Stem Cell TV | Video / Media News

Page 1,770«..10 20..1,7691,7701,771 1,772..1,780 1,790..»

The Trials of Transhumanism: Androgyny and the Antichrist

Posted: August 16, 2015 at 2:44 pm

Posted in Transhumanism | Comments Off

Stem Cell Therapy | Cellular Prolotherapy | Caring Medical

Posted: August 14, 2015 at 9:49 am

Home Stem Cell Therapy | Cellular Prolotherapy

Ross Hauser, MD

Ross Hauser, MD: the use of Stem Cell Therapy in the treatment of joint and spine degeneration.

Stem cell therapy is exploding in the medical field, and for good reason. Stem cells have the potential to regenerate into any type of body tissue. The amazing thing about stem cells is that when you inject them into the body, they know what kinds of cells your body needs for example, meniscus cells or cartilage cells. It is a very exciting time for medicine, especially in the field of regenerative medicine. In our office we often refer to this as Cellular Prolotherapy.

In Stem Cell Therapy we use a persons own healing cells from bone marrow, fat, and blood (alone or in various combinations) and inject them straight to the area which has a cellular deficiency.

The goal is the same: to stimulate the repair of injured tissues. Stem cells aid in fibroblastic proliferation where cell growth, proteosynthesis, reparation, the remodeling of tissues, and chondrocyte proliferation occurs. Our bone marrow contains stem cells,also termed mesenchymal stem cells and progenitor cells, among other names. These immature cells have the ability to become tissues like cartilage, bone, and ligaments.

Consequently, researchers and clinicians are focusing on alternative methods for cartilage preservation and repair. Recently,cell-basedtherapyhas become a key focus of tissue engineering research to achieve functional replacement of articular cartilage.1

Not all injuries require stem cells to heal. For many patients the success rate with traditionalProlotherapyin this office is in the 90%+ range for all patients. However, for those cases of advanced arthritis, meniscus tears, labral tears, bone-on-bone, or aggressive injuries, our Prolotherapy practitioners may choose to use stem cell injections to enhance the healing, in combination with dextrose Prolotherapy to strengthen and stabilize the surrounding support structures formeniscus repair.

In our research published inThe Open Stem Cell Journal,Rationale for Using Direct Bone Marrow Aspirate as a Proliferant for Regenerative Injection Therapy(Prolotherapy). We not only showed the benefit of bone marrow derived stem cells as a Prolotherapy proliferant solution, but also that this exciting field of medicine needs doctors and scientisists working together to expand research and technique guidelines.

Typically the tissue that we are trying to stimulate to repair with Stem Cell Therapy or Cellular Prolotherapy is articular cartilage, but we can also proliferate soft tissues structures such as ligament and tendons. This is new technology so we are studying it as we use it to treat patients.

See the original post:
Stem Cell Therapy | Cellular Prolotherapy | Caring Medical

Posted in Stem Cell Treatments | Comments Off

Home | Political Science | West Virginia University

Posted: August 12, 2015 at 8:43 pm

When it comes to answering these questions, Political Science is built on the core aspects of the great liberal arts tradition.Our strengths are logic, appropriate data, analysis, and communication.Explaining the outcomes of political processes and events involves developing theories, using scientific methods to gather relevant evidence and test those theories, and then using strong communications skills to explain the research.Honing these skills, and learning the knowledge that is shared in our classes, prepares graduates of our department for careers in law, politics, government, the military, academia, private enterprise, and non-profit service.

American Politics examines questions related to the activities of all the branches of the federal government (legislative, judicial, executive), as well as all the levels of government (local, state, and federal).

Comparative Politics examines the differences between states. Why do some states achieve high levels of economic growth, while others fall behind? Does the process used to seek justice after conflicts have an influence on whether people think justice was achieved? In short, why do similar states turn out very differently (and why do different states turn out similarly)?

International Politics is about the interactions that states have with each other. From overlookedbut critical activity like international trade and finance, to rarer and more violent interactions like war and coercion, this part of political science seeks to understand the forces that cause states to behave like they do to each other.

