Immunologist Nick Huntington. Photo: Getty Images/Paul Jeffers

The bodys natural killer cells, as their Hollywood-style name suggests, are key to the immune system. They are programmed to hunt out and destroy foreign and diseased cells. But they dont always identify their targets. When this happens, diseases such as cancer can set in.

But a team of researchers at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research have worked out what the group of highly specialised killer cells need to function at their best. Its a protein called MCL-1.

Immunologist Nick Huntington said the protein was effectively a switch which could turn the killer cells on or off.

The discovery, outlined on Thursday in the journal Nature Communications, opens the way for new drug treatments to tame the spread of a range of diseases, including cancer.

It could also assist patients who undergo donor stem cell or bone marrow transplants - because by manipulating the killer cells switch, foreign bodies such as stem cells could go unchallenged by the bodys immune system.

"Its the only protein which does this in the cell, Dr Huntington said. It needs to be turned on for the cell to survive and when its turned off the cell will die.

While aware of the existence of the MCL-1 protein and its importance at a fundamental level, scientists were previously unaware of its role in natural killer cell function. With colleagues Priyanka Sathe and Rebecca Delconte, Dr Huntington established its role.

That knowledge will prove useful for the development of new drugs to treat cancers.

Potential benefits include reduced side effects from treatment, as the killer cells only target foreign, diseased or cancerous cells, unlike chemotherapy which targets healthy cells as well.

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Scientists discover killer cells' ''on switch''

Infusing stem cells into the brain may help boost recovery after a stroke, according to a pilot study by Imperial College London.

Scientists believe the cells encourage new blood vessels to grow in damaged areas of the brain.

They found most patients were able to walk and look after themselves independently by the end of the trial, despite having suffered severe strokes.

Larger studies are needed to evaluate whether this could be used more widely.

In this early trial - designed primarily to look at the safety of this approach - researchers harvested stem cells from the bone marrow of five people who had recently had a stroke.

'Independent living'

They isolated particular types of stem cells - known as CD34+. These have the ability to stimulate the growth of new blood vessels.

They were infused directly into damaged sections of the brain, via the major artery that supplies this area.

Scientists monitored the patients for six months, charting their ability to carry out everyday activities independently.

Four of the five patients had suffered particularly severe strokes - resulting in the loss of speech and marked paralysis down one side of the body.

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'Stem Cells Show Promise In Stroke Recovery'

5 stroke victims were treated with stem cells extracted from bone marrow Treatment triggers rapid regeneration of damaged brain cells Patients regained power of speech and use of their arms and legs More than 150,000 people have a stroke in England every year Treatment is at early stage and needs years of testing Imperial College London scientists says it shows 'great potential'

By Ben Spencer

Published: 09:25 EST, 8 August 2014 | Updated: 19:30 EST, 8 August 2014

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Five people who had suffered severe strokes (illustrated) regained the power of speech and mobility thanks to a radical new treatment

Stroke patients have shown remarkable signs of recovery after they were given a radical new treatment.

Five people who had suffered severe strokes regained the power of speech, use of their arms and legs and improved cognition after just six months, according to British research published today.

The three men and two women, aged between 45 and 75, were treated with stem cells extracted from their own bone marrow in the first experiment of its kind.

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Hope for stroke victims after radical stem cell treatment enables patients to move and talk again

A pilot study undertaken by researchers from Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and Imperial College London has shown promise in rapid treatment of serious strokes. The study, the first of its kind published in the UK, treated patients using stem cells from bone marrow.

Imagine a perfectly ordinary beginning to your day, say burned toast, no matching pair of socks and the usual damp commute to work. Except at some point through the usual minutiae you suffer a massive stroke. If you dont die outright, you may soon afterwards. Even supposing you survive those first days or weeks, the chance of your life resuming its comforting tedium is impossibly remote. You may need assistance for the rest of your shortened life.

