Q: How close are we to curing blood diseases with human stem cells?

A: New research has nudged scientists closer to one of regenerative medicine's holy grails: the ability to create customized human stem cells capable of forming blood that would be safe for patients.

Advances reported in the journal Nature could not only give scientists a window on what goes wrong in such blood cancers as leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma. They could also improve the treatment of those cancers, which affect some 1.2 million Americans.

While the use of blood-making stem cells in medicine has been common since the 1950s, it remains pretty crude. After patients with blood cancers have undergone powerful radiation and chemotherapy, they often need a bone-marrow transplant to rebuild their white blood cells, which are destroyed by that treatment.

The blood-making stem cells that reside in a donor's bone marrow and in umbilical cord blood harvested after a baby's birth are called "hematopoietic," and they can be life-saving. But even these stem cells can bear the distinctive immune system signatures of the person from whom they were harvested. So they can provoke an attack if the transplant recipient's body registers the cells as foreign.

This response, called graft-versus-host disease, affects as many as 70 percent of bone-marrow transplant recipients soon after treatment, and 40 percent develop a chronic version of the affliction later. It kills many patients.

Rather than hunt for a donor who's a perfect match, doctors would like to use a patient's own cells to engineer the hematopoietic stem cells.

The patient's mature cells would be "reprogrammed" to their most primitive form: stem cells capable of becoming virtually any kind of human cell. Then factors in their environment would coax them to become stem cells capable of giving rise to blood.Once reintroduced into the patient, the cells would take up residence without prompting rejection and set up a lifelong factory of healthy new blood cells.

If the risk of rejection could be eliminated, physicians might also feel more confident treating blood diseases that are not immediately deadly such as sickle cell disease and immunological disorders with stem cell transplants.

One of two research teams, led by stem cell pioneer Dr. George Q. Daley of Harvard Medical School and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, started their experiment with human "pluripotent" stem cells primitive cells capable of becoming virtually any type of mature cell.

The scientists then programmed those pluripotent stem cells to become endothelial cells, which line the inside of certain blood vessels.Using suppositions gleaned from experiments with mice, Daley said his team confected a "special sauce" of proteins that sit on a cell's DNA and program its function. When they incubated the endothelial cells in the sauce, they began producing hematopioetic stem cells.

Daley's team then transferred the resulting blood-making stem cells into the bone marrow of mice to see if they would "take." In two out of five mice who got the most promising cell types, they did. Not only did the stem cells establish themselves, they continued to renew themselves while giving rise to a wide range of blood cells.

A second team, led by researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine's Ansary Stem Cell Institute, achieved a similar result using stem cells from the blood-vessel lining of adult mice.

But Daley cautioned that significant hurdles remain before studies like these will transform the treatment of blood diseases.

"We do know the resulting cells function like blood stem cells, but they still are at some distance, molecularly, from native stem cells," he said.

Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times

More here:
Medical Q&A: Progress made in getting stem cells to 'take' in mice - Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Andrew Duffy, Postmedia Network May 23, 2017

, Last Updated: 5:01 PM ET

Jonathan Pitre has been on a medical roller-coaster in the week since blood tests revealed that his stem cell transplant has taken root in his bone marrow.

While his white blood cell count has soared its now well within the normal range he has also suffered a series of complications that have severely tested his physical endurance.

It has been a long few days, said his mother, Tina Boileau. Hes been through hell.

Pitre, 16, is battling liver, kidney and gastrointestinal problems.

He has been diagnosed with typhlitis, a serious inflammation in part of his large intestine, that brings with it risk of a bowel perforation. He has undergone a series of x-rays and ultrasounds to check for perforations, all of which have come back negative.

At the same time, Pitre is fighting a liver infection that has caused his fever to spike, and his skin to yellow. His blood pressure has fluctuated, and his kidneys are struggling to process all of the fluids and medications that have been been pumped into his body. He hasnt been allowed to eat or drink for days to protect his damaged gastrointestinal system.

Pitre will undergo surgery Wednesday to have another central line installed so that he can be fed intravenously rather than through his existing g-tube, which sends nutrition directly to his stomach.

All of the complications have made it difficult to deliver enough medication to control Pitres pain levels, his mother said.

Its got to get better, she said.

Boileau is placing her faith in her sons new immune system, which has been rebuilt with the help of her donated stem cells. His white blood cell count is at 6.7 which is amazing, she said. And hopefully, that helps him fight everything hes going through.

A normal white blood cell count ranges from 4.0 to 11.

Pitre found out last Tuesday that the white blood cells in his system were all donor cells, which signalled that his transplant had successfully engrafted in his bone marrow. Bone marrow stem cells produce most of the bodys blood, including the white blood cells that are responsible for fighting bacteria, viruses and other pathogens.

