Posted: October 11, 2014 at 4:42 am
Embryonic Stem Cells Moot
http://www.arthritistreatmentcenter.com Ethical concerns about stem cells for arthritis are moot maybe Stem-cell advances may quell ethics debate Laura Unger writing for the Louisville...
By: Nathan Wei
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Embryonic Stem Cells Moot - Video
Posted: October 11, 2014 at 1:51 am
Posted: October 11, 2014 at 1:50 am
Harvard scientists have announced a breakthrough that could eventually allow millions of diabetics to shed the yoke of daily insulin injections.
It took over 15 years of trial and error, but researcher Douglas Melton and his team have discovered a method to transform human embryonic stem cells into insulin-producing cells which can then be injected into the pancreas. The discovery has generated a new wave of momentum in the field, with research labs across the country already working to replicate and build upon Meltons results.
I think weve shown the problem can be solved, Melton told National Geographic Thursday.
The researchers developed a 30-day, six-step process that transforms embryonic stem cells into pancreatic beta cells, the same sugar-regulating cells that are destroyed by the immune system of people with type 1 diabetes. The new cells can read the levels of sugars that enter the body after, say, a meal, and secrete the perfect dose of insulin to balance sugar levels.
Other researchers have had some success harvesting beta cells from cadavers and transplanting them into people with diabetes, but this method cant round up enough of those cells to have a lasting effect.
Meltons method produces millions of the insulin-secreting cells, which were then fed through a catheter to the kidney capsules of 37 diabetic mice.
We can cure their diabetes right away in less than 10 days, Melton told NPR.
When the mice were later given glucose injections, 73 percent showed increased levels of human insulin in their bloodstream, indicating that the beta cells were doing their job.
As with many medical breakthroughs, Melton said they are still a few years away from putting this method to work in humans. One of the primary obstacles to overcome is to find a way to mask transplanted cells from an immune system thats out to destroy them.
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Stem Cell Breakthrough Puts Type 1 Diabetes Cure In Reach
Posted: October 11, 2014 at 1:43 am
Learn How Stem Cell Therapy Is Being Used Right Here in North Texas
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Posted: October 11, 2014 at 1:43 am
Can brain damage caused during birth be ever reversed? Is it possible to repair the damaged brain tissues among children, who suffer from Cerebral Palsy (CP)?
So far, the treatment option for CP is to manage the symptoms of the ailment. However, in recent times, scientists and researchers worldwide have started to explore stem cell therapy as a potential treatment option for CP patients.
Can stem cells reverse the brain damage, which is the sole cause for CP among children? Our research on over 100 CP patients and stem cell therapy has been very encouraging. The patients, who underwent stem cell therapy, have displayed huge improvement in CP symptoms, says Professor and Head of Neurosurgery, LTM Medical College, Mumbai, Alok Sharma.
The neurosurgeon, who is taking part in an international conference on CP in Hyderabad this weekend, said that doctors are not concentrating on treating the brain damage.
The current treatment options available to help patients are only to mange symptoms and nobody tries to repair the underlying damage to the brain tissue. Therefore, developing a standard therapeutic approach for CP through stem cells is the need of the hour, he said.
The results from the stem cell therapy on CP patients conducted by Dr. Aloks team were recently published in Neurogens chapter on Stem cell therapy for cerebral palsy A Novel Option in a book titled Cerebral Palsy Challenges For the Future. According to the neurosurgeon, the patients after therapy had improvements in their speech, balance, upper and lower limb activity and movement.
While for stem cell research, many prefer cord blood banking, Dr. Alok pointed out that they have used stem cells from the adults derived from the bone marrow. The transplanted stem cells have the ability to migrate to the area of the damaged tissue in the brain and home-in on those affected areas to help repair the damage. Stem cells release substance that stimulates natural growth, which decreases the process of damage of the brain, Dr. Alok explained.
