Stem cells are proving themselves beneficial once again after scientists used the controversial building blocks to resurrect dead, scarred heart muscle damaged by recent heart attack.

Results from a Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute clinical trial show that treating heart attack patients with an infusion of their own heart-derived cells helps damaged hearts re-grow healthy heart muscle.

Reporting in The Lancet medical journal, the researchers said this is the clearest evidence yet that broken hearts can heal. All that is needed is a little help from one’s own heart stem cells.

“We have been trying as doctors for centuries to find a treatment that actually reverses heart injury,” Eduardo Marban, MD, PhD, and lead author of the study, told WebMD. “That is what we seem to have been able to achieve in this small number of patients. If so, this could change the nature of medicine. We could go to the root of disease and cure it instead of just work around it.”

Marban invented the “cardiosphere” culture technique used to create the stem cells and founded the company developing the treatment.

“These findings suggest that this therapeutic approach is feasible and has the potential to provide a treatment strategy for cardiac regeneration after [heart attack],” wrote University of Hong Kong researchers Chung-Wah Siu and Hung-Fat Tse in an accompanying editorial of Marban’s paper.

The British Heart Foundation told James Gallagher of BBC News that this could “be great news for heart attack patients” in the future.

A heart attack occurs when the heart is starved of oxygen, such as when a clot is blocking the blood flow to the organ. As the heart heals, the dead muscle is replaced by scar tissue, which does not beat like heart muscle. This in turn reduces the hearts ability to pump blood around the body.

Doctors have long been searching for ways to regenerate damaged heart muscle, and now, it seems heart stem cells are the answer. And the Cedars-Sinai trial was designed to test the safety of using stem cells taken from a heart attack patient’s own heart.

The researchers found that one year after receiving the treatment, scar size was reduced from 24 percent to 12 percent of the heart in patients treated with heart stem cells. Patients in the control group, who did not receive stem cells, did not experience a reduction in their heart attack scar tissues.

“While the primary goal of our study was to verify safety, we also looked for evidence that the treatment might dissolve scar and re-grow lost heart muscle,” Marban said in a statement. “This has never been accomplished before, despite a decade of cell therapy trials for patients with heart attacks. Now we have done it. The effects are substantial, and surprisingly larger in humans than they were in animal tests.”

“These results signal an approaching paradigm shift in the care of heart attack patients,” said Shlomo Melmed, MD, dean of the Cedars-Sinai medical faculty and the Helene A. and Philip E. Hixon Chair in Investigative Medicine. “In the past, all we could do was to try to minimize heart damage by promptly opening up an occluded artery. Now, this study shows there is a regenerative therapy that may actually reverse the damage caused by a heart attack.”

Marban cautioned that stem cells do not do what people generally think they do. The general idea has been that stem cells multiply over and over again, and, in time, they turn themselves and their daughter cells into new, working heart muscle.

But Marban said the stem cells are actually doing something more amazing.

“For reasons we didn’t initially know, they stimulate the heart to fix itself,” he told Daniel J. DeNoon of WebMD. “The repair is from the heart itself and not from the cells we give them.”

Exactly how the stem cells invigorate the heart to do this was a matter of “feverish research” in the lab.

The CArdiosphere-Derived aUtologous stem CElls to reverse ventricUlar dySfunction (CADUCEUS) clinical trial was part of a Phase I study approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Marban used 25 volunteer patients who were of an average age of 53 and had recently suffered a heart attack that left them with damaged heart muscle. Each patient underwent extensive imaging scans so doctors could pinpoint the exact location and severity of the scars. Patients were treated at Cedars-Sinai in LA and at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

Eight of the 25 patients served as a control group, receiving conventional medical treatment. The other 17 patients who were randomized to receive the stem cell treatments underwent a minimally invasive biopsy, under local anesthesia. Using a catheter inserted through a vein in the neck, doctors removed a small sample of heart tissue, about half the size of a raisin. The heart tissue was then taken to the lab at Cedars-Sinai and cultured and multiplied the cells using specially developed tools.

The doctors then took the multiplied heart-derived cells — roughly 12 million to 25 million of them per patient — and reintroduced them into the patient’s coronary arteries during another minimally invasive catheter procedure.

