Category Archives: Stem Cells

A team of Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital has successfully engineered stem cells to produce toxins that can kill cancerous cells, turning them into lethal weapons to in the war against brain tumors. Their study was published online in the journal Stem Cells Friday.

For years, scientists have attempted to create cells that would not only kill cancerous cells but also do it without harming themselves or surrounding healthy cells. The genetically engineered stem cells created by the researchers in Boston were reportedly able to do so, making the development a potential milestone in the field of cancer treatment.

Now, we have toxin-resistant stem cells that can make and release cancer-killing drugs, Khalid Shah, a co-author of the study and the director of the molecular neurotherapy and imaging lab at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, said in a statement. Cancer-killing toxins have been used with great success in a variety of blood cancers, but they dont work as well in solid tumors because the cancers arent as accessible and the toxins have a short half-life.

Based on experiments conducted on mice, the results were very positive, Shah said. After doing all of the molecular analysis and imaging to track the inhibition of protein synthesis within brain tumors, we do see the toxins kill the cancer cells, he said.

Chris Mason, a professor of regenerative medicine at University College London who was not involved in the research, hailed the findings as representative of the future of cancer treatment. This is a clever study, which signals the beginning of the next wave of therapies, Mason told BBC News. It shows you can attack solid tumors by putting minipharmacies inside the patient which deliver the toxic payload direct to the tumor.

However, Nell Barrie, the senior science information manager for Cancer Research UK, told BBC News that much more work is needed to see whether the treatment works on humans. Nonetheless, she said, We urgently need better treatments for brain tumors, and this could help direct treatment to exactly where its needed.

Original post:
Scientists Create Toxin Secreting Stem Cells To Fight Brain Tumors

MIAMI (PRWEB) October 24, 2014

Global Stem Cells Group, Inc. has signed BIOMEN S.A and its founder, anti-aging and regenerative medicine specialist Dra. Mariella Tanzi, to represent the Miami-based stem cell company as an exclusive representative for the Costa Rican territory. Tanzi will also open a new Regenestem clinic in the Costa Rican capital of San Jose.

The arrangement is part of the Global Stem Cells Groups global expansion program, which requires affiliate representatives to have more than five years experience in the health care industry with at least some experience in regenerative medicine.

Tanzi will be instrumental in helping to manage the companys growth in Costa Rica. Her responsibilities will include arranging a number of stem cell training courses at the Regenestem facility in Costa Rica over a one-year period, certification of physicians, and willingness to organize an annual stem cell and regenerative medicine symposium in their territory.

Our main focus is to organize Costa Ricas first annual symposium on stem cells and regenerative medicine in 2015, says Global Stem Cells Group Founder Benito Novas. This new alliance will allow us to establish Regenestem as a leader in regenerative medicine therapies in Costa Rica.

To learn more about the Global Stem Cells Group alliance program, visit the website at http://www.stemcellsgroup.com, email bnovas(at)stemcellsgroup(dot)com, or call 305.224.1858.

About Global Stem Cell Group:

Global Stem Cells Group, Inc. is the parent company of six wholly owned operating companies dedicated entirely to stem cell research, training, products and solutions. Founded in 2012, the company combines dedicated researchers, physician and patient educators and solution providers with the shared goal of meeting the growing worldwide need for leading edge stem cell treatments and solutions. With a singular focus on this exciting new area of medical research, Global Stem Cells Group and its subsidiaries are uniquely positioned to become global leaders in cellular medicine.

Global Stem Cells Groups corporate mission is to make the promise of stem cell medicine a reality for patients around the world. With each of GSCGs six operating companies focused on a separate research-based mission, the result is a global network of state-of-the-art stem cell treatments.

###

Read this article:
Global Stem Cells Group Names BIOMEN S.A as exclusive Representative in Costa Rica

The clones are coming! The clones are coming! (Maybe.) Doctors have grown a retina in a petri dish using stem cells from a 70-year-old patients skin and successfully transplanted the retina to her eye at Japan's Riken Center for Developmental Biology.

This marks the first time a transplanted organ was grown from skin cells from the recipient and not an embryo, The Globe and Mail reports. Until now, scientists have been mired in a debate regarding the use of embryonic stem cells to create transplant tissue. Using a patients own adult stem cells avoids that controversy and also reduces the chance the patient could reject the transplant.

Stem cells hold the promise of curing many diseases, including macular degeneration and Parkinsons.

However, there are risks associated with using adult stem cells. Scientists must turn regular adult cells into dividing cells, and there is concern that cells could turn cancerous after transplant. You only need one stem cell left in the graft that could lead to cancer, Dr. Janet Rossant told the The Globe and Mail. Rossant is chief of research at Torontos Hospital for Sick Children and past president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research.

The Riken Center for Developmental Biology has also been in the news lately because its deputy director committed suicide following accusations of scientific misconduct and the retraction of two papers (unrelated to this stem-cell procedure) that were published in the journal Nature.

