Category Archives: Stem Cells

NEW YORK, July 31, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --This month, scientific journals have reported on two more studies that highlight how stem cells found in babies' umbilical cord blood and cord tissue represent the future of medical treatments for serious diseases and injuries. Nature, The International Weekly Journal of Science, reported that Japanese scientists have successfully engineered rudimentary human livers, or "liver buds", using three types of stem cells. And, ScienceDaily reported that Spanish scientists have patented a biomaterial that helps create artificial bones using umbilical cord blood stem cells. These developments are among many in an industry that is pioneering stem cell-based therapies for many life threatening and debilitating diseases and injuries, including some that children may be more susceptible to as a result of family medical history.

In Japan, the researchers used human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), endothelial cells, and mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) to create liver buds. When they implanted the liver buds in mice, the liver buds performed some functions of a liver, including protein production and drug metabolism. iPSCs are a type of pluripotent stem cell artificially derived from a non-pluripotent cell. MSCs can be found in babies' umbilical cord tissue and placenta tissue and can be collected and preserved immediately after a baby is born.

In Spain, the researchers used umbilical cord blood stem cells to create a biomaterial that helped develop bone tissue. The next step in their research will be to implant the bone tissue in laboratory animals and determine whether it can successfully regenerate bones. If successful, this kind of medical therapy would be helpful for people who have suffered bone trauma due to disease or accidents. Umbilical cord blood stem cells are found in the umbilical cord and placenta immediately after a baby is born.

Research into uses of stem cells from cord blood is growing at a rapid pace. Earlier this year, BioInformant Worldwide, a research company focused on the stem cell industry, reported that there were 78 ongoing clinical trials in 2008 compared to 191 in 2012; this represents a 144% increase in clinical trials for cord blood research in just 5 years. Currently, over 80 diseases have been treated with umbilical cord blood stem cells.

"We believe that preserving a baby's stem cells creates a unique the opportunity for that child to have access not only to today's cutting-edge medical therapies, but also to medical therapies that will be developed in the future," said Martin Smithmyer, CEO of Americord Registry. "These newest reports of advances in stem cell research give us even greater reason to be extremely optimistic about the future of stem cell therapies."

About AmericordAmericordis a leader in the advancement of umbilicalcord blood,cord tissueandplacenta tissuebanking. Americord collects, processes, and stores newborn stem cells from umbilical cord blood for future medical or therapeutic use, including the treatment of more than 80 blood diseases such as sickle cell anemia and leukemia. Founded in 2008, Americord is registered with the FDA and operates in all 50 states. The company's laboratory is CLIA Certified, accredited by the AABB and complies with all federal and state guidelines and applicable licenses. Americord is headquartered inNewYork, NY. You may visit Americord's website atcordadvantage.comfor more information. You may also find Americord onFacebookand follow the company onTwitter.

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New Research Uses Ethical Stem Cells to Create Liver Buds and Artificial Bones

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn.

Statistics from the Department of Health and Human Services reveal that an average of 18 people die waiting for organ transplants each day. There are about 2,500 hearts available and a waiting list of about 100,000 patients in need. We show you how researchers at the University of Minnesota hope to bridge that gap.

I couldnt walk, or breathe, or eat, congestive heart failure patient Allan Isaacs told Ivanhoe.

That was life with congestive heart failure for 71-year-old Isaacs, but after a left ventricular assist device was implanted into his chest, Allans life got moving again.

Allan says he now does, 15 minutes on the elliptical and about 30 minutes on the treadmill.

The LVAD helps pump oxygen rich blood throughout the body, but Allans recovery may also have to do with the fact that his treatment may have included injections of his own bone marrow stem cells. Allans taking part in a leading edge blind study at the University of Minnesotas Medical Center.

We isolate the stem cells and when they go for surgery we inject those cells on the heart wall, Ganesh Raveendran, MD, MS, Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, told Ivanhoe.

