Posted: July 2, 2014 at 5:40 am
Heart Failure treated with Stem Cells, still strong 6 years later.
Using his own stem cells to treat his damaged heart this patient #39;s ejection fraction went from 32% to 55% and is still holding 6 years later. His lungs also got better!
By: Regenocyte
Read more:
Heart Failure treated with Stem Cells, still strong 6 years later. - Video
Posted: July 2, 2014 at 5:40 am
Growing a kidney from stem cells - ABC News Queensland
University of Queensland researchers have made a major leap forward in treating renal disease, announcing they have grown a kidney using stem cells. The breakthrough paves the way for improved...
By: Institute for Molecular Bioscience
Read the rest here:
Growing a kidney from stem cells - ABC News Queensland - Video
Posted: July 2, 2014 at 5:40 am
Stem Cell Research Draft 06/30/14
By: Karl Cox
Read more from the original source:
Stem Cell Research Draft 06/30/14 - Video
Posted: July 1, 2014 at 6:56 pm
Contact Information
Available for logged-in reporters only
About seven days after conception, something remarkable occurs in the clump of cells that will eventually become a new human being. They start to specialize. They take on characteristics that begin to hint at their ultimate fate as part of the skin, brain, muscle or any of the roughly 200 cell types that exist in people, and they start to form distinct layers.
Although scientists have studied this process in animals, and have tried to coax human embryonic stem cells into taking shape by flooding them with chemical signals, until now the process has not been successfully replicated in the lab. But researchers led by Ali Brivanlou, Robert and Harriet Heilbrunn Professor and head of the Laboratory of Stem Cell Biology and Molecular Embryology at The Rockefeller University, have done it, and it turns out that the missing ingredient is geometrical, not chemical.
Understanding what happens in this moment, when individual members of this mass of embryonic stem cells begin to specialize for the very first time and organize themselves into layers, will be a key to harnessing the promise of regenerative medicine, Brivanlou says. It brings us closer to the possibility of replacement organs grown in petri dishes and wounds that can be swiftly healed.
In the uterus, human embryonic stem cells receive chemical cues from the surrounding tissue that signal them to begin forming layers a process called gastrulation. Cells in the center begin to form ectoderm, the brain and skin of the embryo, while those migrating to the outside become mesoderm and endoderm, destined to become muscle and blood and many of the major organs, respectively.
Brivanlou and his colleagues, including postdocs Aryeh Warmflash and Benoit Sorre as well as Eric Siggia, Viola Ward Brinning and Elbert Calhoun Brinning Professor and head of the Laboratory of Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics, confined human embryonic stem cells originally derived at Rockefeller to tiny circular patterns on glass plates that had been chemically treated to form micropatterns that prevent the colonies from expanding outside a specific radius. When the researchers introduced chemical signals spurring the cells to begin gastrulation, they found the colonies that were geometrically confined in this way proceeded to form endoderm, mesoderm and ectoderm and began to organize themselves just as they would have under natural conditions. Cells that were not confined did not.
By monitoring specific molecular pathways the human cells use to communicate with one another to form patterns during gastrulation something that was not previously possible because of the lack of a suitable laboratory model the researchers also learned how specific inhibitory signals generated in response to the initial chemical cues function to prevent the cells within a colony from all following the same developmental path.
The research was published June 29 in Nature Methods.
At the fundamental level, what we have developed is a new model to explore how human embryonic stem cells first differentiate into separate populations with a very reproducible spatial order just as in an embryo, says Warmflash. We can now follow individual cells in real time in order to find out what makes them specialize, and we can begin to ask questions about the underlying genetics of this process.
Read the original:
Using Geometry, Researchers Coax Human Embryonic Stem Cells to Organize Themselves
Posted: July 1, 2014 at 6:56 pm
When a baby is born, blood that remains in his or her placenta and the attached umbilical cord blood is rich in stem cells that can potentially be used to treat certain diseases and genetic disorders.
And as medical technology has evolved, so has the ability to use cord blood that save lives and treat diseases. Today, parents of newborns have the option of banking their babys cord blood privately for their own possible future use, or they can donate it to a public bank similar to donating blood where it may be used to help others with a variety of illnesses.
July is National Cord Blood Awareness Month, a time when many health care providers and blood banks encourage the public to learn more about cord blood research and donations.
Sharon White, manager of the perinatal special care unit at Sharp Mary Birch Hospital for Women & Newborns said over 70 diseases can be treated with cord blood stem cells, such as acute and chronic leukemias, inherited metabolic and immune system disorders, plasma cell disorders and diseases such as breast cancer, neuroblastoma and renal cell carcinoma.