The process used in the trial was developed earlier by Marban when he was on the faculty at Johns Hopkins. Johns Hopkins has filed for a patent on the intellectual property and has licensed it to a company in which Marban has a financial interest. However, no funds from that company were used to support the clinical study. All funding was derived from the National Institutes of Health and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

This study followed another in which doctors reported using cells taken from the heart to heal the heart. That trial reported in November 2011 that cells could be used to heal the hearts of heart failure patients who were having heart bypass surgery.

And another trial is about to get underway in Europe, which will be the largest ever for stem cell therapy in heart attack patients.

The BAMI trial will inject 3,000 heart attack patients with stem cells taken from their bone marrow within five days of the heart attack.

Marban said despite the heart’s ability to re-grow heart muscle with the help of heart stem cells, they found no increase in a significant measure of the heart’s ability to pump — the left ventricle ejection fraction: the percentage of blood pumped out of the left ventricle.

Professor Anthony Mathur, a coordinating researcher for the upcoming BAMI trial, said that even if the Marban trial found an increase in ejection fraction then it would be the source of much debate. As it was a proof-of-concept study, with a small group of patients, “proving it is safe and feasible is all you can ask.”

“The findings would be very interesting, but obviously they need further clarification and evidence,” he told BBC News.

“It’s the first time these scientists’ potentially exciting work has been carried out in humans, and the results are very encouraging,” Professor Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, told BBC News.

“These cells have been proven to form heart muscle in a petri dish but now they seem to be doing the same thing when injected back into the heart as part of an apparently safe procedure,” he added. “It’s early days, and this research will certainly need following up, but it could be great news for heart attack patients who face the debilitating symptoms of heart failure.”

—

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Stem Cells Regrow Healthy Heart Muscle In Heart Attack Patients

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Valentine's Day can lead to plenty of broken hearts. But for cardiac wounds that time alone won't heal, science has made some major advances. When it comes to heart attack, for example, a big development is emerging from a tiny source. Stem cells are coming of age. 

Stem cells, harvested from a patient's own bone marrow, have been heralded as a potential quick fix for damaged heart tissue. But can these progenitor cells actually work to heal massive muscle damage?

A new review of 33 studies assessed data from more than 1,700 heart attack patients. The review researchers found that those patients treated with stem cells—in addition to the standard care of angioplasty—had stronger tickers for years to come than those who had not gotten stem cell therapy. The review article is published in The Cochrane Library. [David Clifford et al., Stem Cell Treatment for Acute Myocardial Infarction, link to come]

It's too early to say whether those with stem cell treatments will live longer, according to the new analysis. But for affairs of the heart, it's more evidence that good things can come in very small packages.

—Katherine Harmon

[The above text is a transcript of this podcast]  
 

Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
© 2012 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.

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Stem Cells Help Heal Broken Hearts

They also help to reduce scar size

Infusion of cardiac stem cells into persons who suffered heart attack recently can help to regenerate their heart muscles, says a study published on February 14, in The Lancet.

Phase I of the study was conducted on 17 patients, who received stems cells, and eight, who received standard care (control group), at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles and Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. All of them had had heart attacks about a month before the study began in May 2009. The stem cells were created from the patients' heart tissues.

Visible improvements were seen in those who received infusion of stem cells, compared with the control group at the end of six months and a year. While no change in the scar size was seen in the control group, there was more than 12 per cent reduction in the size at the end of six months in the treatment group.

As scar size is directly related to scar mass, a reduction of 8.4 gram (28 per cent) and almost 13 gram (42 per cent) in scar mass was seen in the treatment group at the end of six months and 12 months.

Surprisingly, scar mass reduction was accompanied by an increase in viable myocardial mass. In fact, on an average, the increase in viable myocardial mass was “about 60 per cent more than scar reduction.” This is significant as it had led to a “partial restoration of lost left ventricular mass in patients with CDCs [cardiosphere-derived cells],” the authors of the study noted.

The study thus “challenges the conventional wisdom that once established, cardiac scarring is permanent, and that, once lost, healthy heart muscle cannot be restored.”

However, a change in scar size was accompanied by only 2 per cent increase in ejection factor (the amount of blood pumped by the heart), which is not considered significant.

While “the reasons for the discrepancy are unclear,” the study noted that “ejection factor at baseline was only moderately impaired, leaving little room for improvement.”

Of the six patients in the treatment group who had serious adverse events, only one was found to be related to the study.

