Category Archives: Stem Cells

ScienceDaily (Mar. 11, 2012) New ongoing research published March 7 in the journal Science Translational Medicine suggests organ transplant recipients may not require anti-rejection medication in the future thanks to the power of stem cells, which may prove to be able to be manipulated in mismatched kidney donor and recipient pairs to allow for successful transplantation without immunosuppressive drugs. Northwestern Medicine and University of Louisville researchers are partnering on a clinical trial to study the use of donor stem cell infusions that have been specially engineered to "trick" the recipients' immune system into thinking the donated organ is part of the patient's natural self, thus gradually eliminating or reducing the need for anti-rejection medication.

"The preliminary results from this ongoing study are exciting and may have a major impact on organ transplantation in the future," said Joseph Leventhal, MD, PhD, transplant surgeon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and associate professor of surgery and director of kidney and pancreas transplantation at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "With refinement, this approach may prove to be applicable to the majority of patients receiving the full spectrum of solid organ transplants."

Leventhal authored the study along with Suzanne Ildstad, MD, director of the Institute of Cellular Therapeutics at the University of Louisville. It is the first study of its kind where the donor and recipient do not have to be related and do not have to be immunologically matched. Previous studies involving stem cell transplants for organ recipients have included donors and recipients who are siblings and are immunologically identical, something that only occurs in about 25 percent of sibling pairs.

"Being a transplant recipient is not easy. In order to prevent rejection, current transplant recipients must take multiple pills a day for the rest of their lives. These immunosuppressive medications come with serious side effects with prolonged use including high blood pressure, diabetes, infection, heart disease and cancer, as well as direct damaging effects to the organ transplant," said Ildstad. "This new approach would potentially offer a better quality of life and fewer health risks for transplant recipients."

In a standard kidney transplant, the donor agrees to donate their kidney. In the approach being studied, the individual is asked to donate part of their immune system as well. The process begins about one month before the kidney transplant, when bone marrow stem cells are collected from the blood of the kidney donor using a process called apheresis. The donor cells are then sent to the University of Louisville to be processed, where researchers enrich for "facilitating cells" believed to help transplants succeed. During the same time period, the recipient undergoes pre-transplant "conditioning," which includes radiation and chemotherapy to suppress the bone marrow so the donor's stem cells have more space to grow in the recipient's body.

Once the facilitating cell-enriched stem cell product has been prepared, it is transported back to Northwestern, where the recipient undergoes a kidney transplant. The donor stem cells are then transplanted one day later and prompt stem cells to form in the marrow from which other specialized blood cells, like immune cells, develop. The goal is to create an environment where two bone marrow systems exist and function in one person. Following transplantation, the recipient takes anti-rejection drugs which are decreased over time with the goal to stop a year after the transplant.

"This is something I have worked for my entire life," said Ildstad, who pioneered the approach and is known for her discovery of the "facilitating" cell.

Less than two years after her successful kidney transplant, 47-year-old mother and actress Lindsay Porter of Chicago, is living a life that most transplant recipients dream of -- she is currently free of anti-rejection medications and says at times, she has to remind herself that she had a kidney transplant. "I hear about the challenges recipients have to face with their medications and it is significant. It's almost surreal when I think about it because I feel so healthy and normal." Doctors are hopeful that Porter will not need immunosuppressive drugs long-term, given her progress thus far.

In order to qualify for this type of experimental kidney transplant, the donor and recipient pairs must be blood-type compatible and have a negative cross-match, which means that testing has been done to confirm the recipient does not have antibodies in the blood that would cause rejection of the kidney.

The clinical trial is ongoing. Researchers are also planning a second clinical trial, which would offer similar treatment for subjects who have already undergone a living donor kidney transplant.

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New transplant method may allow kidney recipients to live life free of anti-rejection medication

07-03-2012 13:13 The notion of preserving your own stem cells has been gaining some popularity and researches have discovered a new way of preserving more off your cells and thats threw your teeth. Dr. Bradley Briggs from Briggs family & cosmetic dentistry discusses the process and how we can preserve stem cells.

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Dr. Bradley Briggs- Stem Cell - Video

Cancer sufferer Pamela Bou Sejean wants your help to save her life

Pamela Bou Sejean has Hodgkin's Lymphoma and needs a stem cell transplant. Picture: Alison Wynd Source: News Limited

PAMELA Bou Sejean is fighting for her life.

After 16 months battling an aggressive form of Hodgkin's Lymphoma, the 26-year-old has turned to Facebook in a last ditch bid to find the stem cell donor to keep her alive.

TheVictorian woman in Belmont does not match with any registered bone marrow donor in the world so is now pleading for the public to come forward to be blood tested for a possible match.

"I don't know how much time I have, I get too afraid to ask," Ms Bou Sejean told the Geelong Advertiser.

"I want to focus on what we're doing now.

"The waiting process is hard."

With her life in the balance, Ms Bou Sejean's brother Matt a week ago set up the Facebook page How You Can Help Cure Pamela.

There, Facebook users are told about her fight and how to be blood tested for a possible stem cell match.

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Stem cells are my last hope. Can you help?

