The Dr Hadwen Trust awarded 135,078 to Dr Catherine Wright, a lecturer at the Department of Life Sciences at Glasgow Caledonian University and a member of the Institute for Applied Health Research's Diabetes and Biomedical Sciences research group.

Loading article content

The grant will fund a three-year research programme which will allow the university's skin tissue bank to continue providing human skin tissue and cells that can be used for studies related to diabetes research.

This includes issues such as wound healing, as well as the development of human stem cells - which would help to replace the need for animal experimentation.

Dr Wright said: "The funding will allow us to employ a full-time member of staff to assist the academics to run the tissue bank and develop new types of human cell models that can replace animal experiments."

The rest is here:
Diabetes project is given funding boost

(PRWEB UK) 7 August 2014

BioEden the specialist tooth stem cell bank stands by its pledge to make personalised stem cell therapy an affordable reality by launching Access Membership at just 5 per month.

With stem cell therapy holding the promise of longer and better lives in the future, the cost and the ease of finding a stem cell match has been an issue, given that the cost of private stem cell banking requires an initial cash outlay of up to 4000.

Not any more.

BioEden the leading specialist tooth stem cell bank, has added Access Membership to parents finding themselves financially unable to bank their child's cells for future use. "It doesnt sit well with us that a parent could be unable to access what could be a life saving service for their child, for financial reasons," said Group CEO Mr Tony Veverka.

Parents can access the stem cell banking service for just 5 per month, and can become a member of the plan as soon as the baby is born. To date the option for stem cell banking at birth has been umbilical cord blood banking, an invasive process which provides haemopoetic stem cell banking at a cost.

Now parents have the option to choose tooth stem cell banking or to add this to cord blood banking at a very low monthly cost.

Tooth stem cells have considerable advantages over cord blood cells;

And now, thanks to BioEden, cost doesnt have to be a barrier.

So how can 5 a month give access to such a specialist service?

Visit link:
BioEden fights the financial cost of stem cell banking by bringing their specialist service to the people for just 5 ...

A Japanese scientist who was among a team of researchers accused of falsifying the results of two stem cell studies committed suicide Tuesday at a government science institute in western Japan. Yoshiki Sasai, deputy director of the Riken Center for Developmental Biology, was found by a security guard at the Kobe facility with a rope around his neck, the Associated Press reports. Authorities said he had suffered from cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead two hours later.

Sasai, 52, was considered an expert in embryonic stem cell research and co-authored two research papers published in January in the journal Nature that detailed a seemingly groundbreaking method of harvesting stem cells to grow new human tissue. Sasai and lead author Haruko Obokata reported having successfully altered ordinary mouse cells into versatile stem cells by immersing them in a mildly acidic solution. The resulting cells were named stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP) cells.

The studies were initially praised as being on the cutting edge of stem cell treatment, but were quickly disputed when other scientists could not replicate the experimental procedure. The papers were retracted six months later after the journal found they contained erroneous data, among other flaws.

Scientists at RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe are deeply concerned about the allegations regarding the recently reported STAP cells, the center said in a statement released in March. We wish to express our strong commitment to maintaining the highest level of scientific integrity to the public and the scientific community. We are fully aware that trust from the society is crucial for research activities carried out in RIKEN.

The scandal apparently affected Sasais health. Following the initial revelation that the research he was involved in may have been flubbed, he was hospitalized in March for stress, according to Riken spokesman Satoru Kagaya, who told reporters during a televised news conference on Tuesday that Sasai "seemed completely exhausted" when they talked over the phone in May.

Several suicide notes were found on Sasais secretarys desk, according to the Wall Street Journal. The content of the notes has not been made public, but officials said two of the notes were addressed to Riken officials, one of whom was Obokata.

