Category Archives: Stem Cells

TUESDAY, Aug. 26, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Two women with a rare disorder called stiff person syndrome recovered after receiving transplants of their own stem cells, a study shows.

Stiff person syndrome is rare neurological disease that causes stiffness of the skeletal muscles and painful muscle spasms. In severe cases, the disorder makes it difficult to move or walk.

Both of the women were treated in Canada by a team led by Dr. Sheilagh Sanders of the University of Ottawa.

Stem cell transplantation using a patient's own cells has been used successfully in patients with autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and scleroderma, the team noted. The treatment involves eliminating diseased immune cells and then regenerating the immune system with a person's own stem cells.

One of the women described in the new report began developing stiff person syndrome in 2005 when she was 48, the researchers said. She began suffering from progressively stiffer legs, overactive reflexes and frequent falling. The woman also, "walked with an abnormal 'tin soldier' gait," the team said.

Despite the use of medication, her condition got so bad that by late 2008 she was forced to quit work and had become "socially withdrawn."

Hoping to help, Sanders and her colleagues treated the woman in 2009 with transplanted stem cells taken from the patient's own body.

One month after the procedure, the patient no longer had symptoms and six months after the transplant she had returned to work and was playing sports.

Nearly five years later, the woman is still symptom-free, the team said.

The other woman was diagnosed with stiff person syndrome in 2008 at age 30, and had frequent spasms triggered by cold weather or stress. In the year prior to her stem cell transplant, she "made 47 emergency medical services calls with subsequent hospital visits and had required intensive care unit admission," Sanders' team said.

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2 Cases Suggest Stem Cell Transplant Might Ease 'Stiff Person' Syndrome

Stem cell technology pioneer,DefiniGEN Ltdhas joined the Pfizer-inspired European Bank for induced pluripotent stem cells (EBiSC) consortium.

The consortium comprises 26 partners, and has been newly-formed with support from the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA).

DefiniGen, a Cambridge University spin-out that has raised millions, represents one of the first commercial opportunities to arise from the universitys expertise in stem cells and is based on the research of Dr Ludovic Vallier, Dr Tamir Rashid and Professor Roger Pedersen of the universitys Anne McLaren Laboratory of Regenerative Medicine.

The EBiSC iPS cell bank will act as a central storage and distribution facility for human iPS cells, to be used by researchers across academia and industry in the study of disease and the development of new therapeutics. DefiniGENs role will be to validate EBiSC iPS cell lines by generating liver hepatocyte cells for toxicology, disease modelling, and regenerative medicine applications.

Dr Marcus Yeo, CEO of DefiniGEN, said: We are delighted to be a part of this ground-breaking consortium which will provide a crucial platform resource to enable the realisation of the full potential of iPS technology.

Conceptualised and coordinated by Pfizer Ltd in Cambridge, UK and managed by Roslin Cells Ltd in Edinburgh, the EBiSC bank aims to become the European go to resource for high quality research grade human iPS cells.

Today, iPS cells are being created in an increasing number of research programmes underway in Europe, but are not being systematically catalogued and distributed at the necessary scale to keep pace with their generation, nor to meet future demand.

The 35 million project will support the initial build of a robust, reliable supply chain from the generation of customised cell lines, the specification to internationally accepted quality criteria and their distribution to any global qualified user, ensuring accessibility to consistent, high quality tools for new medicines development.

Ruth McKernan, CSO of Pfizers Neusentis research unit in Cambridge, said: We are excited to be a part of this precompetitive collaboration to build a sustainable repository of high quality human iPS cell lines.

For many areas of research in academia and in industry, understanding the biological basis of disease heterogeneity is the next horizon. A bank of well-characterised iPS lines with strong relevance to the entire research community will help us all in our mission to bring therapies to patients.

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Pfizer buys into Cambridge life science innovation

MIAMI - When Bruce Daily woke up after having lumbar surgery a year ago, he realized he couldn't move the right side of his body.

"It took me a long while to figure out I wasn't gonna walk again," he said. "I knew I was down."

Daily, 69, had gone in for lumbar surgery at the University of Miami hospital and had an ischemic stroke while under anesthesia. An ischemic stroke results from an obstruction in a blood vessel that blocks the blood from getting to the brain.

Because he was unconscious, he missed the four-to-five hour-window to apply the tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, the only medication available to treat ischemic strokes. The medication dissolves the clot, restoring blood flow to the brain.