Newswise CHICAGO, IL March 8, 2012 Stem cells provide a recurring topic among the scientific presentations at the Genetics Society of Americas 53rd Annual Drosophila Research Conference, March 7-11 at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers. Specifically, researchers are trying to determine how, within organs, cells specialize while stem cells maintain tissues and enable them to repair damage and respond to stress or aging. Four talks, one on Thursday morning and three on Sunday morning, present variations on this theme.

For a fertilized egg to give rise to an organism made up of billions or trillions of cells, a precise program of cell divisions must unfold. Some divisions are asymmetric: one of the two daughter cells specializes, yet the other retains the ability to divide. Chris Q. Doe, Ph.D., professor of biology at the University of Oregon, compares this asymmetric cell division to splitting a sundae so that only one half gets the cherry. The cherries in cells are the proteins and RNA molecules that make the two cells that descend from one cell different from each other. This collecting of different molecules in different regions of the initial cell before it divides is termed "cell polarity."

Dr. Doe and his team are tracing the cell divisions that form a flys nervous system. Producing the right cells at the right time is essential for normal development, yet its not well understood how an embryonic precursor cell or stem cell generates a characteristic sequence of different cell types, he says. Dr. Doe and his team traced the cell lineages of 30 neuroblasts (stem cell-like neural precursors), each cell division generating a daughter cell bound for specialization as well as a self-renewing neuroblast. The dance of development is a matter of balance. Self-renew too much, and a tumor results; not enough, and the brain shrinks.

Tracing a cell lineage is a little like sketching a family tree of cousins who share a great-grandparent except that the great-grandparent (the neuroblast) continually produces more cousins. The offspring will change due to the different environments they are born into, says Dr. Doe.

Julie A. Brill, Ph.D., a principal investigator at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto, investigates cell polarity in sperm cells. These highly specialized elongated cells begin as more spherical precursor cells. Groups of developing sperm elongate, align, condense their DNA into tight packages, expose enzyme-containing bumps on their tips that will burrow through an eggs outer layers, form moving tails, then detach and swim away.

The Brill lab studies a membrane lipid called PIP2 (phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate) that establishes polarity in developing male germ cells in Drosophila. Reducing levels of PIP2 leads to defects in cell polarity and failure to form mature, motile sperm, Dr. Brill says. These experiments show that localization of the enzyme responsible for PIP2 production in the growing end of elongating sperm tails likely sets up cell polarity. Since loss of this polarity is implicated in the origin and spread of cancer, defects in the regulation of PIP2 distribution may contribute to human cancer progression, she adds.

Stephen DiNardo, Ph.D., professor of cell and developmental biology at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, is investigating how different varieties of stem cells in the developing fly testis give rise to germ cells and epithelial cells that ensheathe the germ cells, as well as being able to self-renew. For each of these roles, stem cells are guided by their environment, known as their niche.

In the fly testis, we know not only the locations of the two types of stem cells whose actions maintain fertility, but of neighboring cells. We study how these niche cells are first specified during development, how they assemble, and what signals they use. Elements of what we and others learn about this niche may well apply to more complex niches in our tissues, Dr. DiNardo explains.

Denise J. Montell, Ph.D., professor of biological chemistry at Johns Hopkins University, will report on the female counterpart to the testis, the fly ovary. She and her co-workers use live imaging and fluorescent biomarkers to observe how the contractile proteins actin and myosin assemble, disassemble, and interact, elongating tissues in ways that construct the egg chamber. These approaches are particularly valuable for observing the response of the developing ovary to environmental changes. Starvation, for example, slows the rate of stem cell division and induces some egg chambers to undergo apoptosis (die) while others arrest until conditions improve, she says.

Her group has discovered that, surprisingly, following starvation and re-feeding, some of the cells that got far along the cell death pathway actually reversed that process and survived. The group has documented this reversal of apoptosis in a variety of mammalian cell types including primary heart cells. These observations have many intriguing implications. This may represent a previously unrecognized mechanism that saves cells that are difficult to replace, and therefore, may have implications for treating degenerative diseases.

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Fly Research Gives Insight Into Human Stem Cell Development

Pamela Bousejean has Hodgkin's Lymphoma and needs a stem cell transplant. Picture: Alison Wynd Source: News Limited

PAMELA Bou Sejean is fighting for her life.

After 16 months battling an aggressive form of Hodgkin's Lymphoma, the 26-year-old has turned to Facebook in a last ditch bid to find the stem cell donor to keep her alive.

TheVictorian woman in Belmont does not match with any registered bone marrow donor in the world so is now pleading for the public to come forward to be blood tested for a possible match.

"I don't know how much time I have, I get too afraid to ask," Ms Bou Sejean told the Geelong Advertiser.

"I want to focus on what we're doing now.

"The waiting process is hard."

With her life in the balance, Ms Bou Sejean's brother Matt a week ago set up the Facebook page How You Can Help Cure Pamela.

There, Facebook users are told about her fight and how to be blood tested for a possible stem cell match.

Mr Bou Sejean who, like the rest of the family, does not match with his sister said "the cure for Pamela is in the body of hundreds of people out there."

