By Amy Norton HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, April 10, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Two experimental therapies might help manage the inflammatory bowel disorder Crohn's disease, if this early research pans out.

In one study, researchers found that a fecal transplant -- stool samples taken from a healthy donor -- seemed to send Crohn's symptoms into remission in seven of nine children treated.

In another, a separate research team showed that stem cells can have lasting benefits for a serious Crohn's complication called fistula.

According to the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation, up to 700,000 Americans have Crohn's -- a chronic inflammatory disease that causes abdominal cramps, diarrhea, constipation and rectal bleeding. It arises when the immune system mistakenly attacks the lining of the digestive tract.

A number of drugs are available to treat Crohn's, including drugs called biologics, which block certain immune-system proteins.

But fecal transplants take a different approach, explained Dr. David Suskind, a gastroenterologist at Seattle Children's Hospital who led the new study.

Instead of suppressing the immune system, he said, the transplants alter the environment that the immune system is reacting against: the "microbiome," which refers to the trillions of bacteria that dwell in the gut.

Like the name implies, a fecal transplant involves transferring stool from a donor into a Crohn's patient's digestive tract. The idea is to change the bacterial composition of the gut, and hopefully quiet the inflammation that causes symptoms.

And for most kids in the new study, it seemed to work. Within two weeks, seven of nine children were showing few to no Crohn's symptoms. Five were still in remission after 12 weeks, with no additional therapy, the researchers reported in a recent issue of the journal Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.

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Stem Cells, Fecal Transplants Show Promise for Crohn's Disease

Two experimental therapies might help manage the inflammatory bowel disorder Crohn's disease, if this early research pans out.

In one study, researchers found that a fecal transplant -- stool samples taken from a healthy donor -- seemed to send Crohn's symptoms into remission in seven of nine children treated.

In another, a separate research team showed that stem cells can have lasting benefits for a serious Crohn's complication called fistula.

According to the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation, up to 700,000 Americans have Crohn's -- a chronic inflammatory disease that causes abdominal cramps, diarrhea, constipation and rectal bleeding. It arises when the immune system mistakenly attacks the lining of the digestive tract.

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A number of drugs are available to treat Crohn's, including drugs called biologics, which block certain immune-system proteins.

But fecal transplants take a different approach, explained Dr. David Suskind, a gastroenterologist at Seattle Children's Hospital who led the new study.

Instead of suppressing the immune system, he said, the transplants alter the environment that the immune system is reacting against: the "microbiome," which refers to the trillions of bacteria that dwell in the gut.

Like the name implies, a fecal transplant involves transferring stool from a donor into a Crohn's patient's digestive tract. The idea is to change the bacterial composition of the gut, and hopefully quiet the inflammation that causes symptoms.

Read the original here:
Fecal transplant, stem cells may help Crohn's disease

Rice University and Texas Children's Hospital scientists are using stem cells from amniotic fluid to promote the growth of robust, functional blood vessels in healing hydrogels.

In new experiments, the lab of bioengineer Jeffrey Jacot combined versatile amniotic stem cells with injectable hydrogels used as scaffolds in regenerative medicine and proved they enhance the development of vessels needed to bring blood to new tissue and carry waste products away.

The results appear in the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Part A.

Jacot and his colleagues study the use of amniotic fluid cells from pregnant women to help heal infants born with congenital heart defects. Such fluids, drawn during standard tests, are generally discarded but show promise for implants made from a baby's own genetically matched material.

He contends amniotic stem cells are valuable for their ability to differentiate into many other types of cells, including endothelial cells that form blood vessels.

"The main thing we've figured out is how to get a vascularized device: laboratory-grown tissue that is made entirely from amniotic fluid cells," Jacot said. "We showed it's possible to use only cells derived from amniotic fluid."

In the lab, researchers from Rice, Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine combined amniotic fluid stem cells with a hydrogel made from polyethylene glycol and fibrin. Fibrin is a biopolymer critical to blood clotting, cellular-matrix interactions, wound healing and angiogenesis, the process by which new vessels branch off from existing ones. Fibrin is widely used as a bioscaffold but suffers from low mechanical stiffness and rapid degradation. Combining fibrin and polyethylene glycol made the hydrogel much more robust, Jacot said.

The lab used vascular endothelial growth factor to prompt stem cells to turn into endothelial cells, while the presence of fibrin encouraged the infiltration of native vasculature from neighboring tissue.

Mice injected with fibrin-only hydrogels showed the development of thin fibril structures, while those infused with the amniotic cell/fibrin hydrogel showed far more robust vasculature, according to the researchers.

Similar experiments using hydrogel seeded with bone marrow-derived mesenchymal cells also showed vascular growth, but without the guarantee of a tissue match, Jacot said. Seeding with endothelial cells didn't work as well as the researchers expected, he said.

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Amniotic stem cells demonstrate healing potential

Apr 10, 2015 by Stephanie Dutchen New research indicates how and when adult intestinal stem cells (dark pink) set up shop at the base of villi, as shown in this image from the intestine of a chick near hatching. Credit: Tabin lab

Mommy, where do intestinal stem cells come from? All right, it's not likely a kindergartner would ask such a question. But evolutionary biologists want to know.

Adult intestinal stem cells live at the bases of our villi, the tiny, fingerlike protuberances that line the intestines and absorb nutrients.

There, the stem cells constantly churn out new intestinal cells to replace those being destroyed by corrosive digestive juices.

The researchers asked: How and when do these stem cells appear in the right place so they can do their job?

Studying mice and chicks, whose intestinal formation is similar to ours, the team found that the entire intestinal lining has stem cell properties at first. As the embryo develops, all but a few cells lose this potential.

"This lends support to the theory that adult stem cells are remnants of a more general pool of cells in the embryo," said Amy Shyer, who conducted the work as a graduate student in the lab of Cliff Tabin at Harvard Medical School and is now a Miller Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.

As for why these cells are restricted to the villi bases, or crypts, the researchers believe the structure of the developing intestine determines which cells receive signals from neighboring tissues that say, "Stop being stem cells."

About two weeks into development, the intestine, initially a smooth tube, starts to form mountainous zigzags that will ultimately become villi. Cells at the peaks are exposed to signals that suppress stem cell properties, while cells in the valleys don't receive them.

"This opens a new door conceptually," said Shyer. "Tissues that start out uniform but then need to set up regions with regular patternswhich happens in the gut, skin, lungs and other organs during embryonic developmentmight coopt these natural changes in architecture to dictate signals that specify cell fate locally."

Read more:
Gut instinct: How intestinal stem cells find their niche