Category Archives: Stem Cell Videos

13-02-2012 13:27 NC State neurologist Dr. Natasha Olby is studying a promising new treatment for paralyzed dogs. Olby has used stem cell treatments to restore partial use of the legs and bladder control to dogs with spinal cord injuries. Her research holds promise for humans, too. A full transcript of this video is available at http://www.ncsu.edu

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Stem cell treatments for paralyzed dogs - Video

HOUSTON - A possible cure for hearing loss in children....that's what physicians are hoping to achieve from the first ever FDA-approved study of stem cells to treat hearing loss in children.

The folks over at Memorial Hermann are studying the safety of using a child's own umbilical cord blood stem cells.....to repair a damaged inner ear.

If it's a success....it would become the first treatment to restore normal hearing.

It has been the most painful thing Ive ever gone through, having to see your child go through challenges its very difficult, very hard, said Wilma Shay.

Wilma Shay's 2 year old son Shane was born premature and failed his newborn hearing test.

A month after getting him home....she knew something was wrong.

Once I just stood behind him and clapped my hands real hard and he didnt move so I said okay lets get him checked out , said Shay.

Hes not hearing well, he has profound hearing loss on both ears. He has severe speech delay as well because of the profound hearing loss, said Shanes ENT at Memorial Hermann, Dr. Sancak Yuksel.

Shane was diagnosed with auditory neuropathy...where sound enters the ear normally, but the transmission of signals from the inner ear to the brain are impaired.

I have him in several days of speech therapy and I also work with him at home, said Shay.

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Stem Cells Could Cure Hearing Loss

A University of Georgia study published in the March 2 edition of the journal Cell Stem Cell, however, creates the first ever blueprint of how stem cells are wired to respond to the external signaling molecules to which they are constantly exposed. The finding, which reconciles years of conflicting results from labs across the world, gives scientists the ability to precisely control the development, or differentiation, of stem cells into specific cell types.

"We can use the information from this study as an instruction book to control the behavior of stem cells," said lead author Stephen Dalton, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar of Molecular Biology and professor of cellular biology in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. "We'll be able to allow them to differentiate into therapeutic cell types much more efficiently and in a far more controlled manner."

The previous paradigm held that individual signaling molecules acted alone to set off a linear chain of events that control the fate of cells. Dalton's study, on the other hand, reveals that a complex interplay of several molecules controls the "switch" that determines whether a stem cell stays in its undifferentiated state or goes on to become a specific cell type, such as a heart, brain or pancreatic cell.

"This work addresses one of the biggest challenges in stem cell researchfiguring out how to direct a stem cell toward becoming a specific cell type," said Marion Zatz, who oversees stem cell biology grants at the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of General Medical Sciences, which partially supported the work.

"In this paper, Dr. Dalton puts together several pieces of the puzzle and offers a model for understanding how multiple signaling pathways coordinate to steer a stem cell toward differentiating into a particular type of cell. This framework ultimately should not only advance a fundamental understanding of embryonic development, but facilitate the use of stem cells in regenerative medicine."

To get a sense of how murky the understanding of stem cell differentiation was, consider that previous studies reached opposite conclusions about the role of a common signaling molecule known as Wnt. About half the published studies found that Wnt kept a molecular switch in an "off" position, which kept the stem cell in its undifferentiated, or pluripotent, state. The other half reached the opposite conclusion.

Could the same Wnt molecule be responsible for both outcomes? As it turns out, the answer is yes. Dalton's team found that in small amounts, Wnt signaling keeps the stem cell in its pluripotent state. In larger quantities, it does the opposite and encourages the cell to differentiate.

But Wnt doesn't work alone. Other molecules, such as insulin-like growth factor (Igf), fibroblast growth factor (Fgf2) and Activin A also play a role. To complicate things further, these signaling molecules amplify each other so that a two-fold increase in one can result in a 10-fold increase in another. The timing with which the signals are introduced matters, too.

"One of the things that surprised us was how all of the pathways 'talk' to each other," Dalton said. "You can't do anything to the Igf pathway without affecting the Fgf2 pathway, and you can't do anything to Fgf2 without affecting Wnt. It's like a house of cards; everything is totally interconnected."

Dalton and his team spent a painstaking five years creating hypotheses about the how the signaling molecules function, testing those hypotheses, andwhen faced with an unexpected resultrebuilding their hypotheses and re-testing. This process continued until the entire system was resolved.

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New study reveals basic molecular 'wiring' of stem cells

Calvin Cole is president of StemCyte in Covina, which stores stem cells gathered from umbilical cord blood. StemCyte has forged partnerships with many hospitals and national organizations to accept and process cord blood donations and make stem cell treatment available for patients across the country. (Sarah Reingewirtz / Staff Photographer)

COVINA - Calvin Cole likes to refer to StemCyte as "the American Red Cross of stem cells."