Pitres lead physician, Dr. Jakub Tolar, said last week that the Russell teenager remains extremely fragile and susceptible to all kinds of complications. But Tolar also said the success of the transplant has established the pre-condition for his recovery.

It has now been 40 days since Pitre was infused with stem cells drawn from his mothers hip bone at the University of Minnesota Masonic Childrens Hospital.

In the next three months, doctors will be on the lookout for signs of acute graft-versus-host-disease (GVHD), a complication in which the donors white blood cells turn on the patients tissues and attack them as foreign. Last week, Pitre showed signs of a rash which can sometimes be a telltale sign of the disease, but a skin biopsy showed that the problem was not related to GVHD.

Anyone who receives stem cells from another person is at risk of developing the condition, which can range from mild to life-threatening. It commonly affects the skin, liver or gastrointestinal tract.

Pitre suffers from a severe form of epidermolysis bullosa (EB), a painful and progressive skin disease that has inflicted deep, open wounds on his body.

Read more here:
'It has been a long few days': Jonathan Pitre on medical roller-coaster - Canoe

Currently, there are only 11 hospitals that are authorized to give stem cell treatments in Indonesia. (Shutterstock/File)

Developments in science and technology have enabled humankind to achieve the unthinkable, including advancements in healthcare. In the next 10 years, patients may not even need medicine to cure certain illnesses as reported by kompas.com.

Principal investigator of Stem Cell and Cancer Institute, Dr. Yuyus Kusnadi, said health scientists are developing stem cell treatments. Stem cells are cells with the ability to renew or regenerate any kind of cells.

Degenerative conditions such as kidney failure and the weakening of heart muscles in the future may be cured by injecting stem cells into the patients body.

Stem cells can be obtained from umbilical cord blood that is kept in a stem cell bank, back bone marrow and fat. However, fat and bone marrow will decline in quality as a person grows older. Stem cells stored in a stem cell bank can be used for future treatments if needed.

Read also: Scientists take first steps to growing human organs in pigs

Health treatments using stem cells exist today although they are not yet developed due to limitations in funding and technology. Yuyus said in Indonesia, those who are allowed stem cell treatment are those who have no option.

For now, stem cell treatment require a doctors approval. Its still subjective, he said.

For those with recommendations for stem cell treatment, the stem cell is obtained from blood or fat. Manipulation in the laboratory is needed to strengthen the stem cell.

Although stem cell treatments are not yet popular these days, Yuyus is optimistic, Lets wait five to ten more years. The current use of medicine only stops symptoms and does not fix the sickness, he said.

Stem cell treatments will not be cheap either, as it will cost patients up to hundreds of millions of rupiah.

Currently, there are only 11 hospitals that are authorized to give stem cell treatments in Indonesia. The hospitals right to provide stem cell treatments is regulated in the Health Ministers Regulation no. 32, 2014 on the Incorporation of Medical Research Service and Education of Tissue and Stem Cell Centers.

Hospitals authorized to provide stem cell treatments in Indonesia include Rumah Sakit Cipto Mangun Kusumo, RS. Sutomo, RS M. Djamil, RS. Persahabatan, RS. Fatmawati, RS. Dharmais, RS. Harapan Kita, RS. Hasan Sadikin, RS. Kariadi, RS. Sardjito and RS. Sanglah. (asw)

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Stem cell treatments ready to replace medicine in 10 years: Expert - Jakarta Post

After 20 years of trying, scientists have transformed mature cells into primordial blood cells that regenerate themselves and the components of blood. The work, described [May 17] in Nature offers hope to people with leukemia and other blood disorders who need bone-marrow transplants but cant find a compatible donor. If the findings translate into the clinic, these patients could receive lab-grown versions of their own healthy cells.

One team, led by stem-cell biologist George Daley of Boston Childrens Hospital in Massachusetts, created human cells that act like blood stem cells, although they are not identical to those found in nature. A second team, led by stem-cell biologist Shahin Rafii of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, turned mature cells from mice into fully fledged blood stem cells.

Time will determine which approach succeeds. But the latest advances have buoyed the spirits of researchers who have been frustrated by their inability to generate blood stem cells from iPS cells. A lot of people have become jaded, saying that these cells dont exist in nature and you cant just push them into becoming anything else, [Mick Bhatia, a stem-cell researcher at McMaster University, who was not involved with either study] says.

[Read the Daley study here.]

Read the Rafii study here.]

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post:Lab-grown blood stem cells produced at last

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Breakthrough for bone marrow transplant recipients: Lab-grown blood stem cells produced for first time - Genetic Literacy Project

He was tired of the daily pain that made even shaking someone's hand almost unbearable.

Marlette lost his arm in an accident when he was a teenager, but as an active kid, he didn't this slow him down. He continued to play football and golf, running track and even wrestling.