But while he missed that chance, he was right on time to meet Dr. Dileep Yavagal, a neurosurgeon who practices at the University of Miami and Jackson Memorial hospitals. Yavagal was enrolling patients in RECOVER-stroke, a clinical trial treating recent stroke patients with stem cells from their bone marrow and applying them directly into the carotid artery, one of two arteries that supply the neck and head with blood. Daily was one of 47 patients nationwide who qualified for the study.

The study is funded by Cytomedix, the company that developed the technology to extract stem cells from bone marrow. The firm chose Yavagal to lead a national blind study at the end of 2012.

Yavagal enrolled 13 patients at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital, between the end of 2012 and January of 2014. So far, the initial three-month results have revealed that the marrow cells are not doing any damage, and there was no clear difference between those who received the cells and those who didn't. The study's one-year final results will be revealed in January.

"There is severe need for developing treatment for ischemic stroke, and stem cells are the most promising," said Yavagal, whose own research is still in its initial phase, focusing on using a healthy donor's bone marrow stem cells versus the patient's own marrow.

Stroke, the leading cause of adult disability in the United States, and the No. 4 cause of death in the country, causes 130,000 deaths a year in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Yavagal, associate professor of clinical neurology and neurosurgery and the director of interventional neurology at the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine, said that restricted mobility or loss of speech resulting from a moderate to severe stroke can be devastating because patients often become dependent on someone else for daily activities.

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Can stem cells help mobility after stroke?

Stem cells from placenta usually discarded after childbirth can now be used to develop treatments for conditions such as diabetes, with each placenta containing enough stem cells to potentially treat 100 patients.

Researchers from The University of Queenslands Centre for Clinical Research have discovered a way to extract large quantities of endothelial stem cells from the life-giving organ.

The placenta is the organ in which a foetus develops. It assists in supplying the foetus with nutrients during pregnancy.

The specialist cells, which form part of the interior surface of blood vessels, are abundant in the placenta but it has not previously been possible to isolate them in sufficient quantities for use in treatments.

Study leader Associate Professor Kiarash Khosrotehrani said researchers were now working to develop medical treatments from the endothelial stem cells.

One of the therapies we are exploring will benefit patients with any condition where blood supply to tissues is severely restricted, such as heart issues, Associate Professor Khosrotehrani said.

We have recently discovered that endothelial stem cells form new blood vessels when injected into the body.

A single placenta has enough stem cells for 100 doses, which means after giving life to a baby, the organ may then go on to give a new lease of life to many patients.

He said laboratory experiments had been promising.

We have conducted experiments in mice with restricted blood flow and this has revealed that injected endothelial stem cells spur blood vessel growth and improve blood flow by up to 30 to 40 per cent in just two weeks, Associate Professor Khosrotehrani said.

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Placental tissue gives gift of life a second time around

Sheryl Ubelacker, The Canadian Press Published Tuesday, August 26, 2014 6:45AM EDT Last Updated Wednesday, August 27, 2014 6:03AM EDT

TORONTO -- Canadian doctors have begun using stem cell transplants to treat "stiff person syndrome," a rare neurological condition in which a patient's leg and other muscles suddenly contract painfully, often leaving them immobilized like a tin soldier.

The disorder, which affects an estimated one in a million people, occurs when the immune system turns against a person's own tissues, in this case attacking cells in the brain and spinal cord.

Stem cell transplants have been used to treat patients with other auto-immune diseases, among them multiple sclerosis, scleroderma and Crohn's disease, but this may be the first time the procedure has been employed to alleviate the symptoms of stiff person syndrome, or SPS, the researchers reported Monday in the journal JAMA Neurology.

SPS is characterized by episodes of stiffness in the muscles and painful muscle spasms, which can be brought on by stress, loud noises or emotional distress. Some people with the disorder are so disabled they are unable to walk or move and may isolate themselves at home to avoid triggering an attack.

"Sometimes this happens when they're startled," said Dr. Harry Atkins of the Blood and Marrow Transplant Program at the Ottawa Hospital, who headed a team that transplanted stem cells into two women with the disease.

"So you can imagine walking across the street and someone honks the horn and you can't move, or you start falling and because your muscles can't move, you just fall and you hurt yourself," Atkins said Monday from Ottawa.

"It really does provide a barrier with just going on with your life."

Tina Ceroni of Toronto is one of the two SPS patients who had the stem-cell transplant -- and she said it has given back her life.

The personal fitness trainer, now 36, started getting severe symptoms in her late 20s. Initially she was diagnosed with hyponatremia, or low blood sodium, thought to be related to her heavy training schedule for a half-ironman competition.