Housed in a 40,000-square-foot building at 1589 Industrial Park St. in Covina, StemCyte is one of the most accredited and experienced cord- blood banks in the world.

"Right now, we have more than 36,000 high-quality cord-blood units under our management," Cole said.

StemCyte has forged partnerships with many hospitals and national organizations to accept and process cord-blood donations and make cord blood available for patients across the country.

It is one of the very few family blood banks that specialize in both private banking and public banking.

So exactly what is cord blood?

Umbilical cord blood remains in the placenta and in the attached umbilical cord after childbirth. It's collected because it contains stem cells that can be used to treat a variety of cancers and other genetic disorders.

But first it must be processed - and stored.

"They put in anti-coagulants and then it's manipulated," Cole said. "Some products are discarded and some additives are added to preserve the cells. Then they are frozen to 200 degrees below zero."

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StemCyte provides both public and private cord blood banking

London, Feb 29 (IANS) Children shot with their own stem cells, for the very first time in a rare immune disorder, have shown improvement.

The condition, known as X-CGD, is caused by faulty genes. Doctors were able to take a sample of the children's stem cells, manipulate them in the lab and reintroduce them. This gave the children a working copy of the faulty gene and their condition improved, enabling them to temporarily fight off infections.

It is the third immune disorder that doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital have successfully tackled. The others were the life-threatening conditions, X-SCID and ada-SCID, and 90 percent of treated children have improved, with some showing signs that their immune system has been normalised for good.

Remy Helbawi, 16, from South London, was the first child with X-CGD to be treated. The condition only affects boys and means that while his body produces the white blood cells to fight viruses it does not have the correct cells to fight off bacterial or fungal infections, The Telegraph reports.

The resulting infections can be life-threatening. Up until now the only treatment has been a bone marrow transplant which would offer a permanent cure.

Remy's brother who also had the disease was found a bone marrow match and was successfully treated that way but no match has been found for Remy and a serious lung infection was threatening his life.

Remy said: "Until I was 10 I had the same life as anyone else, except I had eczema a lot of the time. I didn't have a fungal infection until about ten, but when I got my first fungal infection my life changed. I missed a lot of school, I had lots of tests and was in hospital. I would get exhausted after climbing stairs."

Before undergoing the gene therapy, Remy had to have chemotherapy which made his hair fall out and he was kept in isolation for a month.

Remy's nurse Helen Braggins said: "Remy had been unwell for last two years and began to miss school. He had significant fungal lung disease in January of last year, which was getting worse. Without some radical treatment intervention, Remy would not have survived and was becoming increasingly short of breath."

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Children improve in rare disorder with own stem cells

Researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have isolated egg producing stem cells from human ovarian tissues.

Scientists at the Vincent Center for Reproductive Biology, MGH used a special fluorescence-activated cell sorting protocol in mice models to grow new eggs from isolated stem cells.

The new study is seen as a precursor to solving fertility issues in women of reproductive ages. If made viable, the study could benefit young women undergoing cancer therapy and older women who have to resort to egg donors.

The current breakthrough challenges the widely-accepted notion that while men generate sperms throughout life, women are born with a fixed supply of eggs that deplete with age and are finally exhausted at menopause.

The current research, published in the March issue of Nature Medicine is a follow-up on an earlier landmark 2004 Nature paper suggesting that female mammals have the capability of producing egg cells throughout their adult reproductive stages.

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"The discovery of oocyte precursor cells in adult human ovaries, coupled with the fact that these cells share the same characteristic features of their mouse counterparts that produce fully functional eggs, opens the door for development of unprecedented technologies to overcome infertility in women and perhaps even delay the timing of ovarian failure," said Jonathan Tilly, lead researcher and Director for Reproductive Biology at the MGH Vincent Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

To examine their arguments, the researchers injected green fluorescent protein (GFP)-labeled mouse oocyte-producing stem cells (OSCs) into the ovaries of normal adult mice. Several months later, the recipient mouse ovaries showed the presence of follicles containing oocytes (immature egg cells) with and without the marker protein. Similar GFP-labeled and unlabeled oocytes were observed in cell clusters flushed from the animals' oviducts after induced ovulation.

The GFP-labeled mouse eggs were fertilized in the lab to produce embryos that went on to the hatching blastocyst cell reproductive stages, indicating potential for normal egg cell development.

According to Tilly, "In this paper we provide the three key pieces of evidence requested by those who have been skeptical of our previous work."We developed and extensively validated a cell-sorting protocol to reliably purify OSCs from adult mammalian ovaries, proving once again that these very special cells exist. We tested the function of mouse oocytes produced by these OSCs and showed that they can be fertilized to produce healthy embryos. And we identified and characterized an equivalent population of oocyte-producing stem cells isolated from adult human ovaries", he added.