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Cardiac stem cells can restore heart muscles, says study

Now, researchers with the UCLA Department of Radiation Oncology at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center report for the first time that radiation treatment –despite killing half of all tumor cells during every treatment - transforms other cancer cells into treatment-resistant breast cancer stem cells.

The generation of these breast cancer stem cells counteracts the otherwise highly efficient radiation treatment. If scientists can uncover the mechanisms and prevent this transformation from occurring, radiation treatment for breast cancer could become even more effective, said study senior author Dr. Frank Pajonk, an associate professor of radiation oncology and Jonsson Cancer Center researcher.

"We found that these induced breast cancer stem cells (iBCSC) were generated by radiation-induced activation of the same cellular pathways used to reprogram normal cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) in regenerative medicine," said Pajonk, who also is a scientist with the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine at UCLA. "It was remarkable that these breast cancers used the same reprogramming pathways to fight back against the radiation treatment."

The study appears DATE in the early online edition of the peer-reviewed journal Stem Cells.

"Controlling the radiation resistance of breast cancer stem cells and the generation of new iBCSC during radiation treatment may ultimately improve curability and may allow for de-escalation of the total radiation doses currently given to breast cancer patients, thereby reducing acute and long-term adverse effects," the study states.

There are very few breast cancer stem cells in a larger pool of breast cancer cells. In this study, Pajonk and his team eliminated the smaller pool of breast cancer stem cells and then irradiated the remaining breast cancer cells and placed them into mice.

Using a unique imaging system Pajonk and his team developed to visualize cancer stem cells, the researchers were able to observe their initial generation into iBCSC in response to the radiation treatment. The newly generated iBCSC were remarkably similar to breast cancer stem cells found in tumors that had not been irradiated, Pajonk said.

The team also found that the iBCSC had a more than 30-fold increased ability to form tumors compared to the non-irradiated breast cancer cells from which they originated.

Pajonk said that the study unites the competing models of clonal evolution and the hierarchical organization of breast cancers, as it suggests that undisturbed, growing tumors maintain a small number of cancer stem cells. However, if challenged by various stressors that threaten their numbers, including ionizing radiation, the breast cancer cells generate iBCSC that may, together with the surviving cancer stem cells, repopulate the tumor.

"What is really exciting about this study is that it gives us a much more complex understanding of the interaction of radiation with cancer cells that goes far beyond DNA damage and cell killing," Pajonk said. "The study may carry enormous potential to make radiation even better."

Pajonk stressed that breast cancer patients should not be alarmed by the study findings and should continue to undergo radiation if recommended by their oncologists.

"Radiation is an extremely powerful tool in the fight against breast cancer," he said. "If we can uncover the mechanism driving this transformation, we may be able to stop it and make the therapy even more powerful."

Provided by University of California - Los Angeles

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Radiation treatment transforms breast cancer cells into cancer stem cells

09-02-2012 22:12 Stem Cell Therapy latest news - Jan 2012, MS options Contact Kevin for help to raise funds for treatment part 1 of 4

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13-01-2012 08:41 This is human heart muscle in a dish, beating spontaneously. It was made by Dr Lei Ye of the Stem Cell Institute from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC). These were made by our iPSC facility from human skin cells into which 4 specific genes were temporarily introduced. The heart muscle cells were enabled to develop from the iPSC using a special medium and substrate. It is hoped to use cells like this for the treatment of heart disease by replacing heart muscle that has been destroyed.

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Human heart muscle in a dish, beating spontaneously. - Video

29-01-2012 23:26 Fourteen patients were randomized to see if adipose-derived adult stem cells would help limit the damage from an acute heart attack. Infarct size was decreased by 50%, the perfusion defect was 17% smaller, and the left ventriclular ejection fraction was increased about 6% better than the control group. Stem cell vocabulary was reviewed and highlighted that there are embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells and that sources of stem cell are from bone marrow, adipose tissue, blood, umbilical cord blood and from cloned embryonic cell lines. Stem cells can develop into 200 different cell types.

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Stem Cells Help Heart Attack Victims - Video

07-11-2011 15:39 http://www.StemCellTreatment.org Salima had stem cell treatment for Fibromyalgia and had very good results. We have had great success with stem cell therapy for Fibromyalgia also known as FMS. Fibromyalgia symptoms include pain and tenderness in the joints, muscles and other soft tissue. Stem cell treatment for fibromyalgia is something that ASCAAC specializes in. Go to our website for more information and fill out the form or give us a call so we can answer your stem cell and fibromyalgia questions!