According to the Stroke Association, about 152,000 people suffer a stroke in the UK alone each year. However, the five patients treated in the recent Imperial College pilot study all showed improvements. According to doctors, four of those had suffered the most severe kind of stroke, which leaves only four percent of people alive or able to live independently six months after the event. All four of the patients were alive after six months.

A particular set of CD34+ stem cells was used, as they help with the production of blood cells and blood vessels lining cells. These same cells have been found to improve the effects of stroke in animals, and they assist in brain tissue and blood growth in the affected areas of the brain. The CD34+ cells were isolated from samples taken from patients bone marrow and then infused into the affected area via an artery that leads to the brain, using keyhole surgery.

The innovative stem cell treatment differs from others in one important way: patients are treated within seven days of their stroke, rather than six months hence. The stroke sufferers all recorded improvements in terms of clinical measures of disability, despite four of the five having suffered the most severe kind of stroke.

It's still early days for the research, and much more will need to be done to expand clinical trials, but eventually it is hoped that a drug may be developed that can be administered to stroke sufferers as soon as they are admitted to hospital. This could ameliorate longer term effects and allow for speedier recovery and a faster entry into therapy.

A paper detailing the research was published in journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine.

Source: Imperial College London

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Stem cell stroke therapy shows promise after first human trial

Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan Wednesday called upon citizens to voluntarily register themselves as bone marrow donors to help enhance the chances of patients with blood cancer and other blood-related diseases get genetically compatible donors.

"Unlike blood donation, in the case of unrelated donor, the chances are one in a million that a donor's Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) will match with the needy patient's. Therefore, there is a requirement of having millions of registered donors," Vardhan said while speaking at the launch of a "Public Initiative of Bone Marrow Donation" at All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) here.

A willing donor can register himself at the Asian Indian Donor Marrow Registry (AIDMR) at AIIMS. He will have to undergo an initial test done for which 10 ml of blood is taken. The test is called HLA typing.

In case they turn out to be HLA match for the needy patient, they will be requested to donate their bone marrow or peripheral blood stem cells to patients of blood-cancer and other disorders, he said.

Vardhan said the health ministry will soon start a facility for the bone marrow donation in Safdurjung Hospital, which will intensify the initiative for bone marrow donation in the country.

"There is a need for the NGOs and several other health organisations to spread awareness in the society to curb all kinds of myths and superstitions that deter the individuals from being donors, which is a noble cause," he said.

On the occasion, Vardhan registered himself as a bone marrow donor and gave his blood sample for the HLA testing.

"One should at least understand that for the patients suffering from blood-related diseases like blood cancer, leukaemia, thalassemia, anaemia and many other diseases, a simple commitment to donate bone marrow can save a patient's life at the cost of nothing," Vardhan told IANS.

The AIDMR at AIIMS has set a target of registering 100,000 bone marrow donors in the first year and expand the register up to half a million donors in the next five years.

Vardhan also called for donation of body organs and cadavers, which can save life of the needy patients, and also serve the purposes of medical research.

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India needs more bone marrow donors: Harsh Vardhan

Brain damage caused by strokes could be repaired through the use of stem cells in a discovery that may revolutionise treatment, a study has suggested.

Researchers at Imperial College London found that injecting a patient's stem cells into their brain may be able to change the lives of the tens of thousands of people who suffer strokes each year.

Their results have been called "one of the most exciting recent developments in stroke research".

Doctors said the procedure could become routine in 10 years after larger trials are conducted to examine its effectiveness.

Researcher Dr Paul Bentley, from the college's Department of Medicine, said: "Currently, the main form of treatment is an unblocking of the blood vessel, and that only helps one-third of the patients who are treated and only 10 per cent are eligible anyway. So we said, 'What about the other 90 per cent?' "

The team targeted patients who had suffered severe strokes involving a clot in a blood vessel in the middle of the brain. Typically, there is a high mortality rate in these patients and those who survive are often severely disabled, unable to walk, talk, feed or dress themselves. The experimental procedure was carried out on five such patients, aged 40 to 70, all of whom showed improvement over the following six months, and three were living independently.