See original here:
Yoshiki Sasai Suicide: Japanese Stem Cell Scientist Found Dead In Kobe Facility

04.08.2014 - (idw) Universitt Luxemburg - Universit du Luxembourg

Scientists at the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of the University of Luxembourg have grafted neurons reprogrammed from skin cells into the brains of mice for the first time with long-term stability. Six months after implantation, the neurons had become fully functionally integrated into the brain. This successful, because lastingly stable, implantation of neurons raises hope for future therapies that will replace sick neurons with healthy ones in the brains of Parkinsons disease patients, for example. The Luxembourg researchers published their results in the current issue of Stem Cell Reports. The LCSB research group around Prof. Dr. Jens Schwamborn and Kathrin Hemmer is working continuously to bring cell replacement therapy to maturity as a treatment for neurodegenerative diseases. Sick and dead neurons in the brain can be replaced with new cells. This could one day cure disorders such as Parkinsons disease. The path towards successful therapy in humans, however, is long. Successes in human therapy are still a long way off, but I am sure successful cell replacement therapies will exist in future. Our research results have taken us a step further in this direction, declares stem cell researcher Prof. Schwamborn, who heads a group of 15 scientists at LCSB.

In their latest tests, the research group and colleagues from the Max Planck Institute and the University Hospital Mnster and the University of Bielefeld succeeded in creating stable nerve tissue in the brain from neurons that had been reprogrammed from skin cells.

The tests demonstrate that the scientists are continually gaining a better understanding of how to treat such cells in order to successfully replace damaged or dead tissue. Building upon the current insights, we will now be looking specifically at the type of neurons that die off in the brain of Parkinsons patients namely the dopamine-producing neurons, Schwamborn reports. In future, implanted neurons could produce the lacking dopamine directly in the patients brain and transport it to the appropriate sites. This could result in an actual cure, as has so far been impossible. The first trials in mice are in progress at the LCSB laboratories on the university campus Belval. Weitere Informationen:http://www.cell.com/stem-cell-reports/abstract/S2213-6711%2814%2900203-3 - Link to the scientific paperhttp://www.uni.lu/lcsb - link to the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine

Read this article:
Implanted Neurons become Part of the Brain

Following the death of their colleague Marlon Layne, members of the marketing firm Ogilvy and Mather started a campaign to get the word out about the prevalence of blood cancers and the need for more diversity within the donor pool. Over the past three years they've raised nearly $42,000 for the cause and signed up around 160 new donors to the Be the Match Registry.

"I cant change the past but I can ensure that in the future nobody else like Marlon has to be waiting for a marrow registrant from somebody whos of their same race," said Ogilvy & Mather Marketing Analytics Associate Director Omari Jinaki.

But Jinaki says he has noticed a level of hesitancy to participate within the Black community.

"That is rooted, clearly, in hundreds of years of history of being misguided and misrepresented and underrepresented by the systems that are supposed to protect us," said Jinaki.

There's also a lack of awareness of the need within the Latino and Asian communities and lingering misconceptions the donation process- many believing it's painful with significant recovery time.

"The process has changed in the way one donates bone marrow. 75 percent of the time it's just like a blood donation," said Icla Da Silva Foundation President Airam Da Silva.

Depending on the recipient's need- most can now donate via a peripheral blood stem cell or PBSC.

For five days before donation, the donor is injected with filgrastim, which moves more blood-forming cells out of the marrow into the blood stream. The drug can cause head or joint aches and fatigue.

"On the fifth day the donor goes to the blood bank or to the hospital, they donate blood from one arm, the blood goes through a apheresis machine where it separates the bone marrow cells and the rest of the blood goes back on the other arm," said Da Silva.

You can also donate through a surgical procedure- with general or regional anesthesia. Doctors use hollow needles to draw liquid marrow from the back of the pelvic bone. Donors are usually sent home the same or the following day and feel some soreness for around a week after the procedure.

Go here to read the rest:
Group Raising Awarness about Need for Bone Marrow Donors

A.B.Series Apple Stem Cell Serum
A.B.Series Apple Stem Cell Serum A natural way to rejuvenate and revitalize your skin for a younger you. Apple Stem Cell Serum is formulated from Switzerland based on the Uttwiler Spatlauber...

By: AVAIL Beauty

Continued here:
A.B.Series Apple Stem Cell Serum - Video

By Amy Norton HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, July 30, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Babies born with so-called "bubble boy" disease can often be cured with a stem cell transplant, regardless of the donor -- but early treatment is critical, a new study finds.

Severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), as the condition is medically known, actually refers to a group of rare genetic disorders that all but eliminate the immune system. That leaves children at high risk of severe infections.

The term "bubble boy" became popular after a Texas boy with SCID lived in a plastic bubble to ward off infections. The boy, David Vetter, died in 1984 at the age of 12, after an unsuccessful bone marrow transplant -- an attempt to give him a functioning immune system.