One-third of the patients receive a placebo, the rest get ten injections of stem cells into their hearts. Muscle tissue is then analyzed to, see whether these cells have made any meaningful change, whether the cells have transformed into cardiac muscle, Dr. Raveendran explained.

In many cases an LVAD is a bridge to transplant, but researchers and Allan hope this stem cell therapy could eliminate that need.

Now, I can do whatever I feel like doing, Allan said.

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Heart stem cells and LVAD may avoid transplants

Need a replacement tooth? Just don't ask where it came from!Okay, I've read about some crazy science in my time. My 'Weird Science Weekly' articles have some great examples. However, I think this one tops them all, and it deserves an article all to itself.

A team of Chinese scientists have used human stem cells, taken from urine, to grow a human tooth inside the kidney of a mouse.

Apparently, growing human tissues inside mouse kidneys is a fairly common practice when you're working with stem cells. William Stanford, a stem cell researcher at the University of Ottawa called it a "developmental biology trick," in a CBC News interview. Also, scientists have known for awhile that urine contains stem cells, and given that we produce urine all the time, it's a much more convenient source than scraping cells them from inside someone's mouth or cutting a piece of their tissue off.

[ Related: Lab-grown stem cell burger will cost mystery diner $350,000 ]

After 3 weeks of growth, the researchers saw tooth-like structures in the kidneyTo grow the teeth, the Chinese scientists took the urine stem cells from three different donors, grew them into sheets of tissue, then combined that with tissue from the jaw bone of a mouse embryo (that , and implanted it into the kidney of a mouse.

After three weeks of growth, they found tooth-like structures inside the kidney. "The tooth-like structure contained dental pulp, dentin, enamel space, and enamel organ," the researchers wrote, and they confirmed through testing that the teeth were "of human origin".

Furthermore, they found that these 'teeth' had the same strength and hardness as human teeth.

Earlier this year, researchers at King's College in the UK were able to do the same thing, growing teeth inside the kidney of a mouse, but they used cells from the lining of the human gum tissues.

[ More Geekquinox: Scotty, beam me up! Students investigate the feasibility of teleportation ]

"Teeth are vital not only for a good smile, but also good health. Yet, we lose teeth regularly due to accidents or diseases," the researchers wrote in their paper, which was published in the latest issue of Cell Regeneration. "An ideal solution to this problem is to regenerate teeth with patients own cells."

Originally posted here:
Scientists grow human teeth from urine stem cells

How calcium effects adult neural stem cells - Dr Michael Weible

By: Eskitis Institute

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How calcium effects adult neural stem cells - Dr Michael Weible - Video

Aggressive leukaemia puts healthy stem cells to sleep Tuesday 30 July 2013

An aggressive form of leukaemia actually puts healthy stem cells in the bone marrow to sleep, rather than replacing them with cancer cells as was previously thought, reveals a new UK study supported by Cancer Research UK.

This raises the possibility of being able to "reawaken" the sleeping cells, potentially offering an entirely new form of treatment for patients with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), according to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

AML is a form of cancer characterised by the rapid growth of abnormal white blood cells that accumulate in the bone marrow and interfere with the production of normal blood cells.

Approximately 2,500 people are diagnosed with the condition in the UK each year, and AML can be fatal within weeks or months if left untreated. Around 2,300 people die each year from the disease.

The research was led by scientists at Queen Mary, University of London, with the support of researchers at Cancer Research UK's London Research Institute.

Professor Peter Johnson, Cancer Research UK's chief clinician, said: "Although major progress has been made in treating AML over the years, there's still an urgent need for more effective treatments to improve long-term survival.

"This study takes us an important step forwards in our understanding of what's going on in the bone marrow of people with AML, an area that we have not known enough about previously, and the challenge now is to turn this understanding into new treatments for patients."

Under normal circumstances, bone marrow produces special stem cells called 'haematopoietic' stem cells, which mature into adult blood cells, including a form called .