Dr Madina Kara, a neuroscientist at the Stroke Association, said: "This is one of the most exciting recent developments in stroke research. However, it's still early days in stem cell research, but the findings could lead to new treatments for stroke patients in the future.

"In the UK, someone has a stroke every three and a half minutes, and around 58 per cent of stroke survivors are left with a disability."

The experimental procedure involved harvesting the patient's own bone marrow, which was then sent to a specialist laboratory so specific stem cells, called CD34+, could be selected. The patient then has a wire inserted into the area of the brain damage. Once there, the stem cells are released and the wire retracted. During the trials the whole process took half a day, but it is hoped that with refinement it could be reduced.

It is thought the cells work in two ways: by growing into small blood vessels that allow the brain to grow new nerves and brain tissue surrounding them, and by releasing anti-inflammatory chemicals that encourage tissue repair.

Originally posted here:
Stem cell hope for stroke victims

MONTREALA Quebec womans desperate online plea for a compatible stem-cell donor in her bid to fight cancer a second time is shedding light on the lack of minorities on official lists in Canada and abroad.

Mai Duong finds herself battling leukemia again and doctors say they would like to proceed with a transplant of bone marrow or cord blood stem cells within a month.

But Duong, 34, has discovered that locating the right person can be a needle-in-a-haystack challenge, particularly for those who are from a non-Caucasian background.

This is a global problem, Duong, who is of Vietnamese origin, said in an interview from her room at Montreals Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital.

We cant do a scavenger hunt every time someone has this type of problem.

Duong, who returned home a few days after being interviewed, said a recent bone marrow biopsy showed no signs of cancer. She will now begin four weeks of maintenance chemotherapy, which is given in lower doses to assist in prolonging a remission.

The mother of a 4-year-old girl, Duong successfully fought off acute leukemia in 2013 with chemotherapy. She had to terminate a 15-week pregnancy to undergo the treatment. Duong was in remission until a blood test revealed leukemia had returned this past May.

Seventy per cent of people who had that type of leukemia were just cured with chemotherapy, and unfortunately Im in the 30 per cent, she said.

The diagnosis and a lack of a match in her family have touched off a mad scramble to find a fellow Vietnamese donor. An online campaign has taken that hunt global.

I have cancer, I had a relapse, I dont have a bone marrow (donor) these are things I cannot change, Duong said. So I said, what can I do about it?

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Quebec womans leukemia battle highlights need for minority bone marrow and stem cell donors

By Sidhartha Banerjee, The Canadian Press Published Saturday, August 2, 2014 8:56AM EDT

MONTREAL -- A Quebec woman's desperate online plea for a compatible stem-cell donor in her bid to fight cancer a second time is shedding light on the lack of minorities on official lists in Canada and abroad.

Mai Duong finds herself battling leukemia again and doctors say they would like to proceed with a transplant of bone marrow or cord blood stem cells within a month.

But Duong, 34, has discovered that locating the right person can be a needle-in-a-haystack challenge, particularly for those who are from a non-Caucasian background.

"This is a global problem," Duong, who is of Vietnamese origin, said in an interview from her room at Montreal's Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital.

"We can't do a scavenger hunt every time someone has this type of problem."

Duong, who returned home a few days after being interviewed, said a recent bone marrow biopsy showed no signs of cancer. She will now begin four weeks of maintenance chemotherapy, which is given in lower doses to assist in prolonging a remission.

The mother of a four-year-old girl, Duong successfully fought off acute leukemia in 2013 with chemotherapy. She had to terminate a 15-week pregnancy to undergo the treatment. Duong was in remission until a blood test revealed leukemia had returned this past May.

"Seventy per cent of people who had that type of leukemia were just cured with chemotherapy and unfortunately I'm in the 30 per cent," she said.

