Public release date: 10-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Bill Seiler bseiler@umm.edu 410-328-8919 University of Maryland Medical Center

Baltimore, MD September 10, 2012 Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who are exploring novel ways to treat serious heart problems in children, have conducted the first direct comparison of the regenerative abilities of neonatal and adult-derived human cardiac stem cells. Among their findings: cardiac stem cells (CSCs) from newborns have a three-fold ability to restore heart function to nearly normal levels compared with adult CSCs. Further, in animal models of heart attack, hearts treated with neonatal stem cells pumped stronger than those given adult cells. The study is published in the September 11, 2012, issue of Circulation.

"The surprising finding is that the cells from neonates are extremely regenerative and perform better than adult stem cells," says the study's senor author, Sunjay Kaushal, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and director, pediatric cardiac surgery at the University of Maryland Medical Center. "We are extremely excited and hopeful that this new cell-based therapy can play an important role in the treatment of children with congenital heart disease, many of whom don't have other options."

Dr. Kaushal envisions cellular therapy as either a stand-alone therapy for children with heart failure or an adjunct to medical and surgical treatments. While surgery can provide structural relief for some patients with congenital heart disease and medicine can boost heart function up to two percent, he says cellular therapy may improve heart function even more dramatically. "We're looking at this type of therapy to improve heart function in children by 10, 12, or 15 percent. This will be a quantum leap in heart function improvement."

Heart failure in children, as in adults, has been on the rise in the past decade and the prognosis for patients hospitalized with heart failure remains poor. In contrast to adults, Dr. Kaushal says heart failure in children is typically the result of a constellation of problems: reduced cardiac blood flow; weakening and enlargement of the heart; and various congenital malformations. Recent research has shown that several types of cardiac stem cells can help the heart repair itself, essentially reversing the theory that a broken heart cannot be mended.

Stem cells are unspecialized cells that can become tissue- or organ-specific cells with a particular function. In a process called differentiation, cardiac stem cells may develop into rhythmically contracting muscle cells, smooth muscle cells or endothelial cells. Stem cells in the heart may also secrete growth factors conducive to forming heart muscle and keeping the muscle from dying.

To conduct the study, researchers obtained a small amount of heart tissue during normal cardiac surgery from 43 neonates and 13 adults. The cells were expanded in a growth medium yielding millions of cells. The researchers developed a consistent way to isolate and grow neonatal stem cells from as little as 20 milligrams of heart tissue. Adult and neonate stem cell activity was observed both in the laboratory and in animal models. In addition, the animal models were compared to controls that were not given the stem cells.

Dr. Kaushal says it is not clear why the neonatal stem cells performed so well. One explanation hinges on sheer numbers: there are many more stem cells in a baby's heart than in the adult heart. Another explanation: neonate-derived cells release more growth factors that trigger blood vessel development and/or preservation than adult cells.

"This research provides an important link in our quest to understand how stem cells function and how they can best be applied to cure disease and correct medical deficiencies," says E. Albert Reece, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A., vice president for medical affairs, University of Maryland; the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor; and dean, University of Maryland School of Medicine. "Sometimes simple science is the best science. In this case, a basic, comparative study has revealed in stark terms the powerful regenerative qualities of neonatal cardiac stem cells, heretofore unknown."

Original post:
University of Maryland study: Neonatal heart stem cells may help mend kids' broken hearts

Injections of stem cells taken from patients blood may finally banish wrinkles if clinical trials of a new treatment are successful.

For some, wrinkles are seen as a sign of character. For most, they are an unwelcome reminder of ageing.

However, scientists are developing a method that may finally end the need for the routine of treatments and moisturisers used to try to keep facial lines at bay.

The first clinical trials are to begin shortly on a treatment that uses stem cells purified from a patients blood to combat their own wrinkles.

The cells will be injected beneath the skin where they will grow into new skin cells to help restore the elasticity, claims Pharmacells, the Glasgow-based company behind the technology.

Athol Haas, the companys chief executive, said: The skin has a natural elastic property which comes from cells known as fibroblasts.

The ability of the body to produce this elastic material slows down with age because the number of these fibroblasts decrease.

By introducing large numbers of stem cells into the right place, we are increasing the ability of the body to produce this material. It is still in its early stages but we hope to begin phase one trials within the next 12 months.