Political Theory is examines the moral and ethical questions surrounding politics. What is the best form of government? What is justice? What are the moral reasons for us to prefer democracy to other forms of government? This part of political science has links to philosophy, and asks similar questions, just with a directly political focus.

Read the rest here:
Home | Political Science | West Virginia University

Posted in West Virginia Stem Cells | Comments Off

How Much Do Stem Cell Treatments Really Cost? | Knoepfler …

Posted: August 9, 2015 at 6:51 pm

Stem cell treatments of various kinds are now widely available in America at more than 100 stem cell clinics offering non-FDA approved interventions for dozens of conditions.

American patients are often recruited on the Internet to travel around the US or to Mexico and other countries.

How much do these stem cell treatments cost?

American clinics charge approximately $10,000 per treatment. Notably, many patients gets more than one of these non-FDA approved treatments and must pay each time of course.

Some clinics have reduced prices to the $7,000-$8,000 range. Interestingly, costs for treatments outside of the US are usuallyfar higher than in the US,charging anywhere from $20,000 all the way up to $100,000. These clinics still generally have Americans as clientele. Whether inside or outside the US, insurance does not cover the costs of these potentially dangerous, unproven treatments.

Clinic profits are difficult to estimate and vary depending on the type of stem cells and other factors such as malpractice insurance cost. However, I have heard estimates of the clinics own costs being around $1,000-$2,000 per treatment, yielding a very high profit margin.

Part of the way that clinics cut corners to boost their profitsis by not following FDA regulations, putting patients in danger. Clinics typically do not do pre-clinical studies to get evidence of safety and efficacy before starting to sell their offerings to patients. Clinics also do not include sufficient follow up in the cost of the treatments. They do not publish their data to get peer review and feedback. They often do not have GMP compliant facilities or devices.

Patients themselves are frequently unable to afford these expensive, unproven stem cell treatments, and so they turn to their communities including churches, friends, and family to do fundraisers. For example, a coach reportedlyrecently raised $70,000 for a stem cell intervention fromhis community. Update: The non-FDA approved Stemedica stem cell intervention sold in Tijuana via partner Novastem reportedly costs $32,000-$40,000 a pop.

With the rapidly increasing number of clinics right here in the US, in theory one might imagine costs would go down due to competition. Its not clear if that is driving some clinics to lower prices.

Of course othercosts to patients going to dubious clinics, sometimes not considered, include the price of false hope, potential injury due to dangerous stem cell treatments, possibly being excluded from a real clinical trial in the future, and injury from deferring other arguably more real treatments.

Go here to read the rest:
How Much Do Stem Cell Treatments Really Cost? | Knoepfler ...

Posted in Hawaii Stem Cells | Comments Off

Torben Bech-Hansen, PhD Department of Medical Genetics …

Posted: August 7, 2015 at 8:41 am

Jalkanen, R., N. T. Bech-Hansen, R. Tobias, M. Mntyjrvi, H. Forsius, A. de la Chapelle, T. Alitalo. 2007. Anovel CACNA1F gene mutation causes land Island eye disease. IOVS, 48:2498-2502

Orton, N.C., A.M. Innes, A. Chudley, N.T. Bech-Hansen. 2008. Unique disease heritage of the Dutch-German Mennonite population. Am. J. Med. Genet., 146A:1072-1087.

Ramasubbu, R., R. Tobias,N.T.Bech-Hansen. 2008. Extended Evaluation of Serotonin Transporter Gene Functional Polymorphisms in Subjects with Post-Stroke Depression.Can. J. Psychiatry, 53, 198-201.

Raven, Mary, Noelle Orton, Hadi Nassar, Gary A. Williams, William Stell, Gerald H. Jacobs, N. Torben Bech-Hansen, Benjamin E. Reese. 2008. Afferent Control of Horizontal Cell Morphology: Dissecting the Roles of Pedicle Formation and Visual Activity.J. Comparative Neurology, 506:745758

Jacobson SG, Cideciyan AV, Aleman TS, Sumaroka A, Roman AJ, Gardner LM, Prosser, HM, Mishra M, Bech-Hansen NT, Herrera W, Schwartz SB, Liu XZ, Kimberling WJ, Stell KP, Williams DS,. 2008. Usher Syndrome due to MYO7A, PCDH15, USH2A or GPR98 mutations share retinal disease mechanism. Hum Mol Gen. 17:2405 - 15. Epub 2008 May 7.

