By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, March 31, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Stem cells injected directly into heart muscle can help patients suffering from severe heart failure by improving an ailing heart's ability to pump blood, a new Danish trial indicates.

Doctors drew stem cells from patients' own bone marrow, and then injected those cells into portions of the heart where scar tissue seemed to interfere with heart function, explained lead researcher Dr. Anders Bruun Mathiasen. He is a research fellow in the Cardiac Catheterization Lab at Rigshospitalet University Hospital Copenhagen.

Within six months of treatment, patients who received stem cell injections had improved heart pumping function compared to patients receiving a placebo, according to findings that were to be presented Monday at the American Academy of Cardiology's annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

"We know these stem cells can initiate the growth of new blood vessels and heart muscle tissue," Mathiasen said. "That's what we think has happened."

If larger follow-up trials prove the treatment's effectiveness, it could provide hope for people suffering from untreatable heart failure.

"Heart failure is one of the biggest causes of death. If you can save lives or improve their symptoms, then a treatment like this would be extremely beneficial," said Dr. Cindy Grines, a cardiologist with the Detroit Medical Center and a spokeswoman for the American College of Cardiology.

The treatment could delay the need for a heart transplant and extend the lives of people who can't qualify for a transplant, Grines added.

This new clinical trial included 59 patients with severe heart failure who were considered untreatable. It is the largest randomized trial to test the potential of stem cell injections in treating heart disease, the researchers said.

In the trial, 39 patients received injections of stem cells into their heart muscle through a catheter inserted in the groin. The procedure required only local anesthesia, Mathiasen said. The other 20 received saline injections.

Here is the original post:
Stem Cells May Rejuvenate Failing Hearts, Study Suggests

hide captionRyoji Noyori, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist and president of Japan's prestigious RIKEN research institute, bows at a news conference in Tokyo Tuesday to apologize for the scientific misconduct of a RIKEN colleague.

Ryoji Noyori, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist and president of Japan's prestigious RIKEN research institute, bows at a news conference in Tokyo Tuesday to apologize for the scientific misconduct of a RIKEN colleague.

What is it with stem cell research? Despite solid science from many corners, the scandals never seem to stop. In this case, after a lofty international announcement in January, it only took about two months for the other shoe to drop.

A scientific committee in Japan said Tuesday that the lead author of a recent "breakthrough study" fabricated data and is guilty of scientific misconduct.

The scientist under question, Haruko Obokata of the RIKEN Centers for Developmental Biology, adamantly denied the fraud in a statement, Reuters reports. She claims the errors were made innocently. She plans to appeal the judgement of the panel.

Back in January, Obokata and an international team from Japan and U.S. said they had figured out a fast, easy way to make the most powerful cells in the world embryonic stem cells from just one blood cell.

The trick seemed remarkably simple: Put white blood cells from a baby mouse in a mild acid solution, the team reported in pair of papers in the journal Nature.

But the six-person panel set up by Riken, a top academic research facility in Japan said it found six errors in the studies. Four were innocent mistakes, the panel said. But the other two were intentional and thus fraudulent, Nature reported Tuesday.

For instance, the committee said that Obokata reused an image from her dissertation to demonstrate an unrelated experiment.

"Actions like this completely destroy data credibility," molecular biologist Shunsuke Ishii said Tuesday at a press conference in Tokyo. Ishii chaired the committee investigating the case.

Link:
Fraud Found In Study Claiming Fast, Easy Stem Cells

A Japanese researcher stands by her claim to be able to produce stem cells using an acid bath or mechanical stress

A mouse embryo injected with cells made pluripotent through stress, tagged with a fluorescent protein. Credit:Haruko Obokata

A committee investigating problems in papers claiming a method to apply stress to create embryonic like cells has found the lead researcher guilty of scientific misconduct.

The judgement is the latest twist but not the final word in the bizarre story of stimulus-triggered activation of pluripotency (STAP), a method that researchers at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology (CDB) in Kobe, Japan, still say is able to turn ordinary mature mouse cells into cells that share embryonic stem cells' capacity to turn into all of the bodys cells.

The technology waspresented in twoNaturepapers,on 30 January by the CDBs Haruko Obokata together with colleagues in Japan and the United States, buta slew of problems has been identifiedsince then. (Natures news and comment team is editorially independent of its research editorial team.)

A six-person committee three RIKEN scientists, two university researchers and a lawyer looked at six problems. Four were dismissed as innocent errors, but in two cases the committee found that Obokata had manipulated data in an intentionally misleading fashion. They branded it scientific misconduct.

Image confusion Obokata did not appear at the press conference where the committee announced its results this morning or at an afternoon press conference where RIKEN management, led by director Ryoji Noyori, gave RIKEN's response. But in a written statement, Obokata said she planned to appeal the judgement.

One problem concerned a figure showing electrophoresis gels. One lane in a diagram had been swapped for another. Obokata says that she made the switch because the other lane was clearer and she did not think it a problem. The committee found the swap to be intentionally misleading manipulation.

The committee also condemned Obokatas use of an image from her doctoral thesis, in which the image, of a type of tumour called a teratoma, had been used to show the broad-ranging developmental capacity of cells she made by putting pressure on the cell membranes using a pipette. The image in theNaturepaper was meant to show the same developmental capacity, but those cells were said to be made by stressing the cells with acid. Obokata said that she mistakenly added the wrong image. But the committee, noting that captions on the image had been changed, judged it to be fraudulent.

The committee repeatedly fended off questions about whether the technology works and, thus, whether STAP cells actually exist. That is beyond the scope of our investigation, said committee chair Shunsuke Ishii, a molecular biologist at RIKEN in Tsukuba, Japan.

Originally posted here:
Stem-cell Scientist Found Guilty of Misconduct