View original post here:
Doctors Use Adult (Not Embryonic) Stem Cells To Grow And Implant Petri-Dish Retina

BarbaraHudson writes: The Globe and Mail is reporting the success of a procedure to implant a replacement retina grown from cells from the patient's skin. Quoting: "Transplant doctors are stepping gingerly into a new world, one month after a Japanese woman received the first-ever tissue transplant using stem cells that came from her own skin, not an embryo. On Sept. 12, doctors in a Kobe hospital replaced the retina of a 70-year-old woman suffering from macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in the developed world. The otherwise routine surgery was radical because scientists had grown the replacement retina in a petri dish, using skin scraped from the patient's arm.

The Japanese woman is fine and her retinal implant remains in place. Researchers around the world are now hoping to test other stem-cell-derived tissues in therapy. Dr. Jeanne Loring from the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., expects to get approval within a few years to see whether neurons derived from stem cells can be used to treat Parkinson's disease."

Read more from the original source:
Stem Cells Grown From Patient's Arm Used To Replace Retina

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

24-Oct-2014

Contact: Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson suchitra.holgersson@gu.se 46-727-490-808 University of Gothenburg

Just three years ago, a patient at Sahlgrenska University Hospital received a blood vessel transplant grown from her own stem cells.

Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson, Professor of Transplantation Biology at The Univerisity of Gothenburg, and Michael Olausson, Surgeon/Medical Director of the Transplant Center and Professor at Sahlgrenska Academy, came up with the idea, planned and carried out the procedure.

Missing a vein

Professors Sumitran-Holgersson and Olausson have published a new study in EBioMedicine based on two other transplants that were performed in 2012 at Sahlgrenska University Hospital. The patients, two young children, had the same condition as in the first case they were missing the vein that goes from the gastrointestinal tract to the liver.

"Once again we used the stem cells of the patients to grow a new blood vessel that would permit the two organs to collaborate properly," Professor Olausson says.

Stroke of genius

This time, however, Professor Sumitran-Holgersson, found a way to extract stem cells that did not necessitate taking them from the bone marrow.

Read more from the original source:
Growing a blood vessel in a week

KYOTO A team of Japanese researchers has successfully created cardiac tissue sheets generated from human induced pluripotent stem cells, according to a study in the online British journal Scientific Reports.

The team said it is the first time iPS cells have produced an integrated cardiac tissue sheet that includes vascular cells as well as cardiac muscle cells and is close to real tissue in structure.

The stem cell team, led by Kyoto University professor Jun Yamashita, hopes the achievement will contribute to the development of new treatments for heart disease, because it has already found evidence that transplanting the sheets into mice with failing hearts improves in their cardiac condition.

The team used a protein called VEGF, which is related to the growth of blood vessels, as a replacement for the Dkk1 protein previously used to create cardiac muscle sheets from iPS cells.

As a result, iPS cells were simultaneously differentiated to become cardiac muscle cells, vascular mural cells, and the endothelial cells that line the interior surface of blood vessels. The cells were cultivated into a sheet about 1 cm in diameter.

Three-layer cardiac tissue sheets were then transplanted into nine mice with dead or damaged heart muscle caused by heart attacks. In four of the mice, blood vessels formed in the area where the sheets were transplanted, leading to improved cardiac function.

The weak point of iPS cells is that there is a risk of developing cancer, but the cells did not become cancerous within two months of transplantation, the team said.

About 72 percent of the cardiac tissue sheet was made of cardiac muscle cells, while 26 percent of it consisted of endothelial cells as well as vascular mural cells. But the sheet contained a small portion of cells that had not changed, leading the team to call attention to the possibility that a cancerous change might take place over the longer term.

Yamashita said in the study that he believed the new form of cardiac sheets attached well.

Oxygen and nourishment were able to reach cardiac muscle through blood because there were blood vessels, he said.

Originally posted here:
Japanese team develops cardiac tissue sheet from human iPS cells

KYOTO A team of Japanese researchers has successfully created cardiac tissue sheets generated from human induced pluripotent stem cells, according to a study in the online British journal Scientific Reports.

The team said it is the first time iPS cells have produced an integrated cardiac tissue sheet that includes vascular cells as well as cardiac muscle cells and is close to real tissue in structure.

The stem cell team, led by Kyoto University professor Jun Yamashita, hopes the achievement will contribute to the development of new treatments for heart disease, because it has already found evidence that transplanting the sheets into mice with failing hearts improves in their cardiac condition.

The team used a protein called VEGF, which is related to the growth of blood vessels, as a replacement for the Dkk1 protein previously used to create cardiac muscle sheets from iPS cells.

As a result, iPS cells were simultaneously differentiated to become cardiac muscle cells, vascular mural cells, and the endothelial cells that line the interior surface of blood vessels. The cells were cultivated into a sheet about 1 cm in diameter.

Three-layer cardiac tissue sheets were then transplanted into nine mice with dead or damaged heart muscle caused by heart attacks. In four of the mice, blood vessels formed in the area where the sheets were transplanted, leading to improved cardiac function.

