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Stem cells may transform the way doctors treat heart failure

By Ferris Jabr

HEART REPAIR: Harvesting semispecialized stem cells from an ailing heart, helping them to make millions of copies of themselves and injecting those cells into the heart enable the organ to break down scar tissue and grow new muscle. Image: Bryan Christie

In early 2009 Mike Jones bought a newspaper at a convenience store in Louisville, Ky., and read about a local doctor who wanted to try something unprecedented: healing an ailing heart by harvesting and multiplying its native stem cellsimmature cells with regenerative powers. Jones, then 65, had congestive heart failure: his heart was no longer pumping blood efficiently. He contacted the doctor, Roberto Bolli of the University of Louisville, and in July of that year Jones became the first person in the world to receive an infusion of his own cardiac stem cells.

This article was originally published with the title A Change of Heart.

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A Change of Heart: Stem Cells May Transform Treatment for Heart Failure (preview)

Cocovanol, from Diana Plant Sciences.

Diana Plant Sciences, based in Portland, OR, has brought to market what it says is the first nutraceutical ingredient produced completely in a bioreactor via plant stem cell technology.

The ingredient, a cocoa powder containing a high level of flavanols the company has branded as Cocovanol, debuted recently at the Natural Products Expo West trade show in Anaheim, CA. The powder is indistinguishable at a glance from standard cocoa powder, save for its lighter color. Except in this case, a process of controlled growth within a bioreactornot photosynthesisis the prime input that resulted in the ingredient.

So far as company officials are aware, it is the first nutraceutical ingredient to come to market via the technology, said Marc Philouze, president of Diana Plant Sciences.

There are quite a number of companies that advertise plant stem technology, mostly in the cosmetic industry. Whats really valuable is we dont emphasize so much the stem cells, we care more about the active metabolites within the cells that provide the benefits, Philouze told NutraIngredients-USA.

Diana first identifies a substance of interest, and then drills down to find out which cells within the plant are producing the compounds shown by the scientific literature to have health benefits. They can then culture just the wheat so to speakthose specific cells (in the case of Cocovanol, the cells within the cacao beans that synthesize the flavanols) without having to harvest the chaff, namely all of the thousands of other types of cells within the cacao bean or any other plant of interest that produce other compounds incidental to the health benefit associated with that ingredient.

Non GMO approach

Its a reductionist approach, Philouze acknowledges, one that has led the technology to be applied in the research and manufacture of pharmaceuticals. One big difference between Dianas approach and those of the drug researchers, though, is that in the pharmaceutical realm there is no special issue surrounding genetic modification technology to tweak the stem cells to deliver the desired compounds. Diana explicitly rejects that approach for the production of its nutracuetical ingredients.

This is a non GMO process. We dont intervene at that level, Philouze said.

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Diana Plant Sciences debuts cocoa ingredient derived from plant stem cells

Apr. 1, 2013 Using the same strategy that a common virus employs to evade the human immune system, researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine have modified adult stem cells to increase their survival -- with the goal of giving the cells time to exert their natural healing abilities.

"Basically, we've helped the cells be 'invisible' to the body's natural killer cells, T cells and other aspects of the immune system, so they can survive to promote healing," said Graca Almeida-Porada, M.D., Ph.D., senior author and professor of regenerative medicine at Wake Forest Baptist.

The research, reported in the current issue of PLOS ONE, a peer-reviewed, open access journal, involves mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), found in bone marrow, peripheral and cord blood and fetal liver and lung tissue. These cells are known for their ability to migrate to damaged tissues and contribute to healing. However, like all cells, they are susceptible to being killed by the body's complement system, a part of the immune system involved in inflammation and organ rejection.

"These cells have a natural ability to help modulate the immune response, so if we can increase their survival, they theoretically could be a therapy to decrease inflammation and help transplant patients avoid organ rejection," said Almeida-Porada.

In the study, the researchers evaluated the potential of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), a member of the herpes virus family, to help increase the survival of MSCs. While the HCMN virus infects between 50 percent and 80 percent of people in the U.S., it normally produces no symptoms and remains latent in the body over long periods.

"We wanted to take advantage of the virus' ability to evade the immune system," said Almeida-Porada. "Our strategy was to modify the cells to produce the same proteins as the HCMV virus so they could escape death and help modulate inflammation and promote healing."

MSCs were purified from human fetal liver tissue. They were then engineered to produce specific proteins expressed by the HMCV virus. Through this process, the scientists identified the protein that was most effective at increasing cell survival. Specifically, the team is the first to show that overexpression of the US2 protein made the cells less recognizable to the immune system and increased cell survival by 59 percent (+/- 13 percent).