The researcher, who has started NeuroGen Brain and Spine Institute in Mumbai to conduct stem cell research, pointed out that stem cell therapy and other rehabilitation programmes should be encouraged for the benefit of CP patients. The positive changes that we recorded in our patients were not just restricted to their symptoms but also constructive change in brain metabolism observed through PET-CT scans, he explained. Dr. Alok Sharma can be reached at: alok276@gmail.com
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Fighting CP through stem cell therapy
Posted: October 11, 2014 at 1:43 am
10.10.2014 - (idw) Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
From 9-10 October 2014 around 200 scientists met at the Leipzig Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology for the ninth Fraunhofer Life Science Symposium. Held every two years, this year the event focused on the theme "Medicinal Cell Products and Stem Cells for Medicinal Applications". In recent years biomedical research has revealed numerous promising new approaches for the prevention and treatment of serious illnesses. The issue of stem cells plays a key role in this. With the symposium the Fraunhofer IZI offers international scientists a platform on which they can discuss the latest developments in this field.
The scientific program encompasses three major subject areas: production, manufacture and application. In the first section a paper presented by Sarah Ferber (Centre for Stem Cells, Regenerative Medicine and Tissue Engineering, Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, Israel) was one major point of interest: "Reprogramming the endocrine pancreas; autologous cell replacement therapy for diabetic patients". She spoke about the possibilities for transforming liver cells into insulin-producing cells. In the future this method could possibly be used to help patients with type 1 diabetes, where the misdirected immune system destroys the body's own insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas.
The Fraunhofer Life Science Symposium brings together up to 200 participants from academic and clinical institutions to discuss the various focal points concerning new technologies, trends and developments. It is organized by the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology IZI. For further information see http://www.fs-leipzig.com. Weitere Informationen:http://www.fs-leipzig.comhttp://www.izi.fraunhofer.de
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Experts discuss new developments in the field of stem cell research and cell therapy
Posted: October 11, 2014 at 12:47 am
By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore
Newser
In this April 29, 2012, file photo, a 19-year-old diagnosed with diabetes gives herself an injection of insulin at her home in the Los Angeles suburb of Commerce.(AP Photo/Reed Saxon)
There's no known cure for Type 1 diabetes, so for 3 million Americans, an insulin pump or regular insulin injections form an imperfect and temporary solution. And it's one that doesn't always keep some of the disease's worst outcomes, including blindness and limb amputation, at bay.
Scientists have long sought a better solution, and a team at Harvard is now announcing that, 15 years into its research, it has successfully coaxed human embryonic stem cells into ones that produce insulin.
When those cells were transferred to diabetic mice, they behaved as healthy cells do and regulated blood sugar. "We can cure their diabetes right awayin less than 10 days," researcher Doug Melton tells NPR.
Six months later, that was still the case, reports CBS News, which calls the research possibly "the biggest breakthrough in years toward a cure." Because while scientists have been able to achieve a similar end with insulin-producing cells sourced from cadavers, they've struggled with how to get the quantity they needed.
Now researchers have "the ability to make hundreds of millions of cells," Melton says. "It's a huge landmark paper," an outside researcher tells NPR. "I would say it's bigger than the discovery of insulin." For Melton, the issue is deeply personal: Both his children, now in their 20s, were diagnosed with the disease as kids.
Among the next steps is to move to clinical trials in humans, possibly in as few as three years. (Another announcement related to blood sugar made waves last month.)
This article originally appeared on Newser: Huge Breakthrough in Quest for Type 1 Diabetes Cure
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New diabetes breakthrough 'bigger than the discovery of insulin'
Posted: October 11, 2014 at 12:45 am
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Newswise Four scientists from the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA have received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director's New Innovator Award that will forward revolutionary stem cell and neuro-science in medicine. The four UCLA researchers were among only 50 scientists nationwide to receive the New Innovator Award, the most of any institution represented.
Each recipient received a $2.3M award for their respective projects. These included Dr. Reza Ardehali, assistant professor of cardiology, for his research investigating novel ways to use stem cells to regenerate heart tissue; Dr. Elissa Hallem, assistant professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics, for her work studying interactions between animal parasites and their hosts to foster the further understanding of human parasitic diseases; Dr. Sririam Kosuri, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, for his project developing new biological system technologies to solve outstanding problems in gene regulation; and Dr. Lili Yang, assistant professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics, for her work developing a new method to track special immune cells for use in new cellular therapies.
"These New Innovator Award grants are an important acknowledgement of our cutting-edge research and will help our faculty drive the revolutionary advances we are seeing in stem cell and neuro-science," said Dr. Owen Witte, professor and director of the Broad Stem Cell Research Center. "Every cellular therapy that reaches patients must begin in the laboratory with novel ideas and experiments that will lead us in new directions in medicine and ultimately improve human life. That makes these awards invaluable to our research effort."