Today, children with SCID have a high chance of survival if they receive an early stem cell transplant, researchers report in the July 31 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

In the best-case scenario, a child would get stem cells -- the blood-forming cells within bone marrow -- from a sibling who is a perfect match for certain immune-system genes.

But that's not always an option, partly because kids with SCID are often their parents' first child, said Dr. John Cunningham, director of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation at the University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital. He was not involved in the study.

In those cases, doctors typically turn to a parent -- who is usually a "half" match, but whose stem cells can be purified to improve the odds of success. Sometimes, stem cells from an unrelated, genetically matched donor can be used.

The good news: Regardless of the donor, children with SCID can frequently be cured, according to the new findings. But early detection and treatment is vital.

"These findings show that if you do these transplants early -- before [the age of] 3.5 months, in a child without infection -- the results are really quite comparable to what you have with a matched sibling," said lead researcher Dr. Richard O'Reilly, chief of the pediatric bone marrow transplant service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

Read the original here:
Early Stem Cell Transplant Vital in 'Bubble Boy' Disease

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine has continued in damage-control mode since the state agencys former president, Alan Trounson, joined the board of directors at StemCells Inc. this month, just seven days after leaving the agency.

Newark-based StemCells has been awarded nearly $20 million in CIRM funding, as part of a long relationship that, in the wake of Trounson's departure, has raised concern about potential conflict of interest.

The agency's new president, C. Randal Mills, said he was taking a strong stand on personal ethics, signing an agreement not to accept a job with any company funded by CIRM for at least one year after leaving his position at the state agency.

"We take even the appearance of conflicts of interest very seriously," Mills said in a statement this month.

But a scientist whose grant proposal was turned down even though it received a higher rating than the StemCells proposal called the relationship between the state agency and the company interesting.

In my opinion, Mr. Trounson and the CIRM staff were clearly antagonistic to us and strongly supportive of StemCells, Lon S. Schneider, a scientist at USCs Keck School of Medicine, told the California Stem Cell Report ,a blog that follows news related to the stem cell agency.

And Times columnist Michael Hiltzik pointed out that the agency has hired its own law firm to conduct the investigation, rather than a completely independent party.

The unanswered question burning a hole through CIRM's credibility is whether StemCells Inc. got its money because its research was promising, or because it knew the right people, Hiltzik wrote.

The stem cell agency has also voted to cut $5 million from a $70-million effort to create a series of statewide stem cell clinics, according to the California Stem Cell Report. And even though the board has 29 members, only eight could vote because of conflicts of interest among the others, according to the report.

Following a thorough review it is my opinion that the $70-million price tag is not clearly justified in terms of the benefits it will deliver to the people of California, Mills wrote in a memo to the agency's board.

Read more here:
California stem cell agency head takes stand on 'personal ethics'

Autism Protocol

Current investigative therapies for autism attempt to reverse these abnormalities through administration of antibiotics, antiinflammatory agents, and hyperbaric oxygen. Unfortunately, none of these approaches address the root causes of oxygen deprivation and intestinal inflammation.

Mesenchymal stem cells can regulate the immune system. It is thought that they may help to reverse inflammatory conditions and is currently in the final stages of clinical trials in the US for Crohns disease, a condition resembling the gut inflammation in autistic children.

Through administration of mesenchymal stem cells, we have observed improvement in subjects to whom weve administered stem cells at our facilities. The biological basis for our scientists appears in a peer-reviewed publication Journal of Translational Medicine: Stem Cell Therapy for Autism.

The adult stem cells used in the autism clinical investigation at the Stem Cell Institute come from human umbilical cord tissue (allogeneic mesenchymal). These stem cells are recovered from donated umbilical cords. Before they are approved for use, all umbilical cord-derived stem cells are screened for viruses and bacteria to International Blood Bank Standards. In some cases, we also utilize stem cells harvested from the subjects own bone marrow. Umbilical cord-derived stem cells are ideal for the autism protocol because they allow our physicians to administer uniform doses and they do not require any stem cell collection from the subject, which for autistic children and their parents, can be an arduous process. Because they are collected right after (normal) birth, umbilical cord-derived cells are much more potent than their older counterparts like bone marrow-derived cells for instance. Cord tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells pose no rejection risk because the body does not recognize them as foreign.