Cummings, KJ, C. Klotz, W-Q Li, L. Marazita, E.M. Berry-Kravis, R. Tobias, C. Goldie, D.E. Weese-Mayer, N.T. Bech-Hansen and R.J.A. Wilson. 2009 Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) in African Americans: polymorphisms in the gene encoding the stress peptide pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP). Acta Paediatrica, 98:482-489.

Lodha, N, S. Bonfield, N.C. Orton, C.J. Doering, J.E. McRory, S.C. Mema, R. Rehak, Y. Sauve, R. Tobias, W.K. Stell and N.T. Bech-Hansen. 2009 Congential stationary night blindness in mice - a tale of two Cacna1f mutants. J. Adv. Exp. Med. Biol. In the press.

See original here:
Torben Bech-Hansen, PhD Department of Medical Genetics ...

Posted in Stell Cell Genetics | Comments Off

The Pros and Cons of Stem Cell Therapy for COPD

Posted: August 7, 2015 at 8:40 am

Updated December 29, 2014.

Written or reviewed by a board-certified physician. See About.com's Medical Review Board.

Stem cells are cells found in bone marrow and other organs.

They can develop into any type of tissue that exists in the fully developed body, including any kind of blood cell: red blood cells, white blood cells, or platelets.

Because of their unique, regenerative properties, stem cells offer new hope for a variety of diseases, including diabetes mellitis, stroke, osteoporosis, heart disease and, more recently, COPD. Scientists are interested in using stem cells to repair damaged cells and tissues in the body because they are far less likely than to be rejected than foreign cells that originated from another source.

There are two types of stem cells that doctors work with most in both humans and animals: Embryonic stem cells are derived from a blastocyst, a type of cell found in mammalian embryos and adults stem cells which are derived from the umbilical cord, placenta or from blood, bone marrow, skin, and other tissues.

Embryonic stem cells have the capacity to develop into every type of tissue found in an adult. Embryonic stem cells used for research develop from eggs that have been fertilized in vitro (in a laboratory).

After they are extracted from the embryo, the cells are grown in cell culture, an artificial medium used for medical research. It is atop this medium where they then divide and multiply.

Adult stem cells have been found in many organs and tissues of the body, but, once removed from the body, they have a difficult time dividing, which makes generating large quantities of them quite challenging. Currently, scientists are trying to find better ways to grow adult stem cells in cell culture and to manipulate them into specific types of cells that have the ability to treat injury and disease.

There is much controversy going on in the world of stem cell therapy and COPD. Why? While autologous stem cell treatment without manipulation is legal in the United States, without manipulation, treatments are not likely to be clinically relevant. For stem cell treatments to be clinically relevant, millions of stem cells need to be implanted into a designated recipient. Because generating millions of stem cells is difficult once they are removed from the body, scientists must manipulate them somehow to produce larger quantities. The FDA says that manipulation turns them into prescription drugs, and that this practice must therefore be tightly regulated. Stem cell advocates don't agree with the FDA's stand on this, and are currently fighting to get this changed.

Follow this link:
The Pros and Cons of Stem Cell Therapy for COPD

Posted in Stem Cell Treatments | Comments Off

In stem-cell research, the potential … – Washington Post

Posted: August 6, 2015 at 9:44 pm

By Editorial Board April 20, 2014

CONTROVERSIES OVER stem-cell research are so last decade or so it seemed until last week.

For the last few years, the promising field of stem-cell research has focused on a technique that skirts various ethical concerns about the treatment of human embryos and the potential to clone whole human beings. But last week, U.S. and South Korean researchers announced that they went ahead with a different technique, successfully creating stem cells cloned from the normal skin cells of adults. Their work helps to open a new avenue in stem-cell research. But it also could be a step on the way to human reproductive cloning.

Some ethical worries are reasonable, but they are not enough reason to hold back this research.