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Stem Cell Treatment Fibromyalgia - Video

Boris family gift propels stem cell therapies and one-stop patient care

Newswise — HAMILTON, ON (Feb. 6, 2012) – A Hamilton family is giving McMaster University $30 million to accelerate the university’s innovations in health research, education and care.

“McMaster University has proven its ability to fast forward discoveries from the lab bench to the patients’ bedside, it made perfect sense to make this investment in this world class university,” said Les Boris, on behalf of his parents’ Marta and Owen Boris Foundation. His sister Jackie Work added: “The Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine is ranked among the top 20 medical schools in the world. This is the best place to commit to the future.”

The funding was announced in a ceremony at the University today.

Of the total, $24 million is designated to establish The Boris Family Centre in Human Stem Cell Therapies, which will speed the commercial development of discoveries at the McMaster Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute. The six-year-old institute has had several major breakthroughs, including the ability to turn human skin into blood.

The funds will establish two senior research chairs, one in blood stem cells and the other in neuro stem cells; set up several fellowships and technician positions;
build the facility and provide a fund for emerging opportunities.

An additional $6 million is for a unique clinic which will allow patients with complex health problems to see several specialists and have related tests during one visit. Established in partnership with Hamilton Health Sciences, this patient-oriented clinic will be built in the McMaster University Medical Centre in Hamilton and led by a senior research chair.

The Marta and Owen Boris Foundation was established by Marta and Owen Boris who created the Hamilton cable company Mountain Cablevision and developed it over 50 years before selling it to Shaw Communications in 2009.

Owen Boris died in April, 2011.

“McMaster has been renewing its commitment to our community, and to have community members make such a significant contribution to the University is truly outstanding,” said Patrick Deane, president of McMaster. “Great research, great discoveries, and better patient care. The Boris family gift will accelerate nour ability to make great things happen.”

Dr. John Kelton, dean and vice-president of the Faculty of Health Sciences, added: “This is an innovative and action oriented family. They understand the great potential McMaster has to make medical breakthroughs, and their willingness to place their bets on McMaster is a tremendous vote of confidence in us.”

Mick Bhatia is scientific director of the McMaster Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute. He said: “In a short time we’ve become world renowned for our human stem cell discoveries. Now is the time to move these discoveries to the patient.”

About the clinic for day patients, Dr. Akbar Panju, professor and deputy chair clinical of the Department of Medicine, said the new format is unique in Canada and will put patients first.

“Too often patients go from office to office to receive essential medical care from several specialists. This clinic will ensure they will get everything they need in one place,” he said, noting that the clinic will also be a centre of learning for
health sciences students and residents from many disciplines.

McMaster University, one of four Canadian universities listed among the Top 100 universities in the world, is renowned for its innovation in both learning and discovery. It has a student population of 23,000, and more than 150,000 alumni in 128 countries.

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$30m Gift to Fast Forward Stem Cell Therapies and One-Stop Patient Care

A shortage of blood and stem cells in the black community is costing lives, Canada's blood agency warns.

Canadian Blood Services is calling on people of African and Caribbean heritage to register as blood and stem donors through its OneMatch Stem Cell and Marrow Network.

Sickle cell disease is an inherited disease of red blood cells, predominantly affecting people of African descent. In people with sickle cell disease, the red blood cells are abnormally shaped and starve tissues of oxygen.

The lifespan of affected people is about three decades shorter than average, said Dr. Isaac Odame, medical director of the Global Sickle Cell Disease Network at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.

Complications can include infections, extreme bone pain and damage to the brain, lungs, heart and kidneys, Odame said.

Kynan Jackson, 7, of Halifax struggles with painful sickle cell disease. He takes medication twice a day, has had blood transfusions and been admitted to the hospital a few times since he was diagnosed at age four.

"It is stressful," said his mother, Winnell Jackson. "It's almost like a waiting game. The medication won't ever stop him from getting crisis again, so I know it's coming."

A stem cell transplant replaces the bad, misshapen ones with normal ones, said Odame.