Because HUCT stem cells are less mature than other cells, the bodys immune system is unable to recognize them as foreign and therefore they are not rejected. Weve performed thousands of procedures with umbilical cord stem cells and there has never been a single instance of rejection. HUCT stem cells also proliferate/differentiate more efficiently than older cells, such as those found in the bone marrow and therefore, they are considered to be more potent.

The umbilical cord-derived stem cells are administered intravenously by a licensed physician.

Below is an example of a typical autism schedule. Our investigational clinical protocol for autism (www.clinicaltrials.gov NCT02192749) has been approved by the National Institutional Review Board for Clinical Protocols.

Proper follow-up is an essential part of the autism clinical investigation process. Our primary goal is to ensure that your child is progressing safely. Regular follow-up also enables us to evaluate efficacy and improve our autism clinical protocols based on observed outcomes.

Continue reading here:
Stem Cell Therapy for Autism || Treatment Information ...

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -

Cheri Kovacsev's face is dripping with blood, and she wouldn't have it any other way.

"I'm hoping to achieve smaller pores, [and] the fine lines around my lips to improve over this process," Kovacsev said.

Licensed paramedical aesthetician Amaris Centofanti performs rejuvapen micro-needling.

"After you are done with the treatment, collagen elastin kicks in to heal the skin, so in a few days, your skin starts to look more flawless," Centofanti said.

People like the professor of dermatology, Dr. James Spencer, however, aren't sold on micro-needling, which costs about $350 a pop.

"There was just a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association Dermatology, JAMA Dermatology, last month, of three cases of allergy to the medication to the serum that was put on after micro-needling," Spencer said.

Some other extreme beauty treatments include the bee venom facial. The theory is the venom tightens skin by pumping up collagen. It costs about $130.

Then there is the vampire face-lift, which costs about $600 to $800. For this treatment, plasma is taken from your blood and injected back into your skin.

The placenta facial uses stem cells from a sheeps placenta to boost collagen.

Follow this link:
Health Beat: Extreme skin

Leukemia patient Mai Duong is in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant -- something doctors say the Montreal resident requires within a matter of weeks.

While finding a well-matched stem cell donor is already a difficult task, the 34-year-old mother of one faces an added challenge: shes Vietnamese.

Duong was first diagnosed with acute leukemia in 2013, when she was 15 weeks pregnant with her second child. She was forced to terminate the pregnancy as she underwent seven months of chemotherapy, putting her cancer into remission for seven months.

But it returned in May, and doctors gave her two months to find a stem cell match.

"The only option for me to get cured is with the generosity of people," she says.

Duongs case is raising the alarm about a need for stem cell donors among Canada's minority groups, as those in need of transplants are more likely to find a donor from the same ethnic background.

Canadian Blood Services says less than 25 per cent of individuals in need of a stem cell transplant will be able to find a match within their own families and will have to turn to the public inthe hopes of finding a suitable donor.

But ethnic minorities are under-represented on donor lists in North America.

Less than one per cent of registered stem cell donors in Quebec are of South Asian descent, according to Hema-Quebec, the provinces blood services agency. The statistics are similar across Canada and in the international donor database.

"There is a cultural effect and religious effect," spokesperson Susie Joron told CTV News. "The other issue is that the biggest registries are in America and Germany, which has a big Caucasian population."

Follow this link:
Montreal woman with leukemia desperately seeks Vietnamese stem cell donors

Common shoulder conditions treated with stem cell therapy
In this video, Ross Hauser, MD discusses the types of shoulder conditions our Prolotherapy team specializes in treating with stem cell therapy and platelet rich plasma Prolotherapy. If you...

By: Caring Medical and Rehabilitation Services

View post:
Common shoulder conditions treated with stem cell therapy - Video

Case Study: Stem Cells vs Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery in a Patient with Multi-Vessel Disease 6 Year Follow Up

Stem cells outperform heart bypass surgery. A heart patient treated with his own stem cells instead of undergoing coronary bypass surgery is exceeding all expectations 6 years after his adult stem cell treatment.