Since the late 1990s, scientists have held out the prospect of extraordinary new treatments from pluripotent stem cells, which are stem cells that can grow into all sorts of different tissues at researchers urging. Scientists might be able to grow insulin-producing cells for patients with diabetes. People suffering from macular degeneration might not have to lose their sight. There is even the potential to grow whole organs, matched exactly to patients, that could replace diseased ones.

Early research often involved taking stem cells from embryos discarded during in-vitro fertilization therapy. That procedure stoked opposition from people concerned about embryo destruction during scientific experimentation. Then scientists developed a different technique for harvesting stem cells that involved reprogramming adult cells, no embryos involved.

Work on that procedure continues, but there is concern in some quarters that it will not reliably and uniformly produce usable stem cells. So other scientists have been working on something called somatic cell nuclear transfer, which involves taking the nucleus out of a human egg and replacing it with the nucleus from an adult cell. Last weeks announcement came from researchers who had refined the nuclear transfer process and achieved the results they were looking for pluripotent human stem cells.

The procedure is not perfect. It took a lot of eggs to record a few successes. Moreover, it is the sort of technique scientists would use if they were trying to engage in reproductive cloning creating fully formed human beings who are exact genetic copies of other human beings. The question is whether researchers who arent interested in reproductive cloning should be barred from refining the nuclear transfer process lest a rogue scientist decides to try Xeroxing people.

Wed say that they should not be restricted if the method may advance the search for bona fide stem-cell therapies. The potential to directly and significantly reduce human suffering is too great to close off every line of research but the one that carries zero controversy. There is, moreover, a clear ethical distinction between cloning a humans cells in order to redeploy them in medical treatment and growing a genetic copy of a human being. As long as scientists do not cross ethical lines much farther from where they are now lines that Congress could write into federal law researchers should have the flexibility to go in whichever direction is scientifically useful.

More here:
In stem-cell research, the potential ... - Washington Post

Posted in Washington Stem Cells | Comments Off

Type 2 Diabetes: Everything You Need to Know

Posted: August 6, 2015 at 3:41 am

Type 2 diabetes is a chronic disease in which people have problems regulating their blood sugar. People with diabetes have high blood sugar because their bodies:

Type 2 diabetes is extremely common. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that over 29 million children and adults in the United States have some form of diabetes. That is about 9 percent of the population. The vast majority of these people have type 2 diabetes.

When you eat food, the body digests the carbohydrates in into a type of sugar called glucose. Glucose is the main source of energy for cells. Cells rely on the hormone insulin to absorb and use glucose as a form of energy. Insulin is produced by the pancreas.

People usually develop type 2 diabetes because their cells have become resistant to insulin. Then, over time, their body may stop making sufficient insulin as well. These problems lead to blood sugar, or glucose, building up in the blood

There are several different types of diabetes:

Type 1 diabetes used to be known as juvenile onset diabetes because it is usually first diagnosed in childhood, though it can be diagnosed later in life as well.. People with type 1 diabetes cannot make insulin and are insulin dependent. They must use insulin injections to control their blood sugar.

According to the CDC, only about five percent of people with diabetes have type 1 diabetes (CDC).

There is no known way to prevent type 1 diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes is the most common type of diabetes, and was once known as adult onset diabetes. However, in recent years, the rate of type 2 diagnoses in children has been growing.

Type 2 diabetes usually starts as insulin resistance. Cells stop responding properly to insulin and sugar is unable to get from the blood into the cells. Over time, the pancreas cannot make enough insulin to keep blood sugars in the normal range and the body becomes progressively less able to regulate blood sugar.

View post:
Type 2 Diabetes: Everything You Need to Know

Posted in Diabetes | Comments Off

California's Stem Cell Agency – Myths and Misconceptions …

Posted: August 5, 2015 at 1:48 pm

En Espaol

There is no shortage of myths and misconceptions when it comes to stem cell research and regenerative medicine. Here we address the most common concerns.

If you have more questions that aren't addressed here, please visit our other Stem Cell FAQ pages.

Is CIRM-funded stem cell research carried out ethically? Where do the embryos come from to create stem cell lines? I'm opposed to abortion. Can embryonic stem cell lines come from aborted fetuses? Does creating stem cell lines destroy the embryo? Are adult stem cells as goodor betterthan embryonic stem cells? Don't iPS cells eliminate the need to use embryos in stem cell research? Can't stem cell research lead to human cloning?