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Aggressive leukaemia puts healthy stem cells to sleep

Chinese scientists develop a method for growing new teeth from stem cells generated from urine.

This model of teeth shows just how many everyone has to potentially lose.

People lose teeth for all sorts of reasons, whether it's through neglect, age, or sports injuries. A team of Chinese scientists from the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health is working on an unusual way to replace those missing chompers.

The researchers derived stem cells from urine as a starting point. The experiment involved combining those stem cells with material from mice. Implanting it back into mice resulted in the growth of what looks like little teeth.

"The tooth-like structure contained dental pulp, dentin, enamel space, and enamel organ," the researchers reported.

If you're a fan of science paper titles, this is a good one: "Generation of tooth-like structures from integration-free human urine induced pluripotent stem cells." The research was published in Cell Regeneration.

The results are rudimentary at this point. The harvested teeth are not as strong as regular teeth, but the scientists are hopeful that the work could one day lead to "the final dream of total regeneration of human teeth for clinical therapy."

It's conceivable people in the future could receive implants that allow them to grow new teeth. There just might be some concern over using urine to get there.

Teeth structures generated from stem cells and mouse materials.

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Peeth: Growing teeth from urine-harvested stem cells

GUANGZHOU, China, July 30 (UPI) -- Scientists in China report they've grown rudimentary teeth from stem cells taken from an unexpected source -- human urine.

The technique of using stem cells that could be grown into tiny tooth-like structures could be developed into a way of replacing lost teeth, they said.

Researchers in many countries looking for ways of growing new teeth to replace those lost with age and poor dental hygiene are increasingly focusing on stem cells.

Scientists at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health used urine as the starting point, harvesting cells passed from the body and modifying them into stem cells.

The cells, when implanted into animals, began to resemble a tooth, the researchers said.

"The tooth-like structure contained dental pulp, dentin, enamel space and enamel organ," they reported in the Cell Regeneration Journal.

Some stem cell scientists have expressed doubts about using urine as a cell source.

"It is probably one of the worst sources; there are very few cells in the first place and the efficiency of turning them into stem cells is very low," stem cell scientist Chris Mason of University College London told the BBC. "You just wouldn't do it in this way."

Read the original here:
Human urine used as source of stem cells to grow teeth

Scientists have discovered a way to grow teeth from stem cells taken from human urine, Medical Daily reported.

Previous research has demonstrated the possibility for generating induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from urine samples. Now, in a study published in Cell Regeneration Journal, researchers have detailed how they were able to use these cells to grow structures resembling human teeth in mice models.

The tooth-like structure contained dental pulp, dentin, enamel space and enamel organ," the researchers wrote. "In particular, these regenerative teeth contain enamel with ameloblast-like cells of human origin and possess physical properties found in the regular human tooth. Thus, human [stem cells] could be a candidate source of seed cells on human tooth tissue-engineering for further drug screening or regenerative therapies."

The researchers, from the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health in China, expressed enthusiasm at the possibility of using stem cells from urine in other areas of regenerative medicine as well, Medical Daily reported. However, other experts remain skeptical because of the high-contamination risk for stem cells derived from urine among other reasons.

"It is probably one of the worst sources; there are very few cells in the first place, and the efficiency of turning them into stem cells is very low," Chris Mason, a researcher at University College, London, told reporters. "You just wouldn't do it in this way."

Despite this, the studys authors maintain that their discovery is a strong preliminary step towards the idea that stem cells could eventually be used to address patient-specific dental issues.

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Stem cells from urine can be used to create teeth, study shows

Public release date: 31-Jul-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Karen Richardson krchrdsn@wakehealth.edu 336-716-4453 Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. July 31, 2013 Could harvesting stem cells for therapy one day be as simple as asking patients for a urine sample? Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine and colleagues have identified stem cells in urine that can be directed to become multiple cell types.

