Category Archives: Stem Cells

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Newswise A protein implicated in several cancers appears to play a pivotal role in keeping stem cells in an immature pluripotent state, according to a new study by NYU Langone Medical Center scientists. The study is published online today in Cell Reports.

Stem cells are the perpetual adolescents of the cellular world, uncommitted to any cell fate. In principle, they can be programmed to differentiate into any mature cell type, holding the promise of regenerating tissues and organs. A fuller understanding of their biology, however, is needed.

Our finding provides a better understanding of the complexity of how the stem cell state is regulated, says Eva M. Hernando-Monge, PhD, associate professor of pathology and a member of the Helen L. and Martin S. Kimmel Center for Stem Cell Biology at NYU Langone Medical Center.

The newly identified stem cell factor is BRD4, a protein associated with several cancers and the target of prospective therapies currently in clinical trials. In 2013, Dr. Hernando-Monge and colleagues found that BRD4 is overexpressed in melanoma cells and helps sustain their proliferation, whereas inhibiting BRD4 greatly slows their growth. The protein appeared to drive cancer in part by keeping cancer cells in a relatively immature, stem cell-like state. Intrigued, Dr. Hernand-Monge wanted to find out what role the protein played in actual stem cells.

In the new study, Dr. Hernando-Monges team inhibited BRD4s activity in mouse and human embryonic stem cells using BRD4-blocking compounds developed by collaborator Ming-Ming Zhou and colleagues at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. They also used special RNA molecules that block BRD4 gene transcripts, and observed the cells shift out of the stem cell state. As they divided, the cells began to show characteristics of young neurons. Stem cells are thought to maintain a state of quiescence until some signal forces them to divide, producing a differentiated, highly specialized cell.

BRD4 has been known to regulate gene activity by binding to the support structure of DNA, called chromatin, at special switch sites called super-enhancers distributed throughout the genome. These sites are believed to be top-level controllers, orchestrating the distinctive expression patterns of several genes that together determine specific cell types such as nerve or muscle.

We found that BRD4 occupies the super-enhancer sites of genes that are important for maintaining stem cell identity, says Raffaella Di Micco, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow who conceived the research project with Dr. Hernando-Monge and performed most of the experiments. These genes, including OCT4 and PRDM14, showed steep drops in expression when Dr. Di Micco applied BRD4 inhibitors to stem cells.

OCT4 also represses neuronal differentiation, so we think that the loss of that repression with BRD4 inhibition is the most likely reason for the induction of neuronal characteristics in the stem cells, says Dr. Di Micco.

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Scientists Identify Key Factor That Maintains Stem Cell Identity

A teenager who gave stem cells to save the life of a stranger is backing a national campaign to find more donors.

In June, Celyn Evans, 17, became one of the youngest people in the UK to donate stem cells.

The Colchester Royal Grammar School sixth-form student is supporting Anthony Nolans Save a Life at 16 campaign.

The charity wants HMRC to include details about stem cell donation when it writes to teens with their National Insurance numbers ahead of their 16th birthday.

Celyn, of West Mersea, said: You often hear that young people are self absorbed and not interested in helping others, but I think thats wrong.

People just need to be made aware of how they can help. That is why I am supporting this campaign.

Celyn joined the bone marrow donor register last September when his brothers friend developed leukaemia.

He was not able to help the family friend, but in February, Anthony Nolan contacted him to say he was a possible match for another patient in need of a potentially life-saving transplant.

Celyn agreed to donate and, after a series of check-ups, made the donation in London in June.

Like 90 per cent of donors, he gave his stem cells through a simple, outpatient process similar to giving blood.

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Colchester teen becomes one of the UK's youngest stem cell donors

As far as bioengineering goes, stem cells and the surrounding moral controversy have provoked a variety of particularly vehement media commentary. I suppose the conversation, thinly walking the bright line between technical scientific innovation and philosophical quandary, makes for an enigmatic hors doeuvre even more so when morality is involved. Everyone has an opinion.

There is an aphorism some philosophers toss around: You can swing your fist freely till it hits another mans nose. In less archaic terms, the truism promotes individual autonomy until this autonomy infringes upon anothers human rights. In less convoluted terms, you can do what you want as long as no one else is hurt. Regarding stem cells and those who promote research of stem cells, that nose just seems a bit further away. Or the arms are a bit shorter. Regardless, the fist has a larger diameter to swing voraciously.

While it seems obtrusive to interrupt such theoretical thoughts with empirical ones, pragmatics and research are quite the pals. That aforementioned diameter tends to be an elastic one, contingent upon the mathematics of fiscal funding and politics of a given area. As a Brown undergrad, Id like to think Rhode Islands tendency to vote socially liberally has some hopeful implications for stem cells and their potentially monumental role in future health benefits. If Rhode Island were to meet this topic at the right junctures of funding and politics, what significance would it have?