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Canadian doctors use stem cells to treat 'stiff person syndrome'

TOKYO: Researchers in Japan said on Wednesday (Aug 27) they have been unable to replicate experiments that were hailed earlier this year as a "game-changer" in the quest to grow transplant tissue, amid claims evidence was faked.

In a scandal that rocked Japan's scientific establishment, Riken - the research institute that sponsored the study - launched an independent experiment in April to verify research published by scientist Haruko Obokata and her colleagues earlier this year. But the failure to replicate the experiment casts further doubt on the existence of stem cell-like cells, what the researchers called Stimulus-Triggered Acquisition of Pluripotency (STAP) cells.

"Researchers have conducted 22 experiments thus far, but we could not confirm the emergence of cells in the conditions described in (Obokata's) papers," Riken said in an interim report issued on Wednesday.

Obokata since July has been trying in tandem with independent teams to reproduce her own results. The researchers will continue their experiments under more diverse conditions while also considering data obtained by Obokata herself, Shinichi Aizawa, a special adviser at Riken, told a lengthy press conference.

Obokata was feted after unveiling findings that appeared to show a straightforward way to re-programme adult cells to become stem cells - precursors that are capable of developing into any other cell in the human body. Identifying a readily manufacturable supply of stem cells could one day help meet a need for transplant tissues, or even whole organs, meaning that any advance in the field is met with excitement in the scientific community.

But suspicions began to emerge in the weeks and months after the research was published, building into one of the biggest controversies in scientific publishing for a decade. Leading science journal Nature withdrew the flawed stem-cell study after Obokata agreed in June to retract the papers.

Nature said it would tighten procedures to vet future studies submitted for publication. It said the decision was taken after mistakes were discovered in some data published in two papers, photograph captions were found to be misleading, and the work itself could not be repeated by other scientists.

Earlier this month Obokata's co-author, stemcell scientist Yoshiki Sasai, hanged himself, further shaking Japan's scientific establishment.

Researchers have been trying to replicate results appearing to show that exposing ordinary cells to various stresses had made them pluripotent, or able to develop into any type of tissue. Riken had planned to implant these cells into mouse embryos to test whether they really were pluripotent. But the experiments have been fraught with difficulty from the outset, with researchers unable to reproduce such cells.

On Wednesday Riken, also announced a shake-up of the Centre for Developmental Biology (CDB) where the scandal took place, adding it planned to cut about half of its 40 laboratories. CDB currently has around 400 researchers.

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Japan lab unable to replicate 'stem cell' findings

Q: My daughter plays college soccer and ruptured her ACL. The coaches mentioned stem cell injections that some big-name athletes have used to recover from injuries. Should we consider them? Paige R., Chicago

A: Professional athletes are always looking for the fastest way to heal their injuries. In 2010, Yankees pitcher Bartolo Colon was treated for a torn rotator cuff with injections of fat and bone marrow adult stem cells; he's playing for the Mets this season. And in 2011, Denver Broncos' Peyton Manning opted for injections of his own fat stem cells to try to get over a neck injury. Two years later, he had a record-breaking season and took the Broncos to the Super Bowl. But does this mean the injections worked? Nope.

Colon's agent attributes the pitcher's career turnaround to a re-dedication to the game, not the injections, and Manning followed up his stem cell treatment with major surgery and intense rehab (done in secret).

There's just no solid evidence yet that injections of adult bone marrow (or fat) stem cells effectively regenerate and repair damaged tendons or ligaments, and you cannot be certain of what the injections contain or their side effects. They often are delivered in an unregulated environment and aren't FDA-approved.

We suspect your daughter is headed for reconstructive surgery and six months of rehab. Then she needs to learn new ways to move so she reduces stress on her knees. One metastudy found that two ACL-injury-prevention regimens were effective: Sportsmetrics promotes leg and core strength, increases vertical jump height and may improve speed and agility; the Prevent Injury and Enhance Performance (PEP) program, makes a big difference in the flexion strength of the knee. Both improve athletic performance tests and reduce injury rates. Rehab is tough, and there are no shortcuts, but we bet your daughter has the grit to do it!

Q: I had Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery last year, and my blood glucose levels were almost normal even before I lost any weight. How is that possible? Marty Z., Jupiter, Florida

A: Congrats, Marty. We hope you're continuing to have such good results. It is amazing that bypassing part of your stomach and intestine could have such an immediate effect on your blood sugar levels, and just recently researchers have figured out why that happens sometimes. It seems to have something to do with the bacteria that live in your digestive tract, also called your gut biome.