In 2008, Howie Lindeman, then 58 years old, was facing open heart bypass surgery for three blocked coronary arteries. Lindeman, now 64, had his first heart attack at age 39 that severely damaged his heart. He went through multiple procedures over the last several years including having several stents placed in his blocked arteries. When he developed almost constant chest pain and struggled to walk just 25 feet his doctors decided to perform another heart catheterization. They found severe disease; two arteries were 100% blocked and the remaining one was at 80%. Cardiac bypass surgery was immediately recommended.

Lindeman was not quite ready to have his chest cracked open, so he sought alternative options. He was aware of successful treatments for single blocked arteries with stem cells. Determined to avoid surgery he inquired as to the possibility of stem cell treatment for his condition. Dr. Zannos Grekos, a cardiologist with Regenocyte, agreed to treat him as a case study with the understanding that if the treatment was not successful bypass surgery was his only option. Lindeman was treated with his own stem cells in March of 2008. Within one week of the stem cell procedure Lindeman was feeling much better and returned to fulltime work. His subsequent cardiac testing showed continued improvement up to one year later and now 6 years after his procedure he has had no further cardiac events, his heart tests have remained stable and he continues to work fulltime as a sound engineer touring the world.

I have a high stress, high energy job that I absolutely love, says Lindeman. The treatment has allowed me to continue my career and enjoy the active lifestyle I thought I had lost for good. Im a new person and I continue to feel better every day. Click here to see a video of Howie Lindeman.

The Regenocyte treatment is an outpatient procedure and after a period of observation, the patients then are typically discharged from the hospital. The patient is followed up regularly with testing to monitor their progress and measure their results. Lindemans follow up nuclear cardiac stress testing show a greater than 100% improvement in exercise capacity and improved myocardial perfusion. A heart catheterization performed a year after treatment showed a significant increase in heart function and new blood vessels. Lindemans progress was last reported in December 2011.

Dr. Grekos describes how stem cells are extracted from the patient and then processed in a laboratory. The stem cells are then activated and educated to heal the damaged heart. The lab process provides a key step in Regenocytes treatment success, Dr. Grekos explained. The lab extracts the stem cells from the sample and activates them into over a billion cells while educating them to assist the area of the body that needs treatment. These activated stem cells are known as Regenocytes (regenerative cells). The whole process takes about 3 days.

In this ground-breaking treatment, Dr. Zannos Grekos, an interventional cardiologist, inserted a catheter into Lindemans heart. Over the next 20 minutes, adult stem cells were introduced into the damaged part of his heart. The process of tissue repair begins almost immediately.

We continue to see remarkable results from adult stem cell treatment, said Grekos. Successes like those weve seen with Howie are common and show significant promise for diseases in other organs.

Dr. Grekos and the Regenocyte medical team continue to research the impact of adult stem cell therapy on heart disease. For more information on Regenocyte Adult Stem Cell procedures, upcoming seminars, and to see videos featuring Lindeman, visit http://www.regenocyte.com.

Original post:
Case Study: Stem Cells vs Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery in a Patient with Multi-Vessel Disease 6 Year Follow Up

Paul Laikind, CEO of ViaCyte, which is making a treatment for diabetes from human embryonic stem cells.

In an historic announcement for the stem cell field, San Diego's ViaCyte said Thursday it has applied to start human clinical trials of its treatment for Type 1 diabetes.

ViaCyte grows replacement insulin-producing cells from human embryonic stem cells. The cells are packaged while maturing in a semi-permeable device and implanted. In animal trials, the cells produce insulin, relieving diabetes.

Now the company proposes to take what could be a cure for diabetes into people. ViaCyte has asked to begin a Phase 1/2 clinical trial, which would assess both safety and efficacy of its product. ViaCyte is targeting Type 1 diabetes, in which the insulin-producing cells are destroyed. Patients require multiple injections of insulin daily to survive.

The announcement is good news for California's stem cell agency, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The agency has awarded nearly $39 million to ViaCyte to ready its device for human use.

Paul Laikind, ViaCytes chief executive, said if all goes smoothly, the first patients will be treated in August or September. Based on animal studies, it will take a few months to see results, and just a few patients will be treated at first.

CIRM itself, funded with $3 billion in state bond funds, has come under pressure to show results from its work. The money is projected to run out in 2017. Some supporters of the agency have proposed launching a new initiative to continue funding.