Until recently, anyone hoping to get rid of their wrinkles had to rely on cosmetic treatments that injected synthetic collagen under the skin as a filler to remove the lines.

Botox has now become popular for cosmetic treatments, where a neurotoxin from the bacteria Clostridium botulinum is injected to immobilise the muscles that can cause wrinkles.

More here:
Stem Cells Could Be The Next Anti-Aging Fad

Public release date: 11-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Phyllis Fisher phyllis.fisher@gmail.com 212-606-1724 Hospital for Special Surgery

Researchers at Hospital for Special Surgery have been awarded a $100,000 grant from the National Football League (NFL) Charities to research the use of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) and stem cells as treatments for tendon injury and degeneration. For years, PRP has been used to improve healing in various sports injuries, but there is little evidence of its efficacy. Tendon overuse injuries are commonly seen in NFL players and recreational athletes, and new treatments are needed.

"We don't have a treatment that works 100 percent of the time, so there is room for improvement," said Scott Rodeo, M.D., co-chief of the Sports Medicine and Shoulder Service for Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. "Many people are weekend warriors and they suffer from tendon overuse injuries. Hopefully, our study will be able to help a lot of these people." Dr. Rodeo will be heading up the research. He has been associate team physician for the New York Football Giants since 2000.

The results of the research could lead to the development of an effective therapeutic strategy for tendinopathy that may allow NFL players to return to competition more quickly. It may also lead to a decrease in complications related to tendinosis, such as tendon ruptures.

Tendinosis is caused by repetitive microtears in the connective tissue in and around the tendon along with a failure of the body to mount a full healing response. Over time it can lead to pain, reduced tensile strength and chance of tendon rupture.

The grant money will be used to investigate how degenerated tendons respond to PRP and bone marrow-derived stem cells as well as if these two treatments will be synergistic if they are combined. Researchers will test these treatments in a preclinical model of tendon injury and degeneration. Among the goals of the research are to examine the structural and mechanical properties of the treated tendon tissue and to see how it responds to PRP and stem cells.

In recent years, physicians have found that some, but not all, patients with tendon disorders respond to treatment with PRP. PRP contains cells and growth factors that may stimulate healing of bone and soft tissue. Researchers surmise the mixed results may be caused by variations in preparation, timing, dosage and delivery of platelets, or differences in bioactivity. Different PRP preparations contain different amounts of cell and growth factors, and the researchers speculate that the negative studies may have used PRP preparations with low bioactivity. To test this theory, researchers will test the bioactivity levels of the preparations used. It is also unclear whether PRP treatments actually help heal the tendon structure or just ameliorate the pain. An examination of tissue should provide an answer to this question.

"We don't really understand how PRP affects tendon structure after we place it into patients. Some individuals get pain relief while others do not. The reported clinical results are mixed, " said Richard Ma, M.D., an orthopedic surgery fellow in the Sports Medicine and Shoulder Service at Hospital for Special Surgery and co-principal investigator for the study. "The advantage of a preclinical research model is we can not only evaluate the effects of PRP on tendon architecture after injury, but we can also evaluate how it might improve the structural strength of these tendons.

Similar to PRP, studies using stem cells to treat tendon disorders have also yielded conflicting results. HSS researchers hope their experiments can tease out how this treatment impacts tendons. "Cell therapies such as bone marrow stem cells are attractive because it may provide the necessary stimulus to overcome the unfavorable biologic microenvironment in chronic tendon degeneration," said Dr. Ma. Stem cells have the capability of differentiating into diverse specialized cell types.

Read the original post:
Hospital for Special Surgery investigators receive National Football League grant for PRP research

September 10, 2012

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

[ Watch the Video ]

People have always been searching for the cosmetic Fountain of Youthgrey hairs are dyed, tummies are tucked, and wrinkles are Botoxed.

According to the Scottish company Pharmacells, these modern day Ponce de Leons may have an exciting development to celebrate as the company is about to start clinical trials of a treatment that uses stem cells derived from a patients own blood to eliminate wrinkles.

The skin has a natural elastic property which comes from cells known as fibroblasts, Athol Haas, the companys chief executive, told the Telegraphs Richard Gray.

The ability of the body to produce this elastic material slows down with age because the number of these fibroblasts decreases, he said. By introducing large numbers of stem cells into the right place, we are increasing the ability of the body to produce this natural material. It will be long lasting, we think at least five years if not longer.