The diagnosis and a lack of a match in her family has touched off a mad scramble to find a fellow Vietnamese donor. An online campaign has taken that hunt global.

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Cancer fight shows lack of minorities on donor lists

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.

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Group Raising Awarness about Need for Bone Marrow Donors

SINGAPORE - Singapore's life-saving Bone Marrow Donor Programme celebrated its 100th donor and new patron, Minister for Law and Foreign Affairs K Shanmugam, on Thursday.

Get the full story from The Straits Times.

Here is the statement from the Bone Marrow Donor Programme:

The Bone Marrow Donor Programme (BMDP) celebrates 21 years of saving lives through an extraordinary gift of kindness and generosity as ordinary Singaporeans commit to helping a fellow human being.

As bone marrow transplants become the preferred treatment for a wide number of blood related diseases such as leukaemia and lymphoma, the new BMDP Patron, Minister K Shanmugam, Minister for Law and Foreign Affairs and MP for Nee Soon GRC gave an award to the 100th Singaporean bone marrow donor, Lim Yun Song a 27 year-old Engineer and NTU graduate. This was in recognition of the commitment he and all the other bone marrow donors have made in a purely voluntary capacity to give of themselves a priceless gift of bone marrow (blood stem cells) to save the life of a stranger.

The BMDP manages Singapore's only registry of bone marrow donors and can literally be the last chance of survival for patients with terminal blood-related illnesses. Sadly, though, the chance of finding a donor whose DNA profile is a match to the patient is an alarming 1 in 20,000. With Singapore's unique and rapidly changing demographic, it is more important than ever to recruit more volunteers to join the registry and make sure that each patient is given this last chance of survival.

In conjunction with the 21st anniversary and office inauguration, the BMDP shared a number of significant milestones achieved in recent months.

In addition to reaching the 100th local donor, the number of local donors identified as a patient match increased from 38 in 2012 to 73 last year and year-to-date 64 donors were called up for Confirmatory Typing.

In tandem, the number of volunteers actually going through to make their life-saving donation has increased from seven in the whole of 2013, to nine in the first half of this year with more scheduled.

Minister Shanmugam says, "Bone marrow donors are heroes. They are given a chance to help a fellow human being through a simple yet selfless act of kindness - and they take it. This opportunity is available to everyone but so few rise to the challenge and I hope that more young people - the future of Singapore - will be inspired by what we are seeing here today and will sign up as volunteer bone marrow donors. I'm honoured to join the BMDP as their Patron, and look forward to working with them to build our community of heroes".

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Bone marrow donor programme celebrates 100 donors and new patron

Health and Medicine for Seniors

Aging Immune System May Get Kick-Start from Discovery of Molecular Defect

Old stem cells are not just sitting there with damaged DNA ready to develop cancer, as it has long been postulated

"The decline of stem-cell function is a big part of age-related problems. Achieving longer lives relies in part on achieving a better understanding of why stem cells are not able to maintain optimal functioning."

Emmanuelle Passegu, PhD

July 31, 2014 - There's a good reason seniors over 60 are not donor candidates for bone marrow transplantation. The immune system ages and weakens with time, making the elderly prone to life-threatening infection and other maladies, and a UC San Francisco research team now has discovered a reason why.

"We have found the cellular mechanism responsible for the inability of blood-forming cells to maintain blood production over time in an old organism, and have identified molecular defects that could be restored for rejuvenation therapies," said Emmanuelle Passegu, PhD, a professor of medicine and a member of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCSF.

Passegu, an expert on the stem cells that give rise to the blood and immune system, led a team that published the new findings online July 30, 2014 in the journal Nature.

Blood and immune cells are short-lived, and unlike most tissues, must be constantly replenished. The cells that must keep producing them throughout a lifetime are called "hematopoietic stem cells."