Dr. Lisa Brown, the physician in charge of national child health for the obgyn department at Kaiser Permanente San Diego, said stem cells from cord blood are used mainly to treat disorders of the blood. Since cord blood was first transplanted successfully in 1988, roughly 7,000 similar transplants have been performed, she said.
Stem cells in cord blood are valuable, she said, because they can become several different types of cells when transplanted in the body. For instance, she said, a patient with leukemia or lymphoma would typically get chemotherapy and radiation to destroy their own stem cells in the bone marrow that are causing illness. Those stem cells can then be replaced with healthy stem cells from cord blood. She said once transplanted, the new stem cells make copies of themselves and make blood cells a less painful option than getting stem cells from bone marrow.
To get stem cells from an umbilical cord is not dangerous, its not painful, she said.
Today, all new parents have the option of banking or donating their newborns cord blood. Some local hospital systems, such as Sharp Mary Birch, have partnered with private banks such as StemCyte to give parents the option of collecting and saving their babys cord blood at birth. Other systems, such as Scripps and the Navy, collect cord blood donations for public use through the San Diego Blood Bank. The blood bank first began collecting cord blood a decade ago, but then suppressed the program for financial reasons before ramping up collection efforts again about a year ago, said Chief Executive Officer David Wellis.
Some health care systems offer multiple options. White said Sharp Mary Birch offers private cord blood banking where parents have their babys cord blood collected at birth and stored for potential future use, as well as a related-donor cord blood program where a babys umbilical cord blood can be collected and used to treat a biological sibling or parent with a disease. Theres a fee with both these options. The hospital also offers public banking at no cost where parents donate their babys cord blood to others in need and to further cord blood research.
Originally posted here:
Options exist when saving a newborns cord blood
Posted: July 1, 2014 at 6:56 pm
Date:
June 30, 2014
Source:
Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., Publishers
Summary:
Zebrafish, a model organism that plays an important role in biological research and the discovery and development of new drugs and cell-based therapies, can form embryonic stem cells (ESCs). For the first time, researchers report the ability to maintain zebrafish-derived ESCs for more than two years without the need to grow them on a feeder cell layer.
Zebrafish, a model organism that plays an important role in biological research and the discovery and development of new drugs and cell-based therapies, can form embryonic stem cells (ESCs). For the first time, researchers report the ability to maintain zebrafish-derived ESCs for more than two years without the need to grow them on a feeder cell layer, in a study published in Zebrafish, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.
Ho Sing Yee and coauthors from the Malaysian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (Pulau Pinang), Universiti Sains Malaysia (Penang), and National University of Singapore describe the approach they used to be able to maintain zebrafish stem cells in culture and in an undifferentiated state for long periods of time. The ability to establish and grow the zebrafish ESCs without having a feeder layer of cells to support them simplifies their use and could expand their utility. In the article "Derivation and Long-Term Culture of an Embryonic Stem Cell-Like Line from Zebrafish Blastomeres Under Feeder-Free Condition," the authors show that the ESCs retain the morphology, properties, and ability to differentiate into a variety of cell types that is characteristic of ESCs, and were used to generate offspring after transmission through the germline.
"By addressing a major technical bottleneck in the field, this new culture system enables an array of exciting cellular and molecular genetic manipulations for the zebrafish," says Stephen Ekker, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of Zebrafish and Professor of Medicine at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN.
Story Source:
Read more from the original source:
New method to grow zebrafish embryonic stem cells
Posted: July 1, 2014 at 6:52 pm
MONDAY, June 30, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists are hopeful that cells inside the human gut might someday be retrained to produce insulin, the metabolic hormone that's lacking in people with type 1 diabetes.
The team from Columbia University Medical Center in New York City said their findings hold promise for the development of a new treatment for type 1 diabetes that does not involve stem cells.
For people with type 1 diabetes, their body's natural insulin-producing cells, known as pancreatic beta cells, are destroyed by their immune system. For the past 20 years, scientists have been trying to help the body make new insulin-producing cells that replace those that are lost to the disease.
"The search for the 'holy grail' is to produce a source of insulin producing cells either for transplantation or to convert the body's own cells to make sufficient insulin," said one expert, Dr. Derek LeRoith, professor of medicine and diabetes at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in New York City.
Right now, "insulin injections must be used to replace this lack in insulin production and release," said LeRoith, who was not involved in the new research.
Insulin-producing cells have been created before using stem cells, but these cells do not yet fully function like natural insulin-producing cells, the Columbia research team explained.
However, by simply turning off a particular gene, the Columbia scientists were able to convert cells in the human gut into cells that make insulin. They said the findings suggest that "reeducating" existing cells may be an easier way to replace the cells lost in type 1 diabetes than creating new cells using stem cell technology.