"The only way to give him [Kynan] a chance is to cure it," Odame said. "We know that it can be cured through stem cell transplantation."

Stem cell transplants require a close match from a donor of the same ethnic background, which narrows Kynan's odds of getting one.

"If you are Caucasian and you're looking for an unrelated match, probably 75 per cent chance you will find one. If you are of African descent, your odds are far, far, far less," Odame said.

Canada's blacks represent about 2.5 per cent of the population, based on the 2006 census. But of the 300,000 on the blood agency's stem cell and marrow registry, only 0.7 per cent are of African descent.

"Sometimes people wait six months to years to find a match and they may end up passing away in that time period because we can't find a match in Canada or around the world," said Sue Smith, executive director of One Match.

During Black History Month, Canadian Blood Services is appealing for young, black male donors in particular to donate blood and be registered. Men tend to be bigger and deliver a larger volume of stem cells without the complications of an over-reactive immune system that can occur during pregnancy.

Currently, the agency said there is a waiting list of 36 African Canadians with cancer who could be cured with a stem cell transplant. Kynan's mom hopes the campaign is a success and she's able to see him grow up.

It would "be really nice to know that, you know what, he does have a match out there. There's somebody out there wherever they may be, that would match him and be able to take that pain, help ease that pain in his life."

The blood agency's theme this year, "Our Canadian Story: Making Community Engagement a Priority," emphasizes community.

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Blacks urged to donate blood, stem cells

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Main Category: Neurology / Neuroscience
Also Included In: Stem Cell Research;  Rehabilitation / Physical Therapy
Article Date: 04 Feb 2012 - 10:00 PST

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The February edition of Neurosurgery reports that animal experiments in brain-injured rats have shown that stem cells injected via the carotid artery travel directly to the brain, greatly enhancing functional recovery. The study demonstrates, according to leading researcher Dr Toshiya Osanai, of Hokkaido University Graduate School of Medicine in Sapporo, Japan, that the carotid artery injection technique could, together with some form of in-vivo optical imaging to track the stem cells after transplantation, potentially be part of a new approach for stem cell transplantation in human brain trauma injuries (TBI).

Dr. Osanai and team assessed a new "intra-arterial" technique of stem cell transplantation in rats, with the aim of delivering the stem cells directly to the brain without having to go through the general circulation. They induced TBI in the animals before injecting stem cells into the carotid artery seven days later.

The stem cells were obtained from the rats' bone marrow and were labeled with "quantum dots" prior to being injected. Quantom dots are a biocompatible, fluorescent semiconductor created with nanotechnology that emit near-infrared light with much longer wavelengths that penetrate bone and skin, enabling a non-invasive method of monitoring the stem cells for a period of four weeks following transplantation.

This in vivo optical imaging technique enabled the scientists to observe that the injected stem cells entered the brain on the first attempt, without entering the general circulation. They observed that the stem cells started migrating from the capillaries into the injured part of the brain within three hours.

At week 4, the researchers noted that the rats in the stem cell transplant group achieved a substantial recovery of motor function, compared with the untreated animals that had no signs of recovery.

The team learnt, after examining the treated brains, that the stem cells had transformed into different brain cell types and aided in healing the injured brain area.

Over the last few years, the potential of stem cell therapy for curing and treating illnesses and conditions has been growing rapidly. Below is a list of some of its possible uses.

Stem cells represent a potential, new important method of treatment for those who suffered brain injuries, TBI and stroke. But even though bone marrow stem cells, similar to the ones used in the new study, are a promising source of donor cells, many questions remain open regarding the optimal timing, dose and route of stem cell delivery.

In the new animal study, the rats were injected with the stem cells one week after TBI. This is a "clinically relevant" time, given that this is the minimum time it takes to develop stem cells from bone marrow.

Transplanting the stem cells into the carotid artery is a fairly simple procedure that delivers the cells directly to the brain.

The experiments have also provided key evidence that stem cell treatment can promote healing after TBI with a substantial recovery of function.

Dr. Osanai and team write that by using in vivo optical imaging:

"The present study was the first to successfully track donor cells that were intra-arterially transplanted into the brain of living animals over four weeks."

A similar form of imaging technology could also prove beneficial for monitoring the effects of stem cell transplantation in humans, although the tracking will pose challenges, due to the human skull and scalp being much thicker than in rats.