Through cycles of cell division these stem cells preserve their own numbers and generate the daughter cells that give rise to replacement blood and immune cells. But the hematopoietic stem cells falter with age, because they lose the ability to replicate their DNA accurately and efficiently during cell division, Passegu's lab team determined.

View original post here:
Aging Immune System May Get Kick-Start from Discovery of Molecular Defect

Theres a good reason people over 60 are not donor candidates for bone marrow transplantation. The immune system ages and weakens with time, making the elderly prone to life-threatening infection and other maladies, and a UC San Francisco research team now has discovered a reason why.

Emmanuelle Passegu, PhD

We have found the cellular mechanism responsible for the inability of blood-forming cells to maintain blood production over time in an old organism, and have identified molecular defects that could be restored for rejuvenation therapies, said Emmanuelle Passegu, PhD, a professor of medicine and a member of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCSF. Passegu, an expert on the stem cells that give rise to the blood and immune system, led a team that published the new findings online July 30, 2014 in the journal Nature.

Blood and immune cells are short-lived, and unlike most tissues, must be constantly replenished. The cells that must keep producing them throughout a lifetime are called hematopoietic stem cells. Through cycles of cell division these stem cells preserve their own numbers and generate the daughter cells that give rise to replacement blood and immune cells. But the hematopoietic stem cells falter with age, because they lose the ability to replicate their DNA accurately and efficiently during cell division, Passegus lab team determined.

Especially vulnerable to the breakdown, the researchers discovered in their new study of old mice, are transplanted, aging, blood-forming stem cells, which lack the ability to make B cells of the immune system. These B cells make antibodies to help us fight all sorts of microbial infections, including bacteria that cause pneumonia, a leading killer of the elderly.

In old blood-forming stem cells, the researchers found a scarcity of specific protein components needed to form a molecular machine called the mini-chromosome maintenance helicase, which unwinds double-stranded DNA so that the cells genetic material can be duplicated and allocated to daughter cells later in cell division. In their study the stem cells were stressed by the loss of activity of this machine and as a result were at heightened risk for DNA damage and death when forced to divide.

The researchers discovered that even after the stress associated with DNA replication, surviving, non-dividing, resting, old stem cells retained molecular tags on DNA-wrapping histone proteins, a feature often associated with DNA damage. However, the researchers determined that these old survivors could repair induced DNA damage as efficiently as young stem cells.

"Old stem cells are not just sitting there with damaged DNA ready to develop cancer, as it has long been postulated" Passegu said.

See the original post:
Key to Aging Immune System Is Discovered

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

28-Jul-2014

Contact: Meng Zhao eic@nrren.org 86-138-049-98773 Neural Regeneration Research

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play an important regulatory role in the self-renewal and differentiation of stem cells. Dr. Defeng Zou and co-workers from the First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University, China focuses on the effect of miRNA overexpression on the differentiation of bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells into neurons. In the study released on the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 9, No. 12, 2014), researchers used GeneChip technology to analyze the expression of miRNAs in bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells, neural stem cells and neurons. They constructed a lentiviral vector overexpressing miR-124 and transfected it into bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells. Intracellular expression levels of the neuronal early markers -III tubulin and microtubule-associated protein-2 were significantly increased, and apoptosis was reduced in transfected cells. After miR-124-transfected bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells were transplanted into the injured rat spinal cord, a large number of cells positive for the neuronal marker neurofilament-200 were observed in the transplanted region. The Basso-Beattie-Bresnahan locomotion scores showed that the motor function of the hind limb of rats with spinal cord injury was substantially improved. These results suggest that miR-124 plays an important role in the differentiation of bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells into neurons, providing novel strategies for enhancing the therapeutic efficacy of bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cell transplantation for spinal cord injury.

