June 28, 2012

Connie K. Ho for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

Diabetes is a detrimental disease. In order to combat the illness, University of British Columbia (UBC) researchers conducted a study with an industry partner and discovered that stem cells can reverse Type 1 diabetes in mice.

The discovery leads the way for the development of innovative treatments of diabetes, which is caused by deficient production of insulin by the pancreas. Insulin allows glucose to be held by the bodys muscle, fat, and liver; in turn, its used as fuel for the body. Blindness, heart attack, kidney failure, nerve damage, and stroke are possible consequences of low insulin production. The research by the UBC investigators addressed these various issues. The study was led by Timothy Kieffer, a professor in the Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences, as well as scientists from BetaLogics, the New Jersey-based division of Janssen Research & Development, LLC.

We are very excited by these findings, but additional research is needed before this approach can be tested clinically in humans, remarked Kieffer, a member of UBCs Life Sciences Institute, in a prepared statement.

The team of investigators is the first to demonstrate that human stem cell transplants can bring back insulin production and reverse diabetes in mice. They were able to re-create the feedback loop that allows insulin levels to automatically increase or decrease based on blood glucose levels. The results from their projects was recently published online on the website of the journal Diabetes.

Following the stem cell transplant, the diabetes mice were slowly taken off insulin, a procedure which was to mirror human clinical condition. Even if they were given copious amounts of sugar, the mice were able to continue healthy blood sugar levels three to four months later. The transplanted cells that were removed from the mice many months after the experiments also showed signs of normal insulin-producing pancreatic cells.

Essentially, the mice were cured of their diabetes by placing the body back in charge of regulated insulin production as it is in healthy, non-diabetics, Kieffer told the Vancouver Sun. It took about four to five months for the [stem] cells to become functional in our experiments and the mice were able to maintain good blood glucose levels even when fed a high-glucose diet, said Kieffer, a UBC professor in the department of cellular and physiological sciences.

Research still needs to be done to finalize details of the approach for diabetes treatment.

The studies were performed in diabetic mice that lacked a properly functioning immune system that would otherwise have rejected the cells. We now need to identify a suitable way of protecting the cells from immune attack so that the transplant can ultimately be performed in the absence of any immunosuppression, explained Kieffer in the statement.

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Diabetes Reversal In Mice Via Stem Cells

Public release date: 28-Jun-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Stephanie Desmon sdesmon1@jhmi.edu 410-955-8665 Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions

Johns Hopkins researchers, working with an international consortium, say they have generated stem cells from skin cells from a person with a severe, early-onset form of Huntington's disease (HD), and turned them into neurons that degenerate just like those affected by the fatal inherited disorder.

By creating "HD in a dish," the researchers say they have taken a major step forward in efforts to better understand what disables and kills the cells in people with HD, and to test the effects of potential drug therapies on cells that are otherwise locked deep in the brain.

Although the autosomal dominant gene mutation responsible for HD was identified in 1993, there is no cure. No treatments are available even to slow its progression.

The research, published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, is the work of a Huntington's Disease iPSC Consortium, including scientists from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and the University of California, Irvine, as well as six other groups. The consortium studied several other HD cell lines and control cell lines in order to make sure results were consistent and reproducible in different labs.

The general midlife onset and progressive brain damage of HD are especially cruel, slowly causing jerky, twitch-like movements, lack of muscle control, psychiatric disorders and dementia, and eventually death. In some cases (as in the patient who donated the material for the cells made at Johns Hopkins), the disease can strike earlier, even in childhood.

"Having these cells will allow us to screen for therapeutics in a way we haven't been able to before in Huntington's disease," says Christopher A. Ross, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, neurology, pharmacology and neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and one of the study's lead researchers. "For the first time, we will be able to study how drugs work on human HD neurons and hopefully take those findings directly to the clinic."

Ross and his team, as well as other collaborators at Johns Hopkins and Emory University, are already testing small molecules for the ability to block HD iPSC degeneration. These small molecules have the potential to be developed into novel drugs for HD.