Stem cell research, like field within biomedicne, poses social and ethical concerns. CIRM, as well as the broader research community, takes these seriously.

As a state funding body, CIRM has comprehensive policies to govern research, similar to our national counterpart, the National Institutes of Health. CIRM-funded researchers must comply with a comprehensive set of regulations that have been carefully developed and are in accordance with national and international standards.

These regulations were among the first formal policies governing the conduct of stem cell research and are in accordance with recommendations from the National Academies and from the International Society for Stem Cell Research. CIRMs Standards Working Group meets regularly to consider new ethical challenges as the science progresses and to revise standards to reflect the current state of the research.

Find out More:

CIRM regulations National Academies of Science guidelines International Society for Stem Cell Research guidelines National Academies of Science podcast about guidelines for embryonic stem cell research More about CIRM-grantee ethics training (4:03)

All the human embryonic stem cell lines currently in use come from four to five day-old embryos left over from in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures. In IVF, researchers mix a man's sperm and a woman's eggs together in a lab dish. Some of those eggs will become fertilized. At about five days the egg has divided to become a hollow ball of roughly 100 cells called a blastocyst which is smaller than the size of the dot over an i. It is these very early embryos that are implanted into the woman in the hopes that she becomes pregnant.

Read the rest here:
California's Stem Cell Agency - Myths and Misconceptions ...

Posted in California Stem Cells | Comments Off

Major Study Update: Stem Cells Ease Back Pain …

Posted: August 5, 2015 at 1:47 pm

Normal cells / Source: Wikimedia Commons and National Cancer Instititute Biloine W. Young Thu, May 2nd, 2013 Print this article

Mesoblast, the highest value stem company in the world, released the latest in string of studies examining the ability of a certain type of stem cell to treat back pain.

In its earliest test of its stem cells (known as mesenchymal precursor cells MPCs) the company injected its MPCs into three adjacent lumbar discs in 24 adult male sheep. The MPCs were injected intradiscally. The particular sheep model that was used (Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine May 2012; Vol. 16; No. 5; Pages 479-488) was one where some discs were injected with chrondroitinase in order to mimic disc degeneration and other discs were left alone to represent normal discs as a control arm in the study.

In the sheep test, the degenerated discs had 45-50% less height before treatment with Mesoblasts MPCs. After MPC treatment the discs rehydrated and increased in height at rates that were statistically significant as compared to the controls. It was, in fact, a significant and highly important animal study and set up Mesoblasts human study.

This past week, Mesoblast released its second round of preliminary results from this Phase 2 human study of MPCs as an intradiscal injection treatment for back pain.

In the study, researchers injected allogeneic mesenchymal precursor cells (MPCs) into damaged intervertebral discs in what is, essentially, a one hour outpatient procedure.

This is the six-month follow-up data. All 100 patients have been enrolled.

Researchers Kasra Amirdelfan, M.D. (IPM Medical Group, Walnut Creek, California), Hyun Bae, M.D. (The Spine Institute, Santa Monica, California, Domagoj Coric, M.D. (Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine, Charlotte, North Carolina), Tory McJunkin, M.D. (Arizona Pain Specialists, Phoenix, Arizona), Michael DePalma, M.D. (Virginia I-Spine Physicians, Richmond, Virginia) and William Beckworth, M.D. (Emory Orthopaedics & Spine Center, Atlanta, Georgia) report that a single low-dose injection of MPC significantly reduced low back pain in the treated patients and did so at a statistically significant way as compared to the control group.

The control group, by the way, received hyaluronic acid injections. In terms of safety, the researchers found no cell-related safety issues.

The study has enrolled 100 patients across 13 sites in the United States and Australia. Researchers are randomizing patients to receive direct intra-disc injection of saline (n= 20), hyaluronic acid (HA, n=20), 6 million MPCs in hyaluronic acid carrier (n=30) or 18 million MPCs in hyaluronic acid carrier (n=30).

Continue reading here:
Major Study Update: Stem Cells Ease Back Pain ...