In the endeavor to answer this seemingly large, general question, we should first examine the history of stem cell research policy in America. Second, we should analyze California, a state that has gained both influence and momentum in this field of study as of late.

Stem cell research has long been a moral quandary. Controversy mostly centers on embryonic stem cells and their extraction from in vitro fertilization. While IVF is commonly known as a method to treat infertility, it is also an accessible, effective means to study the embryonic genesis of human development. Stem cell lines are created by utilizing donor embryos or embryos that would have alternatively been discarded by IVF clinics.

Without descending into an entire discussion of where life begins, its enough to know that most stem cell research dissidents first criticize the usage of embryos and hold the process in which the embryos are obtained as a secondary issue.

As research can neither start nor continue in the absence of money, this debate has become an increasingly legal one.

The federal government ended this argument with a wildly unpopular vote to allocate money, though conservatively, to stem cell research laboratories. As political compromises result in little appeasement, this funding law also proved dissatisfactory. Social conservatives protested stem cells embryonic genesis. Researchers were limited to about 20 embryonic cell lines, hardly enough to further the researchs utilitarian health goals.

While the segregation between state and federal government has sometimes provided for unsavory historical moments, a la Southern secession, it has given stem cell researchers a hope for liberty. Since states are given the power to tax their own citizens and discretion in the use of funds gained through these taxes, they can also choose to fund specific types of research.

A decade ago, a group of Californians who believed deeply in the potential health benefits of advances in stem cell research drafted a ballot initiative for the establishment of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Proposition 71 ultimately passed. Since 2006, CIRM has distributed $1.3 billion to build facilities, fund laboratory research and create technology with the promise of long-term health care benefits.

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Bai 16: Stem cells and the political left

By Roger Dobson for the Daily Mail

Published: 18:06 EST, 22 September 2014 | Updated: 18:06 EST, 22 September 2014

Scientists believe stem cells will provide a more effective solution fortendon injuries

Patients are receiving jabs of their own cells in an attempt to heal hard-to-treat tendon injuries, such as tennis elbow.

The treatment, which has previously been used on injured racehorses, uses a patient's stem cells to super-charge the body's natural repair mechanisms.

Millions of Britons suffer tendon injuries. Tendons are the tough bands of tissue that connect muscle to bone. They can become damaged through wear and tear or injury, causing inflammation or tears.

Such damage is notoriously difficult to treat because tendons have a very poor blood supply, so healing compounds cannot reach the injury site. As a result, tough scar tissue often forms around the tendon, significantly hampering movement and flexibility.

Treatments include non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), steroid injections and physiotherapy, but experts say they have limited success. Scientists believe stem cells - which have the ability to turn into different types of cells in the body - will provide a more effective solution.

Early-stage laboratory studies, as well as reports from treating racehorses, have shown that, over several weeks, the stem cells encourage the growth of new tendon tissue and reduce scar tissue.

This may be because stem cells can recruit compounds called growth factors that help regenerate damaged tissue.

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Beat tennis elbow with stem cell injections: Patients are receiving jabs to heal hard-to-treat tendon injuries

Fibroblast Growth Factor FGF Stem Cells 360p
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By: Ronald Torrefiel

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Fibroblast Growth Factor FGF & Stem Cells 360p - Video

About three million Briton currently suffer osteoporosis which is affected by a number factors such as genes, a lack of exercise and poor diet and results in about 60,000 hip, 50,000 wrist and 120,000 spinal fractures every year, according to the National Osteoporosis Society, costing about 1.7 billion in health and social care.

Dr Ifty Ahmed, a researcher at Nottingham University, said his team wanted to provide a preventative treatment, strengthening the bones of those at risk before they suffered a fracture.

Speaking at the Regener8 conference on regenerative medicine, in Leeds last week, he said: Our aim would be to use screening to spot people who are at risk, then strengthen their bones before they get fractures.

It means that rather than waiting until people have a fall and break something, we would try to stop that ever happening, along with the consequences, loss of independence, surgery and secondary illnesses.

Previous attempts have been made to find ways of strengthening thinning bones but the difficulties of protecting the fragile stem cells has meant no such treatments have yet been developed.

Dr Ahmeds team hope to overcome this problem by puncturing the tiny hollow spheres of calcium phosphate allowing the stem cells to migrate inside them where they are protected.

The experimental treatment has not yet been trialled on humans.

It would involve extracting stem cells from a patients bone marrow and mixing them with the microspheres before injecting the paste into the vulnerable bones.

Dr Ahmed said: "If it works, this kind of treatment could be done in a day.

Until now the team have been funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council but they are now looking for a commercial partner.

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Bone paste could provide treatment for ostoeporosis

A Trojan horse in the fight against cancer | Marina Cihova | TEDxBratislava
This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Marna Cihov presents her fascinating research of the therapeutic potential of stem cells in cancer...