The NIH Director'sNew Innovator Award is designed specifically to support unusually creative investigators with highly innovative research ideas at an early stage of their career. The award seeks to support exceptionally creative new scientists whose research complements ongoing efforts by NIH.
Dr. Reza Ardehali: Unlocking the Secrets to Regenerating Heart Tissue
Dr. Ardehali's cutting-edge work focuses on both human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells, known as human pluripotent stem cells (hPSC), to provide insights into the mechanisms involved in the differentiation and specification of heart cells. hPSC have the unique ability to become any cell type in the body. His lab recently identified several novel surface markers that can highly enrich early cardiovascular progenitor cells. When delivered into functioning human hearts that are transplanted in laboratory conditions, the progenitor cells integrate structurally and functionally into the host myocardium. These studies established the basis for future hPSC-based cardiac therapy.
Dr. Ardehali and his colleagues were also the first to directly measure limited division in the cells that make up heart muscle (cardiomyocytes), proving that cardiomyocytes divide and that such cell division is rare. This discovery resolves an important controversy over whether the heart muscle has the power to regenerate and is critical for future research that may lead to regenerating heart tissue to repair damage caused by disease or heart attack.
His 2013, California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), the state's stem cell research agency, New Faculty Physician Scientist Translational Research Award allowed Dr. Ardehali to initiate the preclinical studies on stem cell based therapies for heart disease that were pivotal for his success in the 2014 New Innovator Award competition. The NIH grant affirms the critical success of the project-to-date, and emphasizes the creativity of Dr. Ardehali's research and its potential to have a significant impact on the creation of novel regenerative approaches to treat heart disease.
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Four UCLA Scientists Receive Prestigious Innovator Award for Pioneering Research Using Stem Cells
Posted: October 10, 2014 at 10:56 am
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 9 (UPI) -- Patients with type 1 diabetes lack the insulin-producing cells that keep blood glucose levels in check. Currently, these patients must use insulin pumps or daily hormone injections to keep levels stable.
But in a recent breakthrough in laboratories at Harvard University, researchers came upon a new technique for transforming stem cells into pancreatic beta cells that respond to glucose levels and produce insulin when necessary. The breakthrough could lead to new less invasive, more hands-off treatment for diabetes.
Remarkably, the new technique -- a complex process which involves turning on and off specific genes and takes about 40 days and six precise steps to complete -- was replicated not only on embryonic stem cells but also on human skin cells reprogrammed to act in a stem-cell-like manner. This revelation allows scientists to produce millions of insulin-producing cells while avoiding the ethical dilemmas attached to traditional stem cell research.
Previous attempts to convert stem cells into insulin-producers have proven moderately successful, but these cells mostly produced insulin at will, unable to adjust their output on the fly. The latest techniques -- developed by Douglas Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and his research colleagues -- produce insulin cells that react to glucose spikes by upping production, and lowering insulin output when there's not excess sugar to break down.
The breakthrough has already shown significant promise when used on lab mice. Diabetic mice who received a transplant of the stem cell beta cells had improved blood sugar levels, and were shown to be capable of breaking down sugar.
"We can cure their diabetes right away -- in less than 10 days," Melton told NPR. "This finding provides a kind of unprecedented cell source that could be used for cell transplantation therapy in diabetes."
But there's still one major issue. For reasons doctors still don't understand, the beta cells in humans with diabetes are attacked by the body's immune system. Researchers like Melton still have to figure out a way to protect the new beta cells from being killed -- otherwise the breakthrough won't become anything more than another short-term solution.
"It's taken me 10 to 15 years to get to this point, and I consider this a major step forward," Melton told TIME. "But the longer term plan includes finding ways to protect these cells, and we haven't solved that problem yet."
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Harvard researchers grow insulin-producing stem cells
Posted: October 10, 2014 at 9:40 am
Dr. Bernard Thbaud
Dr. Bernard Thbaud discusses "Cord-derived Stem Cells for Extreme Prematurity: A Breakthrough in the making" during his keynote speech during the Manitoba Institute of Child Health 10th annual...
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Dr. Bernard Thbaud - Video