"People have been talking about turning one cell into another for a long time, but until now we hadn't gotten to the point of creating a fully functional insulin-producing cell by the manipulation of a single target," study senior researcher Dr. Domenico Accili, a professor of medicine at Columbia, said in a university news release.
Prior research conducted by the team at Columbia involving mice revealed that intestinal cells could be turned into insulin-producing cells. Insulin made by the transformed gut cells was then released into the bloodstream and effectively controlled the blood sugar levels in diabetic mice. The research was subsequently confirmed by another team of scientists.
The Columbia team's latest findings found this technique also hold promise for the treatment of type 1 diabetes in human cells.
See the original post:
Gut Cells May Be Coaxed to Make Insulin for People With Type 1 Diabetes
Posted: July 1, 2014 at 6:49 pm
Stem cell scientists had what first appeared to be an easy win for regenerative medicine when they discovered mesenchymal stem cells several decades ago. These cells, found in the bone marrow, can give rise to bone, fat, and muscle tissue, and have been used in hundreds of clinical trials for tissue repair. Unfortunately, the results of these trials have been underwhelming. One problem is that these stem cells don't stick around in the body long enough to benefit the patient.
But Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) scientists at Boston Children's Hospital aren't ready to give up. A research team led by Juan Melero-Martin, PhD, recently found that transplanting mesenchymal stem cells along with blood vessel-forming cells naturally found in circulation improves results. This co-transplantation keeps the mesenchymal stem cells alive longer in mice after engraftment, up to a few weeks compared to hours without co-transplantation. This improved survival gives the mesenchymal stem cells sufficient time to display their full regenerative potential, generating new bone or fat tissue in the recipient mouse body. The finding was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
"We are losing mesenchymal stem cells very rapidly when we transplant them into the body, in part, because we are not giving them what they need," said Melero-Martin, an HSCI affiliated faculty member and an assistant professor of surgery at Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School.
"In the body, these cells sit very close to the capillaries, constantly receiving signals from them, and even though this communication is broken when we isolate mesenchymal stem cells in a laboratory dish, they seem to be ok because we have learned how to feed them," he said. "But when you put the mesenchymal stem cells back into the body, there is a period of time when they will not have this proximity to capillary cells and they start to die; so including these blood vessel-forming cells from the very beginning of a transplantation made a major difference."
Melero-Martin's research has immediate translational implications, as current mesenchymal clinical trials don't follow a co-transplantation procedure. He is already collaborating with surgical colleagues at Boston Children's Hospital to see if his discovery can help improve fat and bone grafts. However, giving patients two different types of cells, as opposed to just one, would require more time and experiments to determine safety and efficacy. Melero-Martin is seeking to identify the specific signals mesenchymal stem cells receive from the blood vessel-forming cells in order to be able to mimic the signals without the cells themselves.
"Even though mesenchymal stem cells have been around for a while, I think there is still a lack of fundamental knowledge about communication between them and other cells in the body," he said. "My lab is interested in going even beyond what we found to try to understand whether these cell-cell signals are different in each tissue of the body, and to learn how to educate both blood vessel-forming and mesenchymal stem cells to co-ordinate tissue specific regenerative responses."
Other Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers are studying mesenchymal stem cells as bioengineering tools to deliver therapeutics, which is possible because of the cell type's unique ability to not trigger an immune response. Jeffrey Karp, PhD, at Brigham and Women's Hospital has developed several methods to turn these cells into drug-delivery vehicles, so that after transplantation they can, for example, hone in on swollen tissue and secrete anti-inflammatory compounds. And Khalid Shah, PhD, at Massachusetts General Hospital has designed a gel that holds mesenchymal stem cells in place so that they can expose brain tumors to cancer-killing herpes viruses.
"A lot of these applications have no real direct link with mesenchymal stem cells' supposed progenitor cell function," Melero-Martin said. "In our study, we went back to the collective ambition to use these cells as a way to regenerate tissues and we are not in a position to say how that affects other uses that people are proposing."
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Harvard University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Follow this link:
Research team pursues techniques to improve elusive stem cell therapy
Posted: July 1, 2014 at 6:49 pm
Los Angeles, California (PRWEB) June 30, 2014
R3 Stem Cell has expanded to Southern California, and is now offering procedures in Beverly Hills to patients. The company has partnered with Beverly Hills Orthopedic Institute to now offer three different types of stem cell procedures to patients for all types of degenerative arthritis, tendonitis and ligament injuries. For more information and patient scheduling, call (310) 438-5343.