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BE THE CHANGE: Stem cells are Pamela's last hope - can you help?

MissionIR would like to highlight Neuralstem, Inc. (NYSE AMEX: CUR). The company's patented technology enables the ability to produce neural stem cells of the human brain and spinal cord in commercial quantities, and the ability to control the differentiation of these cells constitutively into mature, physiologically relevant human neurons and glia. In addition to ALS, Neuralstem is also targeting major central nervous system conditions with its cell therapy platform, including spinal cord injury, ischemic spastic paraplegia, chronic stroke, and Huntington's disease.

In the company's news yesterday,

Neuralstem reported dosing of the fourteenth patient in its ongoing Phase I clinical trialing of the companys spinal cord neural stem cells in ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or Lou Gehrigs disease), marking the second patient to receive cells in the cervical (upper back) region of the spine and the trials first female patient. This is the first FDA-approved neural stem cell trial for the treatment of ALS.

This treatment is designed to help remediate breathing function loss associated with progressive ALS, and the transplantation of stem cells observed in the trial will be keenly watched for safety/efficacy of spinal cord neural stem cells, as well as the intraspinal transplantation method. The first twelve patients received lumbar (lower back) transplants and the trial has now been underway since January of 2010.

Having begun with non-ambulatory patients and progressing to patients able to walk, this trial has now entered into the final six patients, all of whom will receive cervical transplants, with trial conclusion projected for six months after the final surgery is complete. The proprietary CUR spinal cord delivery platform with floating cannula has helped tremendously in making this dream a possibility and represents a true breakthrough in the field, making the first ever intraspinal injections feasible.

Chairman and CSO of CUR, Karl Johe, PhD., was proud to be breaking new ground with this latest cohort of patients, as it represents a major milestone for the trial, with direct implantation of cells into the gray matter of the spinal cord in the cervical region. Dr. Johe was especially proud of the potential these successful surgeries represent for the numerous patients who suffer from significant quality of life impairment due to ALS. With the 14th successful transplant notched into their belts, CUR is confident that the demonstration of safety in this novel procedure is going quite well.

This is a huge coup for CUR which is also making significant advancements towards developing a robust cell therapy platform capable of addressing a wide range of major central nervous system conditions, ranging from spinal cord injuries and chronic stroke, to ischemic spastic paraplegia and other crippling conditions. The company has an IND submitted to FDA for Phase I safety trials in chronic spinal cord injury.

The company is also well-positioned to service systematic screening needs in the large chemical library space. With proprietary screening technology and the ability to generate appropriate human neural stem cell lines, CUR is ready to leverage discovered/patented compounds that help to stimulate brain activity and neuron regeneration. The potential exists to even reverse debilitating CNS conditions.

The company has also received FDA clearance to conduct a Phase Ib safety trial for their first small molecule compound, NSI-189, for treatment of MDD (major depressive disorder); technology that could easily pan out into schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and Alzheimers offerings.

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Neuralstem Shows Solid Progress in Spinal Cord Neural Stem Cell Trial for ALS

8 March 2012 Last updated at 04:20 ET

An injection of stem cells given alongside a kidney transplant could remove the need for a lifetime of drugs to suppress the immune system, say scientists.

Early tests of the technique at US hospitals were successful in a small number of patients.

The journal Science Translational Medicine reports how the majority no longer need anti-rejection medication.

Researchers said it could have a "major impact" on transplant science.

One of the key problems associated with organ transplantation is the risk that the body will "recognise" the new organ as a foreign invader and attack it.

To prevent this, patients take powerful drugs to suppress their immune systems, and will have to do this for life.

The drugs come at a price, preventing organ rejection but increasing the risk of high blood pressure, diabetes and serious infection.

The study, carried out at the University of Louisville and the Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, involved eight patients.

Their transplant came from a live donor, who also underwent a procedure to draw stem cells, the building blocks of their immune system, from the blood.

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Stem cells beat kidney rejection

by Maggie Ruper

WHAS11.com

Posted on March 7, 2012 at 11:50 PM

Updated today at 12:01 AM

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WHAS11) -- New research published Wed. in the journal Science Translation Medicine, shows organ transplant recipients may not require anti-rejection medication after surgery.

The study, authored by University of Louisville professor Suzanne Ildstad, M.D., suggests bone marrow stem cells are able to trick the recipients immune system into thinking the donated organ is part of the patients natural self. It therefore eliminates the need for patients to take dozens of daily anti-rejection drugs.

Normally, if I have to transplant a kidney into a patient they have to take immunosuppression drugs for their lifetime and that's about 15 to 25 pills a day, said Ildstad.

Louisville native and father of four, Rob Waddell underwent the procedure in 2009 at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. He suffered from Polycystic Kidney Disease since he was 11 years old. His new kidney and the stem cells were donated to him by his next door neighbor.

It was a match and the rest is history. He's what I call my guardian angel," said Wadell.

The results were considered important because the technique worked for patients who did not have well-matched or related donors.

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UofL Professor’s study: Stem cells eliminate need for anti-rejection drugs