"These cells can be obtained through a simple, non-invasive low-cost approach that avoids surgical procedures," said Yuanyuan Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of regenerative medicine and senior researcher on the project.

Reporting online in the journal Stem Cells, the team successfully directed stem cells from urine to become bladder-type cells, such as smooth muscle and urothelial, the cells that line the bladder. But the urine-derived cells could also form bone, cartilage, fat, skeletal muscle, nerve, and endothelial cells, which line blood vessels. The multipotency of the cells suggests their use in a variety of therapies.

"These stem cells represent virtually a limitless supply of autologous cells for treating not only urology-related conditions such as kidney disease, urinary incontinence and erectile dysfunction, but could be used in other fields as well," said Zhang. "They could also potentially be used to engineer replacement bladders, urine tubes and other urologic organs."

Being able to use a patient's own stem cells for therapy is considered advantageous because they do not induce immune responses or rejection. However, because tissue-specific cells are a very small subpopulation of cells, they can be difficult to isolate from organs and tissues.

Zhang's team first identified the cells, which are a small subset of the many cells found in urine, in 2006. The current research builds on earlier studies by confirming the multipotency of the cells. In addition, the research found that unlike iPS cells or embryonic stem cells, the urine derived-stem cells do not form tumors when implanted in the body, indicating they may be safe for use in patients.

The research involved obtaining urine samples from 17 healthy individuals ranging in age from five to 75 years. Isolating the cells from urine involves minimal processing, according to the authors. Next, they evaluated the cells' ability to become multiple cell types.

Importantly, the cells differentiated into the three tissue layers (endoderm, ectoderm and mesoderm) that are a hallmark of true stem cells and also differentiated into the specific cell types mentioned earlier.

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Stem cells in urine easy to isolate and have potential for numerous therapies

Stem cells in urine directed to become several different cell types, indicating many therapeutic uses.

Could harvesting stem cells for therapy one day be as simple as asking patients for a urine sample? Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine and colleagues have identified stem cells in urine that can be directed to become multiple cell types.

"These cells can be obtained through a simple, non-invasive low-cost approach that avoids surgical procedures," said Yuanyuan Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of regenerative medicine and senior researcher on the project.

Reporting online in the journal Stem Cells, the team successfully directed stem cells from urine to become bladder-type cells, such as smooth muscle and urothelial, the cells that line the bladder. But the urine-derived cells could also form bone, cartilage, fat, skeletal muscle, nerve, and endothelial cells, which line blood vessels. The multipotency of the cells suggests their use in a variety of therapies.

"These stem cells represent virtually a limitless supply of autologous cells for treating not only urology-related conditions such as kidney disease, urinary incontinence and erectile dysfunction, but could be used in other fields as well," said Zhang. "They could also potentially be used to engineer replacement bladders, urine tubes and other urologic organs."

Being able to use a patient's own stem cells for therapy is considered advantageous because they do not induce immune responses or rejection. However, because tissue-specific cells are a very small subpopulation of cells, they can be difficult to isolate from organs and tissues.

Zhang's team first identified the cells, which are a small subset of the many cells found in urine, in 2006. The current research builds on earlier studies by confirming the multipotency of the cells. In addition, the research found that unlike iPS cells or embryonic stem cells, the urine derived-stem cells do not form tumors when implanted in the body, indicating they may be safe for use in patients.

The research involved obtaining urine samples from 17 healthy individuals ranging in age from five to 75 years. Isolating the cells from urine involves minimal processing, according to the authors. Next, they evaluated the cells' ability to become multiple cell types.

Importantly, the cells differentiated into the three tissue layers (endoderm, ectoderm and mesoderm) that are a hallmark of true stem cells and also differentiated into the specific cell types mentioned earlier.

Next, the researchers placed cells that had been differentiated into smooth muscle and urothelial cells onto scaffolds made of pig intestine. When implanted in mice for one month, the cells formed multi-layer, tissue-like structures.

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Stem cells in urine have potential for numerous therapies