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Ovarian Stem Cells Holds Promise for Infertile Women: Study

A new study by researchers from Harvard says that ovaries may be capable of producing new eggs, a discovery which, if true, overturns the long-held belief within the scientific community that a woman is born with a limited number of eggs.

Our current views of ovarian aging are incomplete. Theres much more to the story than simply the trickling away of a fixed pool of eggs, the studys lead researcher, Jonathan Tilly of Harvards Massachusetts General Hospital, told Time magazine.

Special stem cells in ovaries are capable of generating new eggs, according to the study, published in the journal Nature Medicine.

Weve isolated, essentially, the female equivalent of the stem cells that we know exist in men that actively make new sperm. So having these cells now isolated, I think, opens up a lot of opportunities to consider that we simply couldnt fathom before, Dr. Tilly told Voice of America.

Indeed, fertility experts such as Allan Pacey from the University of Sheffield have said the studys findings re-write the rule book. Dr. Pacey told the BBC that the study opens up a number of exciting possibilities for preserving the fertility of women undergoing treatment for cancer, or just maybe for women who are suffering infertility by extracting these cells and making her new eggs in the lab.

In the study, researchers isolated the rare cells from ovaries and placed them in culture outside the body. Over a period of several months, those 100 or so cells were made in to hundreds of thousands of such cells and, as Dr. Tilly told Voice of America, We noticed that these cells would spontaneously generate immature eggs, all on their own, in these cultures.

While the studys findings, if true, are a major change in our understanding of human fertility, independent experts have cautioned that the cells are some way from any potential clinical use.

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Ovary stem cells can produce new eggs: study

February 28, 2012, 11:02 AM EST
By Ryan Flinn
Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Stem cells taken from human ovaries were used to produce early-stage eggs by scientists in Boston who may have created a new method to help infertile women.
Females have a fixed number of eggs from birth that are depleted by the time of menopause. The finding, published today in the journal Nature Medicine, challenges the belief that their ovaries can�t make more. The research was led by Jonathan Tilly, the director of Massachusetts General Hospital�s Vincent Center for Reproductive Biology.
Tilly reported in 2004 that ovarian stem cells in mice create new eggs, or oocytes, in a way similar to how stem cells in male testes produce sperm throughout a man�s life. His latest work, if reproduced, would suggest the same is true for human ovaries, potentially pointing at new ways to aid fertility by delaying when the ovaries stop functioning.
�The 50-year-old belief in our field wasn�t actually based on data proving it was impossible, or not ongoing,� Tilly said in a telephone interview. �It was simply an assumption made because there was no evidence indicating otherwise. We have human cells that can produce new oocytes.�
In the study, healthy ovaries were obtained from consenting patients undergoing sex reassignment surgery. The researchers were able to identify ovarian stem cells because they express a rare protein that�s only seen in reproductive cells.
The stem cells from the ovaries were injected into human ovarian tissue that was then grafted under the skin of mice, which provided the blood supply that enabled growth. Within two weeks, early stage human follicles with oocytes had formed.
7-Million Eggs
A female is most endowed with oocytes, or eggs, as a fetus, when she has about 7 million. That number that drops to 1 million by birth, and around 300,000 by puberty. By menopause, the number is zero. Since the 1950�s, scientists thought that ovarian stem cells capable of producing new eggs are only active during fetal development.

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Ovarian Stem Cells Make Human Eggs in Possible Aid to Fertility

ScienceDaily (Feb. 26, 2012) — Japanese scientists have found that the odorous compound responsible for halitosis -- otherwise known as bad breath -- is ideal for harvesting stem cells taken from human dental pulp.

In a study published 27 February, in IOP Publishing's Journal of Breath Research, researchers showed that hydrogen sulphide (H2S) increased the ability of adult stem cells to differentiate into hepatic (liver) cells, furthering their reputation as a reliable source for future liver-cell therapy.

This is the first time that liver cells have been produced from human dental pulp and, even more impressively, have been produced in high numbers of high purity. "High purity means there are less 'wrong cells' that are being differentiated to other tissues, or remaining as stem cells. Moreover, these facts suggest that patients undergoing transplantation with the hepatic cells may have almost no possibility of developing teratomas or cancers, as can be the case when using bone marrow stem cells," said lead author of the study Dr. Ken Yaegaki.

The remarkable transforming ability of stem cells has led to significant focus from research groups around the world and given rise to expectations of cures for numerable diseases, including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

In this study, Dr. Ken Yaegaki and his group, from Nippon Dental University, Japan, used stem cells from dental pulp -- the central part of the tooth made up of connective tissue and cells -- which were obtained from the teeth of dental patients who were undergoing routine tooth extractions.

Once the cells were sufficiently prepared, they were separated into two batches (a test and a control) and the test cells incubated in a H2S chamber. They were harvested and analysed after 3, 6 and 9 days to see if the cells had successfully transformed into liver cells. To test if the cells successfully differentiated under the influence of H2S, the researchers carried out a series of tests looking at features that were characteristic of liver cells.