R3 Stem Cell works with medical practices nationwide to offer stem cell therapy for all types of musculoskeletal conditions. The three types of procedures offered are bone marrow derived stem cell therapy, amniotic derived stem cell therapy and platelet rich plasma therapy.
Said R3 CEO Bob Maguire, Patients are now benefiting from stem cell procedures by delaying or avoiding the need for joint replacement due to the amazing pain relief and regeneration possible with the procedures. We are very excited to be expanding into Southern California to help more patients and have the opportunity to work with a highly respected physician like Dr. Raj.
The R3 Stem Cell partnership with Beverly Hills Orthopedic Institute brings the stem cell therapy to patients with treatment from Dr. Raj. As a Double Board Certified orthopedic doctor and a WebMD medical expert, Dr. Raj has pioneered the clinical use of stem cell therapy for patients.
Treatment is offered for athletes, grandparents, weekend warriors, manual laborers, students, essentially the whole spectrum of individuals who can benefit from regeneration of soft tissue or bony injury. This includes degenerative arthritis, rotator cuff injury, plantar fasciitis, Achilles or knee tendonitis, tennis elbow and additional indications such as chronic wounds from diabetes.
Dr. Raj stated The partnership with R3 Stem Cell is great because of the stem cell procedure options I now have available for patients along with the research protocols. It will only improve patient outcomes dramatically.
R3 Stem Cell works with medical practices nationwide on instituting regenerative medicine into the practice. Several procedure options are included such as bone marrow, amniotic and PRP therapy. In addition, research protocols and education come with the partnership.
For individuals interested in obtaining stem cell therapy for any type of arthritis, tendonitis, or ligament injury in the Los Angeles or Beverly Hills area, simply call (310) 438-5343.
Read the original post:
R3 Stem Cell Clinics Expand to Southern California, Now Offering Procedures in Beverly Hills
Posted: July 1, 2014 at 6:49 pm
Durham, NC (PRWEB) July 01, 2014
Medication and minimally invasive surgery to implant a sling can provide relief for millions of people who suffer from stress urinary incontinence (SUI), but not everyone responds to these therapeutic methods. A new study in the current STEM CELLS Translational Medicine tests the safety and effectiveness of stem cells as an alternative SUI treatment.
SUI results when the pelvic floor muscles, which support the bladder and urethra, weaken to the point that the muscles are not able to prevent urine from flowing when pressure is placed on the abdomen, such as when the person laughs or coughs. It occurs most often in women, due to childbirth and pregnancy.
Tissue engineering offers an attractive method to regenerate sphincter muscle, explained the studys corresponding author, Kirsi Kuismanen, from the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Tampere University Hospital (TUH) in Finland. She and her TUH colleagues teamed up with researchers from the Adult Stem Cell Group of BioMediTech in Tampere and the University of Twente in the Netherlands on the study.
Previously, various different cell sources, such as skeletal muscle-derived stem cells (SkMSCs), mesenchymal stem cells derived from bone marrow (BMSCs) and adipose stem cells (ASCs), have been studied for treating urinary incontinence. The SkMSCs and BMSCs would be a potential alternative for incontinence therapy. However, when compared to ASCs, the major limitation of SkMSCs and BMSCs is the difficulty to obtain these cells in large quantities, Dr. Kuismanen said.
The study involved five SUI patients who either did not want a sling implant or had undergone implants but they proved unsuccessful. They were treated with ASCs combined with bovine collagen gel, which is a bulking agent, and saline.
Prior to the treatment, the ASCs were isolated from subcutaneous fat and expanded for three weeks in a laboratory. The mixture of ASCs and collagen was injected in the patients who were followed for three, six and 12 months after the injections. The primary end point was a cough test to measure the effect of the treatment. Validated questionnaires were used to determine the subjective cure rate.
After six months, one out of five patients displayed a negative cough test with full bladder. At one year, the cough test was negative with three patients; two were satisfied with the results and ended their treatment for SUI. Validated questionnaires showed some subjective improvement in all five patients.
This is the first study describing the use of autologous ASCs in combination with collagen gel for female SUI treatments, Dr. Kuismanen said. Thus far, the treatment with autologous ASCs has proven safe and well tolerated. However, the feasibility and efficacy of the treatment were not optimal so additional research is needed to develop SUI injection therapies.
New treatments are needed for this common condition that affects millions of women, said Anthony Atala, M.D., editor of STEM CELLS Translational Medicine and director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The current study, believed to be the first to evaluate adipose-derived stem cells in combination with collagen, adds to the body of knowledge about the safety and effectiveness of stem cell treatments for stress urinary incontinence.
The rest is here:
Studies Test Effectiveness and Safety of Stem Cell Treatment for Urinary Incontinence