Roux-en-Y surgery bypasses most of the stomach and the first part of the small intestine, called the duodenum. That's where a lot of your gut bacteria live and where they influence gut hormones that regulate appetite, insulin use, glucose levels and more. So right away, the surgery decreases levels of hormones that regulate appetite; you can eat less without being hungry. That alone lowers glucose levels and increases the effectiveness of your body's insulin supply.

Also, when you have diabetes, your gut bacteria are thrown out of balance; the bad guys overwhelm the good guys (like bifidobacteria and lactobacillus). And that means the hormones that affect how cells get and use glucose can't do their job. The glucose stays in your bloodstream instead of being used as fuel by your cells. But once a lot of the bad gut bacteria are bypassed, your gut biome snaps back into balance and the bacteria and hormones work together to regulate blood sugar levels.

So we suggest you keep your gut biome balanced and happy with a healthy diet of five or more servings of fruits and veggies a day. Asparagus, garlic, cooked onions and dandelion greens deliver prebiotics that help good-for-you gut bacteria thrive. Fermented foods like nonfat kefir and kimchi contain healthful probiotics. Also, avoid saturated fats and added sugars they just make your biome miserable. And we like daily spore probiotic supplements containing bacillus coagulans GBI-30, 6086 and lactobacillus GG.

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Stem cells for sports injuries; gastric bypass and the gut biome

Canadian doctors have begun using stem cell transplants to treat stiff person syndrome, a rare neurological condition in which a patients leg and other muscles suddenly contract painfully, often leaving them immobilized like a tin soldier.

The disorder, which affects an estimated one in a million people, occurs when the immune system turns against a persons own tissues, in this case attacking cells in the brain and spinal cord.

Stem cell transplants have been used to treat patients with other auto-immune diseases, among them multiple sclerosis, scleroderma and Crohns disease, but this may be the first time the procedure has been employed to alleviate the symptoms of stiff person syndrome, or SPS, the researchers reported Monday in the journal JAMA Neurology.

SPS is characterized by episodes of stiffness in the muscles and painful muscle spasms, which can be brought on by stress, loud noises or emotional distress. Some people with the disorder are so disabled they are unable to walk or move and may isolate themselves at home to avoid triggering an attack.

Sometimes this happens when theyre startled, said Dr. Harry Atkins of the Blood and Marrow Transplant Program at the Ottawa Hospital, who headed a team that transplanted stem cells into two women with the disease.

So you can imagine walking across the street and someone honks the horn and you cant move, or you start falling and because your muscles cant move, you just fall and you hurt yourself, Atkins said Monday from Ottawa.

It really does provide a barrier with just going on with your life.

Tina Ceroni of Toronto is one of the two SPS patients who had the stem-cell transplant and she said it has given back her life.

The personal fitness trainer, now 36, started getting severe symptoms in her late 20s. Initially she was diagnosed with hyponatremia, or low blood sodium, thought to be related to her heavy training schedule for a half-ironman competition.

But when she tried to water-ski at a friends cottage and had to be helped from the water because she was unable to move, Ceroni knew that there was something definitely not right.

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Stem-cell transplant eases symptoms of rare stiff person syndrome: study

At the age of 70, many people are retired but Glenn Abbassi is still dashing round the world doing one of the most important jobs ever.

As a volunteer courier for bone marrow register Anthony Nolan, its her mission to travel thousands of miles transporting vital stem cells for seriously ill transplant patients.

So far, during seven years in her role, she has helped to save the lives of 264 people. She has travelled to four continents and more than 30 countries. She even spent last Christmas away from her family in China.

Speaking yesterday in support of a new Anthony Nolan campaign, she said: I wouldnt change it for the world. Every trip I embark on is as important as the next one.

Glenn, a former NHS complaints manager, explained how donated cells have to be with the recipient within 72 hours.

Getting back in time is a matter of life or death, she said.

The cells are used to treat a range of conditions, including cancer and blood disorders.

Glenns role is particularly poignant as her first husband Peter Davies was diagnosed with the blood disorder aplastic anaemia in 1977. He died three years later aged just 43.

She met her current husband Eddie, 68, a retired air conditioning engineer, a few years later when he flew to Britain from his homeland in Iran to donate his bone marrow to his brother.

They fell in love when Eddie lodged with her while his brother recovered.

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Amazing pensioner helps save 264 lives in 30 countries on four continents

Jerad Temple ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
Thanks to McKenna Simonelli for the nomination. Donating to Pope John Paul II Medical Research because they only use adult stem cells in their research.

By: Jerad Temple

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Jerad Temple ALS Ice Bucket Challenge - Video