###

Article: "Overexpression of microRNA-124 promotes the neuronal differentiation of bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells" by Defeng Zou1, Yi Chen2, Yaxin Han1, Chen Lv1, Guanjun Tu1 (1 Department of Orthopedics, First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China; 2 Department of Orthopedics, Jinhua Central Hospital of Zhejiang University, Jinhua, Zhejiang Province, China)

Zou DF, Chen Y, Han YX, Lv C, Tu GJ. Overexpression of microRNA-124 promotes the neuronal differentiation of bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells. Neural Regen Res. 2014;9(12):1241-1248.

Contact: Meng Zhao eic@nrren.org 86-138-049-98773 Neural Regeneration Research http://www.nrronline.org/

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

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How does microRNA-124 promote the neuronal differentiation of BMSCs?

When Karen Mitchell read the popular blog written by teenage terminal cancer sufferer Alice Pyne, not only was she deeply moved but also inspired.

Pride Of Britain winner Alice, who had Hodgkins lymphoma from the age of 12, took to social media to urge people to join the bone marrow register. Karen decided she too would sign up to donate her stem cells and save lives.

But there was one thing holding her back her weight.

She was 25st and had a BMI of 60, well above the healthy range of 18-25, and when she began the online registration for Anthony Nolan with her weight and height 5ft 6in she was rejected as being too fat.

So, instead she sent brave Alice a tweet, promising she would lose weight to join the register. And when Alice replied, urging her not to give up, Karen swore that she would not fail.

Now shes lost an incredible 11st 7lb and next week she will make a life-saving donation in memory of Alice, who died in January 2013.

Alice told me not to give up and I didnt want to let her down, says Karen. Her amazing legacy can go on saving lives and I hope everyone reading this will donate as well not for me but for Alice.

Karen, from Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, had battled with her weight for as long as she could remember. Her teenage years were a misery as she was forced to dress in size 18 clothes. Even turning vegetarian and making her staple food cheese at 15 didnt help solve her weight problem.

I longed to wear trendy clothes like the other girls at my school but I could only shop in the fat section of shops, she says.

Karen married when she was 27 but says she knew when she walked down the aisle in her size 28 wedding dress that the marriage was already doomed.

Link:
'I promised brave cancer teenager Alice I'd lose 11st so I could donate bone marrow'

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, July 23, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Most blood cancer patients in the United States who need a bone marrow transplant can find an acceptable match through the National Marrow Donor Program, a new study has determined.

Depending on a patient's race or ethnic background, the study found that 66 percent to 97 percent of patients will have a suitably matched and available live donor on the registry.

Even hard-to-match ethnic groups can find a suitable donation thanks to banked stem cells drawn from umbilical cord-blood donations, said senior author Martin Maiers, director of bioinformatics research at the National Marrow Donor Program.

All told, for patients who are candidates for either bone marrow or cord-blood transplants, the likelihood of having a suitable match is as high as 91 to 99 percent, the study found.

"For almost all patients, there is some sort of product available for them," Maiers said.

The findings, said to represent the first attempt to accurately determine the successful-match rate of the bone marrow registry, are published July 24 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Patients suffering from blood-related cancers such as leukemia or lymphoma need a stem cell transplant to help them survive their cancer treatment. The transplant is done after chemotherapy and radiation is complete.

Donation from a relative is the best option, but only about 30 percent of patients have such a donor available, researchers said in background notes. The majority must rely on the National Marrow Donor Program to match them with a live bone marrow donor or banked stem cells gathered from donated umbilical cord blood.

The National Marrow Donor Program has on hand 11 million potential bone marrow donors and 193,000 banked cord-blood donations. The number of transplants facilitated by the program has quadrupled, with nearly 6,000 transplants in 2012 compared with 1,500 a decade earlier.

Continue reading here:
Good Odds for Those Who Need Bone Marrow Donor, Study Finds

WATCH:An 11-year-old girl with a rare blood disease is in need of a stem cell transplant ideally from a match within the South Asian Community. Angie Seth reports.

Stem cell and bone marrow donations are critical for hundreds of people in Canada suffering from certain types of cancers or blood diseases.