The researchers conclude:

"Further studies are warranted to apply in vivo
optical imaging clinically."

Written by Petra Rattue
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

Visit our neurology / neuroscience section for the latest news on this subject. "Therapeutic Effects of Intra-Arterial Delivery of Bone Marrow Stromal Cells in Traumatic Brain Injury of Rats—In Vivo Cell Tracking Study by Near-Infrared Fluorescence Imaging"
Osanai, Toshiya; Kuroda, Satoshi; Sugiyama, Taku; Kawabori, Masahito; Ito, Masaki; Shichinohe, Hideo; Kuge, Yuji; Houkin, Kiyohiro; Tamaki, Nagara; Iwasaki, Yoshinobu
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Treating Brain Injuries With Stem Cell Transplants - Promising Results

Do you remember when we used to think some things were impossible? Modern technology has taught us to never say never or impossible. I think about the 1970s and 1980s growing up without cell phones, computers and many of the electronically advanced gadgets that our kids today take for granted. I can’t even imagine what the great innovators will come up with next.

When I was a young child, I remember watching science fiction movies about cloning people and remember how obscure and unbelievable it seemed at the time. It was common knowledge that cloning was strictly science fiction. Now, cloning is not only possible, but a procedure that has occurred with astonishing success. Fortunately, cloning has only been performed with animals and not yet humans.

Medically speaking, one of the most popular and potentially one of the most substantial advances in modern medicine is stem cell research and therapy. Initially, stem cell research was met with a great deal of resistance and controversy. The reason stem cell research had trouble getting started was because stem cells could only be collected from fetuses. With time, scientists have successfully harvested stem cells from other sources.

Stem cells are primitive or extremely young cells which are capable of dividing and changing into a variety of cell types. They have the ability to develop into cells that form muscle, cartilage, bone or other tissues. One of the remarkable findings about stem cells is that they seem to detect and “know” which tissue is damaged and automatically change into the cells needing repaired.

In actuality, the damaged tissue sends some type of signal to the stem cells allowing them to respond and promote healing of the injured tissues. Essentially, stem cells have the ability to grow into mature tissue cells wherever they are needed and this makes them very useful for repairing certain body tissues damaged by injury, disease and possibly aging.

Stem cell treatment is a type of medical therapy called regenerative medicine. Regenerative medicine is simply a category of medical therapy pertaining to growing new tissue. Although stem cell therapy is an extremely unique and obviously beneficial type of medical treatment, it is also a very vast field of medical research and certainly has not been completely perfected. There are countless possibilities and applications for stem cell therapy and medical researchers have barely scratched the surface with regards to stem cell potential.

Until now the gold standard for treating arthritis in pets has been to give them anti-inflammatory medications, joint supplements and sometimes acupuncture. Over the years, these types of medications have improved greatly and pets have benefitted wonderfully from receiving this kind of treatment. However, even with the improvements, these medications have potential side effects. Sometimes, the side effects may even outweigh the benefits, depending on the individual circumstance.

Therefore, stem cell therapy offers treatment that doesn’t just relieve the symptoms, but actually regenerates or grows new tissue allowing for complete healing and without side effects. Presently, there are some stem cell applications already being used in veterinary medicine!

Recently, veterinary specialists have developed a technique for collecting stem cells from fat tissue and administering the stem cells into dogs, cats and horses specifically for treatment of arthritis. The process involves collecting a small amount of fat from the patient and then the fat is placed into a machine which extracts and concentrates stem cells. Next, the stem cells are injected back into the patient’s joints forthe treatment of arthritis.

There is a certain protocol for proceeding with the stem cell therapy. First, a definitive diagnosis of arthritis, using X-rays, must be made by your veterinarian. Additionally, your pet would need a complete workup including blood tests and additional X-rays to rule out any other disease processes such as infection or cancer. Any patient with cancer would not be a good candidate for stem cell therapy and any infection would need to be cleared prior to stem cell therapy.

Following the initial workup, your pet would be sedated or anesthetized for surgical collection of fat tissue. The fat tissue would then be sent to a lab to have the stem cells extracted and processed from the fat. Then, your pet would need to be sedated again to administer the injections containing the stem cells into their arthritic joints.