In addition to physical observations under the microscope, the researchers investigated the cell's ability to store glycogen and then recorded the amount of urea contained in the cell. "Until now, nobody has produced the protocol to regenerate such a huge number of hepatic cells for human transplantation. Compared to the traditional method of using fetal bovine serum to produce the cells, our method is productive and, most importantly, safe" continued Dr. Yaegaki.

Hydrogen sulphide (H2S) has the characteristic smell of rotten eggs and is produced throughout the body in the tissues. Although its exact function is unknown, researchers have been led to believe that it plays a key role in many physiological processes and disease states.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Institute of Physics (IOP), via AlphaGalileo.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

Nikolay Ishkitiev, Bogdan Calenic, Izumi Aoyama, Hisataka Ii, Ken Yaegaki, Toshio Imai. Hydrogen sulfide increases hepatic differentiation in tooth-pulp stem cells. Journal of Breath Research, 2012; 6 (1): 017103 DOI: 10.1088/1752-7155/6/1/017103

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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Dental pulp stem cells transformed by 'bad breath’ chemical

By LAURAN NEERGAARD
AP Medical Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - For 60 years, doctors have believed women were born with all the eggs they'll ever have. Now Harvard scientists are challenging that dogma, saying they've discovered the ovaries of young women harbor very rare stem cells capable of producing new eggs.

If Sunday's report is confirmed, harnessing those stem cells might one day lead to better treatments for women left infertile because of disease - or simply because they're getting older.

"Our current views of ovarian aging are incomplete. There's much more to the story than simply the trickling away of a fixed pool of eggs," said lead researcher Jonathan Tilly of Harvard's Massachusetts General Hospital, who has long hunted these cells in a series of controversial studies.

Tilly's previous work drew fierce skepticism, and independent experts urged caution about the latest findings.

A key next step is to see whether other laboratories can verify the work. If so, then it would take years of additional research to learn how to use the cells, said Teresa Woodruff, fertility preservation chief at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.

Still, even a leading critic said such research may help dispel some of the enduring mystery surrounding how human eggs are born and mature.

"This is going to spark renewed interest, and more than anything else it's giving us some new directions to work in," said David Albertini, director of the University of Kansas' Center for Reproductive Sciences. While he has plenty of questions about the latest work, "I'm less skeptical," he said.

Scientists have long taught that all female mammals are born with a finite supply of egg cells, called ooctyes, that runs out in middle age. Tilly, Mass General's reproductive biology director, first challenged that notion in 2004, reporting that the ovaries of adult mice harbor some egg-producing stem cells. Recently, Tilly noted, a lab in China and another in the U.S. also have reported finding those rare cells in mice.

But do they exist in women? Enter the new work, reported Sunday in the journal Nature Medicine.

First Tilly had to find healthy human ovaries to study. He collaborated with scientists at Japan's Saitama Medical University, who were freezing ovaries donated for research by healthy 20-somethings who underwent a sex-change operation.

Tilly also had to address a criticism: How to tell if he was finding true stem cells or just very immature eggs. His team latched onto a protein believed to sit on the surface of only those purported stem cells and fished them out. To track what happened next, the researchers inserted a gene that makes some jellyfish glow green into those cells. If the cells made eggs, those would glow, too.

"Bang, it worked - cells popped right out" of the human tissue, Tilly said.

Researchers watched through a microscope as new eggs grew in a lab dish. Then came the pivotal experiment: They injected the stem cells into pieces of human ovary. They transplanted the human tissue under the skin of mice, to provide it a nourishing blood supply. Within two weeks, they reported telltale green-tinged egg cells forming.

That's still a long way from showing they'll mature into usable, quality eggs, Albertini said.

And more work is needed to tell exactly what these cells are, cautioned reproductive biologist Kyle Orwig of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, who has watched Tilly's work with great interest.

But if they're really competent stem cells, Orwig asked, then why would women undergo menopause? Indeed, something so rare wouldn't contribute much to a woman's natural reproductive capacity, added Northwestern's Woodruff.

Tilly argues that using stem cells to grow eggs in lab dishes might one day help preserve cancer patients' fertility. Today, Woodruff's lab and others freeze pieces of girls' ovaries before they undergo fertility-destroying chemotherapy or radiation. They're studying how to coax the immature eggs inside to mature so they could be used for in vitro fertilization years later when the girls are grown. If that eventually works, Tilly says stem cells might offer a better egg supply.

Further down the road, he wonders if it also might be possible to recharge an aging woman's ovaries.

The new research was funded largely by the National Institutes of Health. Tilly co-founded a company, OvaScience Inc., to try to develop the findings into fertility treatments.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Report: Women have rare egg-producing stem cells