Right now there are approximately 800 people on the transplant list. Among them is 11-year-old Cierra Singh.

Cierra has a rare blood disease calledMyelodysplastic Syndrome.

Mybone marrow and my bones are not producing enough healthy cells. So there are platelets and the white blood cells and the red blood cells. My mom tells me they are not working as well as they should work, Cierra tells Global News.

We had the opportunity to meet this incredible little girl who strives to give back to others in every which way.

Everyone says its a big deal, but I dont see it as a big deal. I just try to stay positive all the time, she says.

Cierra was diagnosed with the rare blood disease in April. A trip to Sick Kids hospital because of a swollen leg led doctors to discover Cierras immune system was not functioning properly.

Her Mothers fears paint a bleak picture.

If she were to get a fever of 38.5 and up we need to rush her into emergency within the hour . The risk of infectious diseases is very high so they need to pump her body with antibiotics because she wont be able to fight it. The only cure for Myelodysplastic Syndrome is a stem cell transplant, there is no other option, KiranBenet, Cierras Mom says.

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11-year-olds critical need for a stem cell transplant

Surgeons have pioneered a new knee operation that could prevent the development of arthritis and extend sporting careers.

The procedure, which is currently being trialled at Southampton General Hospital, involves coating damaged cartilage with stem cells, taken from a patient's own hip, and surgical glue.

Known as Abicus (Autologous Bone Marrow Implantation of Cells University Hospital Southampton), the technique, if successful, will regenerate the remaining tissue and create a permanent "like-for-like" replacement for the first time.

Cartilage is a tough, flexible tissue that covers the surface of joints and enables bones to slide over one another while reducing friction and acting as a shock absorber.

Damage to the tissue in the knee is common and occurs mainly following sudden twists or direct blows, such as falls or heavy tackles playing sports such as football and rugby, but can also develop over time through gradual wear and tear.

Around 10,000 people a year in the UK suffer cartilage damage serious enough to require treatment due to pain, "locking" and reduced flexibility. If left untreated, it can progress to arthritis and severely impair leg movement.

Currently, the most commonly used procedure to repair the injury - microfracture - involves trimming any remaining damaged tissue and drilling holes in the bone beneath the defect via keyhole surgery to promote bleeding and scar tissue to work as a substitute.

However, the technique has variable results, with studies in the US suggesting the procedure offers only a short term benefit (the first 24 months after surgery), and does not lead to the formation of new cartilage.

Patients who undergo the Abicus operation have the cartilage cut and tidied and undergo microfracture, but their cartilage tissue is then coated with a substance made up of bone marrow cells, platelet gel and hyaluronic acid.

During the 30-minute procedure, the bone marrow sample is spun in a centrifuge in the operating theatre to give a concentrated amount of the patient's own stem cells.

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High hopes for new knee operation

The First Minister has given his support to the Teles campaign for bone marrow donors.

Alex Salmond urged people to consider joining the national bone marrow registers after he heard about Menzieshill baby Faith Cushnies cancer battle.

Mr Salmond said: Faiths story highlights the need for more bone marrow donors, and I commend the Evening Telegraph for their excellent campaign.

It is vital that those willing to donate their blood stem cells or bone marrow sign up to the Anthony Nolan Trust and British Bone Marrow Registers, to help people who desperately need lifesaving transplants.

I would encourage everyone eligible to consider saving lives by joining the register.

More than 180 people from Tayside have registered to be donors with the bone marrow and stem cell charity Anthony Nolan since the Tele published Faiths story on Tuesday.

The nine-month-old, needed a bone marrow donation to beat leukaemia, but after her donor backed out she relapsed before a replacement could be found.

Doctors have told Faiths devastated parents there is now nothing they can do for her.

Every year around 1,800 people in the UK need a bone marrow or stem cell transplant to treat cancers such as leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma and blood disorders like sickle cell disease.