In pets, stem cell therapy is primarily available and being used for arthritis. However, I have no doubt that it won’t be long before stem cell therapy will be used in pets to treat many diseases and conditions. It has already shown to be effective for diabetes, allergies, gastrointestinal diseases, pancreatitis and many other diseases.

If you have a pet that you think might be suffering from arthritis, contact your veterinarian as soon as possible to consider stem cell therapy and to ensure your pet lives a long, healthy and happy life.

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The Pet Corner: Behold! The future of modern medicine is here

ScienceDaily (Feb. 1, 2012) — Hepatitis C, an infectious disease that can cause inflammation and organ failure, has different effects on different people. But no one is sure why some people are very susceptible to the infection, while others are resistant.

Scientists believe that if they could study liver cells from different people in the lab, they could determine how genetic differences produce these varying responses. However, liver cells are difficult to obtain and notoriously difficult to grow in a lab dish because they tend to lose their normal structure and function when removed from the body.

Now, researchers from MIT, Rockefeller University and the Medical College of Wisconsin have come up with a way to produce liver-like cells from induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs, which are made from body tissues rather than embryos; the liver-like cells can then be infected with hepatitis C. Such cells could enable scientists to study why people respond differently to the infection.

This is the first time that scientists have been able to establish an infection in cells derived from iPSCs -- a feat many research teams have been trying to achieve. The new technique, described this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could also eventually enable "personalized medicine": Doctors could test the effectiveness of different drugs on tissues derived from the patient being treated, and thereby customize therapy for that patient.

The new study is a collaboration between Sangeeta Bhatia, the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT; Charles Rice, a professor of virology at Rockefeller; and Stephen Duncan, a professor of human and molecular genetics at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Stem cells to liver cells

Last year, Bhatia and Rice reported that they could induce liver cells to grow outside the body by growing them on special micropatterned plates that direct their organization. These liver cells can be infected with hepatitis C, but they cannot be used to proactively study the role of genetic variation in viral responses because they come from organs that have been donated for transplantation and represent only a small population.

To make cells with more genetic variation, Bhatia and Rice decided to team up with Duncan, who had shown that he could transform iPSCs into liver-like cells.

Such iPSCs are derived from normal body cells, often skin cells. By turning on certain genes in those cells, scientists can revert them to an immature state that is identical to embryonic stem cells, which can differentiate into any cell type. Once the cells become pluripotent, they can be directed to become liver-like cells by turning on genes that control liver development.

In the current paper, MIT postdoc Robert Schwartz and graduate student Kartik Trehan took those liver-like cells and infected them with hepatitis C. To confirm that infection had occurred, the researchers engineered the viruses to secrete a light-producing protein every time they went through their life cycle.

"This is a very valuable paper because it has never been shown that viral infection is possible" in cells derived from iPSCs, says Karl-Dimiter Bissig, an assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology at Baylor College of Medicine. Bissig, who was not involved in this study, adds that the next step is to show that the cells can become infected with hepatitis C strains other than the one used in this study, which is a rare strain found in Japan. Bhatia's team is now working toward that goal.

Genetic differences

The researchers' ultimate goal is to take cells from patients who had unusual reactions to hepatitis C infection, transform those cells into liver cells and study their genetics to see why they responded the way they did. "Hepatitis C virus causes an unusually robust infection in some people, while others are very good at clearing it. It's not yet known why those differences exist," Bhatia says.

One potential explanation is genetic differences in the expression of immune molecules such as interleukin-28, a protein that has been shown to play an important role in the response to hepatitis infection. Other possible factors include cells' expression of surface proteins that enable the virus to enter the cells, and cells' susceptibility to having viruses take over their replication machinery and other cellular structures.

The liver-like cells produced in this study are comparable to "late fetal" liver cells, Bhatia says; the researchers are now working on generating more mature liver cells.

As a long-term goal, the researchers are aiming for personalized treatments for hepatitis patients. Bhatia says one could imagine taking cells from a patient, making iPSCs, reprogramming them into liver cells and infecting them with the same strain of hepatitis that the patient has. Doctors could then test different drugs on the cells to see which ones are best able to clear the infection.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Journal Reference:

R. E. Schwartz, K. Trehan, L. Andrus, T. P. Sheahan, A. Ploss, S. A. Duncan, C. M. Rice, S. N. Bhatia. Modeling hepatitis C virus infection using human induced pluripotent stem cells. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1121400109

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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