By: TEDx Talks

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A Trojan horse in the fight against cancer | Marina Cihova | TEDxBratislava - Video

Blazin #39; For Rikky 2014
A kid that was told he would never walk, and with the miracle of stem cells he just may get that chance! When we were 20 weeks pregnant and the Spina Bifida was seen on the ultrasound, our...

By: Heath Reese

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Blazin' For Rikky 2014 - Video

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Newswise NEW YORK, September 18, 2014 Scientists at NYU Langone Medical Center have found a way to boost dramatically the efficiency of the process for turning adult cells into so-called pluripotent stem cells by combining three well-known compounds, including vitamin C.

Using the new technique in mice, the researchers increased the number of stem cells obtained from adult skin cells by more than 20-fold compared with the standard method. They say their technique is efficient and reliable, and thus should generally accelerate research aimed at using stem cells to generate virtually any tissue. Stem cells are immature or uncommitted cells that are theoretically capable of becoming any cell type.

This big boost in efficiency gives us an opportunity now to study stem cell programming mechanisms at high resolution, says Matthias Stadtfeld, PhD, assistant professor of cell biology and a member of the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine and the Helen L. and Martin S. Kimmel Center for Stem Cell Biology at NYU Langone Medical Center, who led the research.

This is a very exciting advance, says Ruth Lehmann, PhD, director of the Kimmel Center for Stem Cell Biology and the Skirball Institute at NYU Langone and chair of the Department of Cell Biology. The new technology developed by the Stadtfeld lab to reprogram differentiated cells efficiently and effectively brings the prospect of stem cell technology for safe use in regenerative medicine ever so much closer."

The standard method for reprogramming skin, blood, or other tissue-specific cell types into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) was reported in 2006 by the laboratory of Kyoto Universitys Shinya Yamanaka, who later won a Nobel Prize for the achievement. The method involves the artificial expression of four key genes dubbed OKSM (for Oct4, Klf4, Sox2 and myc) whose collective activity slowly prods cells into an immature state much like that of an early embryonic cell.

In principle, one could take a sample of cells from a person, induce the cells to become iPSCs, then multiply the iPSCs in a lab dish and stimulate them to mature towards desired adult cell types such as blood, brain or heartwhich then could be used to replace injured or diseased tissue in that same individual.

But there are many formidable technical obstacles, among which is the low efficiency of currently used protocols. Converting most cell types into stable iPSCs occurs at rates of 1 percent or less, and the process can take weeks.

Researchers throughout the world have been searching for ways to boost this efficiency, and in some cases have reported significant gains. These procedures, however, often alter vital cellular genes, which may cause problems for potential therapies. For the new study, reported online today in Stem Cell Reports, Dr. Stadtfeld and his laboratory team decided to take a less invasive approach and investigate chemical compounds that transiently modulate enzymes that are present in most cells. We especially wanted to know if these compounds could be combined to obtain stem cells at high efficiency, Dr. Stadtfeld says.

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NYU Langone Scientists Report Reliable and Highly Efficient Method for Making Stem Cells

Sheryl Ubelacker, The Canadian Press Published Thursday, September 18, 2014 2:46PM EDT Last Updated Thursday, September 18, 2014 6:31PM EDT

TORONTO -- Canadian researchers have found a way to boost the number of stem cells in umbilical cord blood so more patients with leukemia and other blood-related cancers could receive potentially life-saving transplants.

The key to the breakthrough technique is a molecule developed at the Universite de Montreal, coupled with a bioreactor designed at the University of Toronto, which allows scientists to significantly expand the number of stem cells from a single unit of cord blood.

"Basically it's going to give access to about 10 times as many cords in (cord blood) banks," said Dr. Guy Sauvageau, principal investigator of stem cell genetics at the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer at the Montreal university. "It's as if you were to multiply by 10 today the number of cord blood units in the world."

The molecule, called UM171, was discovered serendipitously. It had been created by a chemist at the institute working on another program but didn't work for its intended purpose, "so they just threw it in what we call a library of compounds," Sauvageau said Thursday from Montreal.

When his research team began testing compounds from among thousands in the library, UM171 "was the only one that really worked."

Stem cells from donated umbilical cord blood are able to give rise to all the types of cells that make up blood, including the immune cells that protect the body and fight infection. The same is true of bone marrow, but finding a suitable donor is more difficult.

For some people with blood-related cancers like leukemia, myeloma and lymphoma, getting a stem cell transplant to replace their own blood system is often the treatment of last resort.

But the biggest hurdle for doctors is finding enough cord blood stem cells that are a compatible match and won't cause severe rejection symptoms in recipients, he said. Typically, there are not enough stem cells in a single cord blood unit to regenerate an adult's blood system; only five per cent of cord blood bank units can be used for large adults.

"And there's another reason why this is becoming more of a problem, because we have more and more ethnic groups in our society and these people's access to a matched unrelated donor is more limited than for most Caucasians."

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Researchers develop molecule that boosts cord blood stem cells