Bone marrow, the spongy tissue found inside some bones, contains stem cells that produce blood cells to carry oxygen around the body, fight infection and stop bleeding.

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Alex Salmond says Yes to the Teles bone marrow campaign

Patients' virus levels became undetectable after a bone-marrow therapy with stem cells

Scanning electron microscope (SEM) image of a lymphocyte with HIV cluster. Credit: National Cancer Institute via Wikimedia Commons

Scientists have uncovered two new cases of HIV patients in whom the virus has become undetectable.

The two patients, both Australian men, became apparently HIV-free after receiving stem cells to treat cancer. They are still on antiretroviral therapy (ART) as a precaution, but those drugs alone could not be responsible for bringing the virus to such low levels, says David Cooper, director of the Kirby Institute at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, who led the discovery. A year ago, a different group of researchers had reported cases with a similar outcome.

Cooper presented details of the cases today at a press briefing in Melbourne, Australia, where delegates are convening for next week's 20th International AIDS Conference. The announcement came just a day after the news that at least six people heading to the conference died when aMalaysia Airlines flight was shot down in Ukraine.

Cooper began searching for patients who had been purged of the HIV virus after attending a presentation by a US team last year at a conference of the International AIDS Society in Kuala Lumpur. At that meeting, researchers from Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, reported that two patients who had received stem-cell transplants were virus-free.

Cooper and his collaborators scanned the archives of St Vincents hospital in Sydney, one of the largest bone-marrow centres in Australia. We went back and looked whether we had transplanted [on] any HIV-positive patients, and found these two, says Cooper.

The first patient had received a bone-marrow transplant for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2011. His replacement stem cells came from a donor who carried one copy of a gene thought to afford protection against the virus. The other had been treated for leukaemia in 2012.

Unfortunately, several months after the 'Boston' patients stopped taking ART,the virus returned. An infant born with HIV in Mississippi who received antiretroviral therapy soon after birth, then stopped it for more than three years,was thought to have been cured, buthas had the virus rebound, too.

Natural resistance At the moment, there is only one person in the world who is still considered cured of HIV:Timothy Ray Brown, the 'Berlin patient', who received a bone-marrow transplant and has had no signs of the virus in his blood for six years without ART. The bone marrow received by the Berlin patient came from a donor who happened to have a natural genetic resistance to his strain of HIV.

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HIV Cleared in 2 Patients via Cancer Treatment

Scientists have discovered a new way to make human platelets, which could help patients worldwide who need blood transfusions.

Platelets are the cells we use to form blood clots. They're traditionally created in our bone marrow. But scientists are now using a machine called a platelet bioreactoralong with human stem cells to create platelets outside the human body.(ViaYouTube / ThrombosisAdviser,American Society of Hematology)

Essentially, this"next-generation"device asBoston Magazinecalls it features the same characteristics asbone marrow. The crucial difference: It's able to carry out a reaction on an industrial scale.

An author of the study said in a press release published byHealthDay,"The ability to generate an alternative source of functional human platelets with virtually no disease transmission represents a paradigm shift in how we collect platelets that may allow us to meet the growing need for blood transfusions."

Brigham and Women's Hospital reports more than 2 million donor platelet units are transfused each year in the U.S. to help patients in need.

That includestrauma patients and those undergoing chemotherapy, organ transplants and surgery. (Getty Images)

But platelet shortages are common due to increased demand, a short shelflife and the possibility of contamination, rejection and infection. (Getty Images)

The problem lab-created platelets have runinto in the past istime: Growing new platelets took too long.

A doctor not associated with this researchsaid,"This study addresses that gap, while contributing to our understanding of platelet biology at the same time."(ViaHealthDay /Brigham and Women's Hospital)

Butthe rules are tough on blood products, so the platelets will undergo safety tests over the next three years. Clinical human trials likely won't start until 2017. (Getty Images)

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Scientists find new way to make human platelets