"This is a great example of how the investment that the voters made in creating CIRM is beginning to move from labs to patients," said Joe Panetta, a member of CIRM's governing board and chief executive of Biocom, the San Diego-based life science trade group. ""There are at least a dozen other clinical trials in progress. This is good for CIRM and San Diego."

Robert N. Klein, former chairman of CIRM's board, who has a 24-year-old son with Type 1 diabetes, praised the announcement.

"This is an exciting day for the father of any son or daughter who has Type 1 diabetes," Klein said. "This is a very critical trial that we're optimistic about. ViaCyte has a team that is extremely well-qualified to deal with complications and setbacks that often come up. They have extreme quality integration of their clinical and scientific groups, so they can respond well to modifications they may have to make along the way to accomplish all of their goals."

See more here:
ViaCyte asks to start diabetes stem cell therapy

More than 100 people from Tayside have signed up for the bone marrow register since the Tele published the story of tragic tot Faith Cushnie.

The nine-month-old from Menzieshill needed a bone marrow donation to beat leukaemia, but the donor backed out and doctors have told Faiths parents that there is now nothing they can do for her.

But 109 of you were so touched by Faiths story you immediately registered to be donors at the bone marrow and stem cell charity Anthony Nolan.

Over the same period last year the charity did not have a single registration from Tayside.

Incredibly, Dundee is currently sending the second highest number of visitors to the charitys website, after London, with 658 sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Charities like Anthony Nolan typically struggle for donors, in comparison to campaigns like Give Blood.

Blood was donated in Tayside 21,000 times in the last year but only 4,000 people in the region are on the list of bone marrow donors.

Thats despite an average of around 600 people being diagnosed with leukaemia in Scotland during that time.

Dr David Meiklejohn, a consultant in the department of haematology in Ninewells Hospital, said nearly all donors were volunteers.

He said: Its important to raise awareness as we cant get donors otherwise.

The rest is here:
Tele readers rush to save lives: Faith Cushnies plight highlights importance of bone marrow donors

Nicola Cockx with her baby sadly died just eight months after giving birth[Cavendish Press]

Nicola Cockx, 35, was so intent on having a child that she postponed having chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant for fear it would risk the health of her future child.

Instead she fought Multiple Myeloma - a form of bone marrow cancer which affects plasma cells- by using holistic methods of treatment and even completed a one year nutrition course to help with a healthy diet.

But, tragically, Mrs Cockx, from Little Bollington, Cheshire, passed away in February 2013, eight months after giving birth to her daughter Harriet.

She had began limping in July 2008 and three months later as she was about to see an orthopaedic specialist she slipped and broke her femur whilst on business trip in Germany with her father John Flowers, who runs a glazing company.

Mrs Cockx's husband Rudy, 39, an IT consultant, told a Manchester inquest: "Following the leg break in the hip area the multiple myeloma was diagnosed. It was extremely stressful."

The condition affects places in the body where there is bone marrow such as the spine, hips, skull and pelvis.

Nicola Cockx with her husband, Rudy [THE COCKX FAMILY]

Mr Cockx said his wife was initially treated with radiotherapy in the area of her hip where the cancer had struck but despite this she sought alternative medication and therapy.

She even considered an autologous stem cell transplant - where your own stem cells are removed and blasted with chemotherapy- but she backed out last minute for fear the chemo toxins would affect her fertility.

Read the original:
Woman who delayed cancer treatment to give birth died eight months after becoming a mother

Insight: Stem Cells -- Perry and Matt
Perry Cross and Matt Battista share their experiences trying highly experimental stem cell therapy to treat a spinal cord injury. Catch the full episode on Tuesday, July 15 at 8:30pm AEST on...

By: Insight SBS

See the original post here:
Insight: Stem Cells -- Perry and Matt - Video

University of Wisconsin-Madison

The ability to reliably and safely make in the laboratory all of the different types of cells in human blood is one key step closer to reality.

Writing today in the journal Nature Communications, a group led by University of Wisconsin-Madison stem cell researcher Igor Slukvin reports the discovery of two genetic programs responsible for taking blank-slate stem cells and turning them into both red and the array of white cells that make up human blood.

[ Watch the Video: What Are Stem Cells? ]

The research is important because it identifies how nature itself makes blood products at the earliest stages of development. The discovery gives scientists the tools to make the cells themselves, investigate how blood cells develop and produce clinically relevant blood products.

