Category Archives: Stem Cells

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -

One in three people in the U.S. suffers with chronic pain. It affects more Americans than diabetes, heart disease and cancer combined. Non-invasive treatments in the past have been limited, but now stem cells could hold the key to the future of pain management.

Bobby Sydnor and his band have something to sing about. Sydnor may have found the answer to his debilitating pain from a motorcycle accident that nearly crushed his spine 40 years ago, leaving him with three degenerative discs.

"Its just excruciating. I remember sometimes crawling to the bathroom," Sydnor said.

Now, thanks to a cutting edge therapy, the bonsai enthusiast is finally getting some relief without surgery.

"It really has the potential to change the disease state, instead of just treating the symptoms," said Dr. Tory L. McJunkin, principal investigator at Arizona Pain Specialists.

McJunkin is involved in a multi-center clinical trial thats using stem cells to regenerate discs in the spine.

"They have the ability to change and to regrow that tissue until its a normal tissue," McJunkin said.

Preclinical studies on sheep showed their discs were regenerated

"The treated disc looks exactly the same, you cant tell a difference at all and the untreated disc is very degenerative, very black, McJunkin said.

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Health Beat: Stem cells to the rescue: Oh, my back!

MONTREAL, July 25, 2013 /CNW Telbec/ - In Canada, infertility afflicts nearly 15% of couples. In 55% of infertile couples, infertility is due to causes that can be traced to the woman, while in the remaining 35% , the causes of infertility is attributed to the man. In 25% of cases, infertility is present in both partners. To overcome the problems of infertility, the team of Dr. Mitinori Saitou, University of Kyoto, Japan, studies the mechanisms of in vitro reconstruction and the development of germ cells in mammals. He has successfully shown, using mouse models, that fertilizable eggs and viable offspring can be produced from stem cells in culture. Further, he has shown that sperm can be grown in the same manner. Applyingf these findings to human medicine has the potential to revolutionize treatments for infertility in both males and females in the future. Dr Saitou will present a talk about his results on Thursday, July 25, at the 46th annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Reproduction at the Palais des congrs de Montreal.

The Dr. Saitou's team recently established the specification and subsequent development of pluripotent stem cellscells that can produce any kind of cell during cell division. In mice, these cells, transformed in primary stem cells, contribute to spermatogenesis and oogenesis. These experiments will serve as the foundation for the systematic analysis of germ cell development and the mechanisms of meiosis (transfer of genetic material during spermatogenesis and oogenesis), and thus will improve our understanding of the development of stem cells in mammals and humans.

Dr. Mitinori Saitou is assistant professor and head of the laboratory CBD for Mammalian Germ Cell Biology at the University of Kyoto. He specializes in germ cell specification, proliferation, and development through signaling, global transcription, as well as epigenetic dynamics.

INTERVIEWS AND ACCREDITATION: The speakers and experts present will make themselves available to discuss their research. Media wishing to schedule an interview or obtain accreditation are asked to contact Bruce D. Murphy, Ph.D., Co-Chair of the SSR Local Arrangement Committee (bruce.d.murphy@umontreal.ca).

About the Society for the Study of Reproduction (SSR)

The SSR's purpose is to promote the study of the biological and medical aspects of fertility and reproduction by fostering interdisciplinary communication. It holds an annual conference and publishes the journal Biology of Reproduction on a monthly basis.

For more information visit http://www.ssr.org/

About the 46th Annual Meeting of the SSR

Reproductive Health: Nano to Global 22-26 July 2013 Palais des congrs de Montral Montral, Qubec, Canada

Hosted by Rseau Qubcois en Reproduction

Excerpt from:
Growing eggs from stem cells as cure for infertility?

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Judith Villablanca, MD, of The Saban Research Institute of Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, Susan Kreissman, MD, of Duke University Medical Center, and colleagues reported the results of a randomized, phase 3 clinical trial conducted by the Childrens Oncology Group examining the effect of selectively removing (purging) tumor cells from blood stem cells before they are transplanted back into patients with high-risk neuroblastoma following high-dose chemotherapy. This is the first randomized trial looking at the effect of tumor selective stem cell purging on patient outcome. The study will be published online July 25 in the prestigious journal Lancet Oncology.

Neuroblastoma is the second most common solid tumor in children. Half of all children diagnosed with this condition have high-risk disease, meaning that they are less responsive to treatment and have less than a 50% chance of survival. Standard treatment includes a course of high dose chemotherapy because it is more effective at killing tumor cells, however, it also kills the normal blood-forming cells in the bone marrow. In order to mitigate this effect, some immature blood cells (called peripheral blood stem cells or PBSC) are removed before the child is treated with high dose chemotherapy and then re-infused after treatment. This procedure is called an autologous peripheral blood stem cell transplant.

Since neuroblastoma often spreads into the blood and bone marrow, stem cells collected for transplant may be mixed with tumor cells. It was not known if removing tumor cells from the stem cells would change the outcome for patients. To find out, Robert Seeger, MD, Patrick Reynolds, MD, PhD and their team at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, developed a technique for removing or purging the tumor cells from the blood stem cells. This technique involved using antibodies that attached the tumor cells to magnetic beads, and then were removed using strong magnets. Purging stem cells as well as the high dose chemotherapy regimen used in this study were both first piloted in a prior multi-center trial led by Childrens Hospital Los Angeles and chaired by Dr. Villablanca.

This multicenter, phase 3 clinical trial randomized patients to receive either purged or non-purged PBSC following high dose chemotherapy. Purging was done, for all patients randomized to that treatment, at a centralized lab at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. The study showed that purging stem cells prior to transplant did not significantly affect patient survival, suggesting that patients had other tumor sites in their body that were not effectively treated by the high dose chemotherapy. This information now allows oncologists to eliminate the complex and expensive purging process. Future investigations will focus on new therapies that are more effective at killing resistant tumor cells throughout the body.

A second important finding from this study was that patient survival was not decreased when total body irradiation (TBI) was eliminated from the treatment regimen. TBI had been used in the previous COG transplant study. Eliminating TBI resulted in the reduction of serious radiation side effects including cataracts, short stature and abnormal tooth development.

This study illustrates the importance of clinical trials developed as a partnership between lab scientists and clinical researchers to create optimal therapies for treating children with cancer. Each successive trial builds on the previous one allowing us to continuously be working on safer and more effective treatments, says Judith Villablanca, MD, principal investigator at Childrens Hospital and Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California.

The extremely sensitive tumor cell detection method called TLDA was developed by Robert C. Seeger, MD, Director of the Cancer Research Program at The Saban Research Institute. Tumor cells detected by TLDA in the PBSC prior to purging predicted which patients would have worse outcomes. Testing for tumor using this method may provide a new marker to help identify which patients are less likely to respond to standard therapy and who might benefit from more novel approaches.

Our new TLDA test, which can be used to test bone marrow, blood, or PBSC during the course of therapy or at the end of all therapy provides an excellent means of assessing the response of the patients tumor cells to treatment. This response assessment appears to be very helpful in predicting patient outcome, says Robert C. Seeger, MD, who is also Professor of Pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

Childrens Hospital Los Angeles is also the lead institution in the New Approaches to Neuroblastoma Therapy (www.nant.org) clinical trials consortium, which includes 15 neuroblastoma centers in the US and Canada, and is focused on developing these novel therapies for children with neuroblastoma who are currently failing standard treatment approaches.

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Effects of Purging Tumor Cells From Stem Cells in Patients Transplanted for High-Risk Neuroblastoma