The weak point of iPS cells is that there is a risk of developing cancer, but the cells did not become cancerous within two months of transplantation, the team said.

About 72 percent of the cardiac tissue sheet was made of cardiac muscle cells, while 26 percent of it consisted of endothelial cells as well as vascular mural cells. But the sheet contained a small portion of cells that had not changed, leading the team to call attention to the possibility that a cancerous change might take place over the longer term.

Yamashita said in the study that he believed the new form of cardiac sheets attached well.

Oxygen and nourishment were able to reach cardiac muscle through blood because there were blood vessels, he said.

Excerpt from:
107.26 /$ (5 p.m.)

Miami, FL (PRWEB) October 21, 2014

Global Stem Cells Group has announced that Alfredo Hoyos, M.D. and Maritza Novas, R.N., M.S.N. will be speaking at the EuroMedicom First AMWC Latin America Aesthetic & Anti-aging Medicine World Congress in Medellin, Colombia, Nov. 27, 28 and 29, 2014.

The World Congress Colombia event is organized in cooperation with the International Scientific Board of the AMWC Monaco event, the largest international event in the field of aesthetic and anti-aging medicine. The goal of the event is to showcase the AMWCs commitment to innovation, expertise and excellence in aesthetic and anti-aging medicine, and to share a wealth of experience and teaching skills with attendees from around the world.

In addition to keeping up with worldwide practices, the Medellin conference is designed to contribute to enhancing practitioners skills through advanced academic and clinical sessions, as well as lectures presented by prominent experts in the field like Hoyos and Novas.

Novas and Hoyos will discuss the latest advancements in stem cell medicine for cosmetic and anti-aging applications. Hoyos, founder of Stem Lab, Global Stem Cells Group's new representative in Colombia, will also discuss plans to hold a symposium on stem cell and regenerative medicine in Bogota in Feb., 2014.

Novas is a lead trainer and part of the research and development team for Stem Cell Training, a Global Stem Cells Group subsidiary. Hoyos, a prominent Colombian plastic surgeon, is the world-renowned creator of high-definition liposculpture and other advanced body contour techniques. Hoyos will also be promoting the new collaboration between Global Stem Cells Group and his Colombia-based Stem Lab biotechnology company, which develops stem cell techniques for regenerative medicine treatments.

Hoyos serves Global Stem Cells Group and its subsidiary Regenestem as exclusive representative for the Colombian territory. Hoyos will be in charge of all Global Stem Cells Group divisions and programs in Colombia, including patient recruiting through Regenestem, physician training and certification trough Stem Cell Training, and stem cell equipment and disposables sales through Adimarket. Five dates are planned for training and physician certification under the Global Stem Cells Group brand in Colombia during 2015.

For more information, visit the Global Stem Cells Group website, email bnovas(at)stemcellsgroup(dot)com, or call 305-224-1858.

About the Global Stem Cells Group:

Global Stem Cells Group, Inc. is the parent company of six wholly owned operating companies dedicated entirely to stem cell research, training, products and solutions. Founded in 2012, the company combines dedicated researchers, physician and patient educators and solution providers with the shared goal of meeting the growing worldwide need for leading edge stem cell treatments and solutions. With a singular focus on this exciting new area of medical research, Global Stem Cells Group and its subsidiaries are uniquely positioned to become global leaders in cellular medicine.

Read the original post:
Maritza Novas, R.N., M.S.N and Alfredo Hoyos, M.D. to Speak at the EuroMedicom Aesthetic & Anti-Aging Medicine World ...

A new research has identified that 'megakaryocytes' or 'megacells' are responsible for playing a critical role in adult stem cell transplant.

Hematopoietic stem cells differentiate to generate megakaryocytes in bone marrow and the study has shown that the hematopoietic stem cells (the parent cells) could be directly controlled by their own progeny (megakaryocytes).

The results had suggested that megakaryocytes might be used clinically to facilitate adult stem cell regeneration and to expand cultured cells for adult stem cell transplants.

Researchers at Stowers Institute for Medical Research had discovered that megakaryocytes had directly regulated the function of murine hematopoietic stem cellsadult stem cells that had formed the blood and immune cells and that had constantly renewed the body's blood supply. These cells could also develop into all types of blood cells, including white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets.

Because of their remarkable ability to renew themselves and differentiate into other cells, hematopoietic stems cells have been used to treat many diseases and conditions. The transplantation of isolated human hematopoietic stem cells has been used in the treatment of anemia, immune deficiencies and other diseases, including cancer.

The study was published in the journal Nature Medicine.

(Posted on 20-10-2014)

Post your comments

Information on States of India:

Read more from the original source:
Progeny 'mega cells' pivotal in adult stem cell transplant

The Stem Cell #39;s Journey
DescriptionStem cells have the ability to transform into many different cell types, but Stemmy the stem cell possesses a unique gift: he can transform cells around him into duplicates of himself....

By: Jeff Alu

More here:
The Stem Cell's Journey - Video