This is the first demonstration of the production of different kinds of cells from human pluripotent stem cells using transcription factors, explains Slukvin, referencing the proteins that bind to DNA and control the flow of genetic information, which ultimately determines the developmental fate of undifferentiated stem cells.

During development, blood cells emerge in the aorta, a major blood vessel in the embryo. There, blood cells, including hematopoietic stem cells, are generated by budding from a unique population of what scientists call hemogenic endothelial cells. The new report identifies two distinct groups of transcription factors that can directly convert human stem cells into the hemogenic endothelial cells, which subsequently develop into various types of blood cells.

The factors identified by Slukvins group were capable of making the range of human blood cells, including white blood cells, red blood cells and megakaryocytes, commonly used blood products.

By overexpressing just two transcription factors, we can, in the laboratory dish, reproduce the sequence of events we see in the embryo where blood is made, says Slukvin of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health and the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center.

The method developed by Slukvins group was shown to produce blood cells in abundance. For every million stem cells, the researchers were able to produce 30 million blood cells.

Excerpt from:
Wisconsin Scientists Find Genetic Recipe To Turn Stem Cells To Blood

How safe is stem cell therapy for children affected with autism spectrum disorder
In conversation with Dr Alok Sharma (MS, MCh.) Professor of Neurosurgery Head of Department, LTMG Hospital LTM Medical College, Sion, Mumbai. Explains, H...

By: Neurogen Brain and Spine Institute

See the original post here:
How safe is stem cell therapy for children affected with autism spectrum disorder - Video

Im not betting on it, but if, by some miracle, Argentine winger Angel Di Maria is on the pitch against Germany Sunday in the 2014 World Cup final, get ready for another explosion of interest in stem cell therapy, a now familiar occurrence every time a famous athlete undergoes the treatment.

Di Maria, who either tore or strained a thigh muscle in Argentinas World Cup win over Belgium, is so determined to play in the final that, according to some reports, he is having the muscle injected with stem cells in the hope of healing by Sunday. (This Associated Press report from Thursday said he was practicing at 60 to 80 percent, so Im guessing were talking about a strain.)

If those reports are true, Di Maria will join a long line of elite athletes who have resorted to the unproven and possibly risky therapy. This kind of stem cell therapy is experimental in every sense of the word, according to the International Society for Stem Cell Research. There also is some evidence that the procedure can promote tumor growth or create an immune response to a patients own cells, or that injected stem cells might migrate to another part of the body.

Never mind. There is soccer to be played!

No one denies that stem cells hold promise as a therapy down the road, perhaps in as little as five or 10 years, says Kevin McCormack, communication director for the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. With $3 billion supplied by voters in a 2004 ballot initiative, the organization is funding trials of the use of stem cell therapies for scarring after heart attacks, sickle cell anemia, leukemia and other conditions.

But for now, stem cells are known to be effective only for certain disorders of the blood, immune system and bone marrow. Beyond that, little has been proven, although clinics in the United States and around the world are offering the therapy and raking in bucks from desperate patients.

Di Maria may even see some benefits, McCormack said. In theory, they might [help] because they may have an anti-inflammatory effect or they may stimulate the bodys own natural healing, he said. But the problem is that they havent done any research to prove that.

The stem cells are harvested from a patients bone marrow and sometimes run through a centrifuge to concentrate them. Then they are injected into the damaged tissue.

For athletes, who are always looking for ways to prolong their careers and bounce back from injury, the fad began in 2010, when Major League pitcher Bartolo Colon had a slurry of stem cells that can turn into a variety of tissues injected into his injured elbow and shoulder. Within months, he was throwing 93 mile per hour fastballs for the New York Yankees. Later, Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning, one of the most famous athletes in the United States, reportedly had stem cell therapy on his injured neck.

McCormack and others express concern that when pro athletes and other celebrities have unproven treatments, it sends the rest of us weekend warriors out in search of the same. Here a good bit of blame goes to us in the media. A 2012 analysis conducted for the journal Molecular Therapyshowed that 72.7 percen of the media coverage of athletes and stem cell therapy didnt address whether the treatment works, and 42 percent referred to alleged benefits. Only 5.7 percent of the stories brought up possible safety issues and risks.

See the original post:
Injured Argentine winger Angel Di Maria may be resorting to unproven stem cell therapy