"The research showed that modifying the cells indeed improves their survival," said Almeida-Porada. "Next, we hope to evaluate the healing potential of these cells in conditions such as bowel disease, traumatic brain injury and human organ transplant." The research was supported by National Institutes of Health grants HL73737 and HL97623.

Almeida-Porada's co-researchers were Melisa A. Soland, Ph.D., and Christopher Porada, Ph.D., Wake Forest Baptist; Mariana Bego, Ph.D., Institut de Recherches Cliniques de Montreal, Canada; and Evan Colletti, Ph.D, Esmail Zanjani, Ph.D., and Stephen S. Jeor, Ph.D., University of Nevada.

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Researchers first to use common virus to 'fortify' adult stem cells

Steven Cherry: Hi, this is Steven Cherry for IEEE Spectrums Techwise Conversations.

3-D printing is being used for all sorts of things, from small plastic parts and microprocessors to a titanium jawbone for transplantation, from wedding cakes, as well be describing in an article in our June issue, to an entire car body, as well be hearing about in a podcast next month. Everything from computer chips to chocolate chips, in other words.

But the most unusual and potentially one of the most beneficial uses has to be that of human embryonic stem cells.

This is a pretty new thing. Researchers have done this with the stem cells of other animals, but it was only last month that a team at Heriot-Watt University, in Scotland, announced the 3-D printing of human stem cells. The work was published in the journal Biofabrication. My guest today is one of the coauthors of the study.

Will [Wenmiao] Shu is at the School of Engineering & Physical Sciences; Biochemistry, Biophysics & Bioengineering at Heriot-Watt University. He joins me by phone from there.

Will, welcome to the podcast.

Will Shu: Hello. Hi, thank you for inviting me.

Steven Cherry: The title of your paper is Development of a Valve-Based Cell Printer for the Formation of Human Embryonic Stem Cell Spheroid Aggregates. Thats certainly a mouthful, so lets take it in parts. What you did here was actually build a printer.

Will Shu: Okay, so there are two key components of the 3-D bioprinter. One is the printing nozzle, which determines what kind of materials you can print and also how much quantity of the material you can print at a particular spot, okay. So the valve-based printing nozzle we developed is basically, are solenoid microvalves, which we found is very gentle in printing stem cells, human embryonic stem cells.

So the printed human embryonic stem cells intend very high cell viability. And also, importantly, after printing out, we found the stem cells kept their key biological function, which is their potencytheir ability to be turned into any other type of cells in the body. And the other key component of the printer is basically their motion control. And similar to other types of 3-D printers, which you can print plastics [unintelligible] three-dimensional motion of the printing head, basically how well you can print, and thats quite similar to other types of 3-D printing technology.

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A 3-D Printer for Human Embryonic Stem Cells

CHUBBUCK, Idaho -

One local animal hospital performed southeast Idaho's first stem cell procedure Monday.

For the first time, the Alpine Animal Hospital in Chubbuck helped two animals ease their arthritis pain using a procedure that takes stem cells from the animals' own fat tissue.

Karen Vargas noticed her 9-year old dog, Sadie, growing older and more effected by arthritis in her joints.

She has arthritis in her front paws and her front legs and so I thought this is a wonderful time to have it done, Vargas said. So I called and I said, 'Hey, let me have the first dog being done here in Pocatello,' and I was so excited.

Sadie is a therapy dog who has helped comfort people since the new Portneuf Medical Center was built two years ago. Since then, Sadie would tote around a backpack full of chocolate to cheer-up those around her.

But now, Sadie herself is going under the knife herself.

It's pretty exciting for us here at the Alpine Animal Hospital to be groundbreaking and heading in this direction with stem cells, veterinarian Dr. Steven Haymore said. I think it's going to be something we see in the future for veterinary medicine pretty routinely, if not in human medicine.

Once the fat tissue from Sadie's abdomen had been harvested, it was placed in test tubes. Once in the lab, the test tubes were mixed with various solutions and spun into a liquid before being digested down a centrifuge that separates the fat cells from the clean, stem cells.

Haymore said fat tissues are used in this process because, although there are stem cells located throughout the whole body, there are greater concentrations of them in the fat itself. As a matter of fact, in one test tube alone, there are up to billions of stem cells ready to be processed and injected back into the body.

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Stem cells : local animal hospital leading the way in SE Idaho