The ability to generate from stem cells the same neurons found in Huntington's disease may also have implications for similar research in other neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

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Turning skin cells into brain cells

ScienceDaily (June 28, 2012) Johns Hopkins researchers, working with an international consortium, say they have generated stem cells from skin cells from a person with a severe, early-onset form of Huntington's disease (HD), and turned them into neurons that degenerate just like those affected by the fatal inherited disorder.

By creating "HD in a dish," the researchers say they have taken a major step forward in efforts to better understand what disables and kills the cells in people with HD, and to test the effects of potential drug therapies on cells that are otherwise locked deep in the brain.

Although the autosomal dominant gene mutation responsible for HD was identified in 1993, there is no cure. No treatments are available even to slow its progression.

The research, published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, is the work of a Huntington's Disease iPSC Consortium, including scientists from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and the University of California, Irvine, as well as six other groups. The consortium studied several other HD cell lines and control cell lines in order to make sure results were consistent and reproducible in different labs.

The general midlife onset and progressive brain damage of HD are especially cruel, slowly causing jerky, twitch-like movements, lack of muscle control, psychiatric disorders and dementia, and -- eventually -- death. In some cases (as in the patient who donated the material for the cells made at Johns Hopkins), the disease can strike earlier, even in childhood.

"Having these cells will allow us to screen for therapeutics in a way we haven't been able to before in Huntington's disease," saysChristopher A. Ross, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, neurology, pharmacology and neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and one of the study's lead researchers. "For the first time, we will be able to study how drugs work on human HD neurons and hopefully take those findings directly to the clinic."

Ross and his team, as well as other collaborators at Johns Hopkins and Emory University, are already testing small molecules for the ability to block HD iPSC degeneration.These small molecules have the potential to be developed into novel drugs for HD.

The ability to generate from stem cells the same neurons found in Huntington's disease may also have implications for similar research in other neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

To conduct their experiment, Ross took a skin biopsy from a patient with very early onset HD.When seen by Ross at the HD Center at Hopkins, the patient was just seven years old. She had a very severe form of the disease, which rarely appears in childhood, and of the mutation that causes it. Using cells from a patient with a more rapidly progressing form of the disease gave Ross' team the best tools with which to replicate HD in a way that is applicable to patients with all forms of HD.

Her skin cells were grown in culture and then reprogrammed by the lab of Hongjun Song, Ph.D., a professor at Johns Hopkins' Institute for Cell Engineering, into induced pluripotent stem cells. A second cell line was generated in an identical fashion in Dr. Ross's lab from someone without HD. Simultaneously, other HD and control iPS cell lines were generated as part of the NINDS funded HD iPS cell consortium.

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Turning skin cells into brain cells: Huntington's disease in a dish

HOUSTON -

Pandu, the 286-pound Malayan tiger stretched out on the gurney in the Houston Zoo's hospital, had bone chips big ones in his right elbow.

Ivy the leopard, being prepped in another room, also needed medical treatment for her limp. The zoo's 68-pound black cat, which had arthroscopic surgery in 2009, was showing signs of pain again in her elbows.

The zoo staff was worried.

"I imagine we are going to end up euthanizing her at some point if it can't be fixed," said Beth Schaefer, the zoo's curator of carnivores and primates.

With two big cats needing attention, surgeon Brian Beale of Gulf Coast Veterinary Specialists and stem-cell specialists at InGeneron Inc. donated their services to treat the animals. While Beale removed bone chips and cleaned the joints during arthroscopic surgery, InGeneron staffers produced stem cells from each animal's body fat.

When the surgeries were complete, Beale injected the stem cells, which had taken about two hours to process for each big cat, into the animals' joints to promote faster healing.

Pandu, always a big baby looking for attention, was moving a bit slowly the day after surgery.

Feisty Ivy pretended nothing was wrong.

A week after the surgery, Houston Zoo veterinarian Lauren Howard says neither animal has suffered complications. Pandu, with mild swelling, was released into his exhibit half-days on Monday.

Read more from the original source:
Stem cells help some ailing Houston Zoo creatures