Commercially using stem cells for skin care is actually being done today. However, the stem cells are derived from a sample of the patients fat cells, not their blood. According to Haas, his companys treatment is superior to those that use fat-derived stem cells.

The stem cells in fat are more mature so the quality is not so good, and the numbers of them in it are much smaller, around five or 10 million, Haas explained. We are talking about 500 million, very high quality, pure stem cells and there is definitely a link between dose and efficacy. The more you have, the better it should be.

These pure stem cells and their potential applications were first discovered by American researchers about 10 years ago, and are currently used in hospitals to treat organs in the event of a trauma.

Read more here:
Fountain Of Youth Found? Stem Cells Eliminate Wrinkles

ScienceDaily (Sep. 10, 2012) Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who are exploring novel ways to treat serious heart problems in children, have conducted the first direct comparison of the regenerative abilities of neonatal and adult-derived human cardiac stem cells. Among their findings: cardiac stem cells (CSCs) from newborns have a three-fold ability to restore heart function to nearly normal levels compared with adult CSCs. Further, in animal models of heart attack, hearts treated with neonatal stem cells pumped stronger than those given adult cells.

The study is published in the September 11, 2012, issue of Circulation.

"The surprising finding is that the cells from neonates are extremely regenerative and perform better than adult stem cells," says the study's senor author, Sunjay Kaushal, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and director, pediatric cardiac surgery at the University of Maryland Medical Center. "We are extremely excited and hopeful that this new cell-based therapy can play an important role in the treatment of children with congenital heart disease, many of whom don't have other options."

Dr. Kaushal envisions cellular therapy as either a stand-alone therapy for children with heart failure or an adjunct to medical and surgical treatments. While surgery can provide structural relief for some patients with congenital heart disease and medicine can boost heart function up to two percent, he says cellular therapy may improve heart function even more dramatically. "We're looking at this type of therapy to improve heart function in children by 10, 12, or 15 percent. This will be a quantum leap in heart function improvement."

Heart failure in children, as in adults, has been on the rise in the past decade and the prognosis for patients hospitalized with heart failure remains poor. In contrast to adults, Dr. Kaushal says heart failure in children is typically the result of a constellation of problems: reduced cardiac blood flow; weakening and enlargement of the heart; and various congenital malformations. Recent research has shown that several types of cardiac stem cells can help the heart repair itself, essentially reversing the theory that a broken heart cannot be mended.

Stem cells are unspecialized cells that can become tissue- or organ-specific cells with a particular function. In a process called differentiation, cardiac stem cells may develop into rhythmically contracting muscle cells, smooth muscle cells or endothelial cells. Stem cells in the heart may also secrete growth factors conducive to forming heart muscle and keeping the muscle from dying.

To conduct the study, researchers obtained a small amount of heart tissue during normal cardiac surgery from 43 neonates and 13 adults. The cells were expanded in a growth medium yielding millions of cells. The researchers developed a consistent way to isolate and grow neonatal stem cells from as little as 20 milligrams of heart tissue. Adult and neonate stem cell activity was observed both in the laboratory and in animal models. In addition, the animal models were compared to controls that were not given the stem cells.

Dr. Kaushal says it is not clear why the neonatal stem cells performed so well. One explanation hinges on sheer numbers: there are many more stem cells in a baby's heart than in the adult heart. Another explanation: neonate-derived cells release more growth factors that trigger blood vessel development and/or preservation than adult cells.

"This research provides an important link in our quest to understand how stem cells function and how they can best be applied to cure disease and correct medical deficiencies," says E. Albert Reece, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A., vice president for medical affairs, University of Maryland; the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor; and dean, University of Maryland School of Medicine. "Sometimes simple science is the best science. In this case, a basic, comparative study has revealed in stark terms the powerful regenerative qualities of neonatal cardiac stem cells, heretofore unknown."

Insights gained through this research may provide new treatment options for a life-threatening congenital heart syndrome called hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS). Dr. Kaushal and his team will soon begin the first clinical trial in the United States to determine whether the damage to hearts of babies with HLHS can be reversed with stem cell therapy. HLHS limits the heart's ability to pump blood from the left side of the heart to the body. Current treatment options include either a heart transplant or a series of reconstructive surgical procedures. Nevertheless, only 50-60 percent of children who have had those procedures survive to age five.

More:
Neonatal heart stem cells may help mend kids' broken hearts