But over time, the strain on his remaining arm and wrist took a toll.

So to relieve his pain, he traveled from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to Munich, Germany, with the hopes that a special procedure using stem cells could make a difference.

"There's no cartilage," Marlette said of his wrist. "I'm bone-on-bone. It is constantly inflamed and very sore."

As Marlette grew older, even the simplest things, like tucking in his shirt or putting on a jacket, became incredibly painful.

Marlette developed cysts and holes in the bones of his wrist. Doctors prescribed anti-inflammatory medications, but they only managed the pain, doing nothing to actually heal the problem. One day, his doctor, Dr. Bob Van Demark at Sanford Health in South Dakota, where Marlette works in finance, saw a presentation by Dr. Eckhard Alt.

It was about a new treatment using stem cells.

"Following an infection or wound or trauma," Alt said, "there comes a call to the stem cells in the blood vessels, which are silent, and nature activates those cells."

Stem cells are located throughout our bodies, like a reserve army offering regeneration and repair. When we're injured or sick, our stem cells divide and create new cells to replace those that are damaged or killed. Depending on where the cells are in the body, they adapt, becoming specialized as blood cells, muscle cells or brain cells, for example.

Alt was the first person to use adipose tissue, or fat, as a prime source of stem cells, according to Dr. David Pearce, executive vice president for research at Sanford health.

"He observed that the simplest place to get some stem cells is really from the fat," said Pearce. "Most of us could give some fat up, and those stem cells don't have to be programmed in any way, but if you put in the right environment, they will naturally turn into what the cell type around them is."

Fat tissue has a lot of blood vessels, making it a prime source of stem cells, and Alt recognized that stem cells derived from adipose tissue are also particularly good at becoming cartilage and bone.

Bone marrow is another source of stem cells, but these easily turn into blood and immune cells. Stem cells from fat have another fate.

"Fat-derived stem cells have a different lineage they can turn into, that is really cartilage and bone and other sort of connective tissues," said Pearce.

Van Demark traveled to Alt's Munich clinic along with some doctors from Sanford, which is now partnering with Alt on clinical trials in the United States. Marlette's doctor was impressed with what he saw and recommended the treatment to his patient.

Marlette paid his own way to Munich, where he would receive an injection of stem cells from his own fat tissue.

"I had one treatment, and my wrist felt better almost within the next couple weeks," Marlette said. "Through the course of the next seven months, it continued to feel better and better."

One injection was enough for this ongoing improvement.

"We see (from an MRI scan) that those cysts are gone, the bone has restructured, the inflammation is gone, and he formed ... new cartilage," said Alt.

MRIs confirmed what he was feeling: The cartilage had begun to regenerate in his wrist. Because the procedure uses autologous cells, which are cells from the patient's own body, there's little to no chance of rejection by the body's immune system.

Though the procedure worked for Marlette, the use of stem cells as a form of treatment is not without controversy or risk. In the US, they have been mired in controversy because much of the early research and discussion has been centered around embryonic and fetal stem cells.

Marlette traveled to Germany because approved treatments like this are not available in the United States. Clinics have popped up across the country, but they lack oversight from the Food and Drug Administration.

Dr. Robin Smith, founder of the Stem for Life Foundation, first began working in this field 10 years ago. According to Smith, there were 400 clinical trials for stem cells when she first started; now, there are 4,500. She partnered with the Vatican to hold a stem cell conference last year.

"We're moving toward a new era in medicine," said Smith, who was not involved in this research. "(We are) recognizing cells in our body and immune system can be used in some way -- manipulated, redirected or changed at the DNA level -- to impact health and cure disease. It is an exciting time."

Dr. Nick Boulis is a neurosurgeon with Emory University in Atlanta. His team ran the first FDA-approved clinical trials in the US to inject stem cells in the spinal cords of patients with ALS, better known as Lou Gehrig's disease, and he isn't surprised to see procedures like the one at Alt's clinic in Germany have success.

"Joints and bones heal," Boulis said. "The nervous system is very bad at healing. It doesn't surprise me that we're seeing successes in recapitulating cartilage before we're seeing successes in rebuilding the motherboard."

Smith also cautioned patients to do their research, especially about the types of cells being used. "When you have a health problem, and you need a solution, sometimes you don't have three five, seven years to get there," she said, referencing the slow progression of regulations in places like the United States.

"So really ,look for places that have the regulatory approval of the country they're in. Safety has to be number one," she said.

Alt's Munich clinic was approved by the European equivalent of the FDA, the European Medicines Agency. Through the partnership with Sanford, the health group is now launching clinical trials in America, focusing on rotator cuff injuries, a common shoulder injury. This is the first FDA-approved trial of its kind.

Further down the line, Alt hopes to see stem cells used for such issues as heart procedures and treating the pancreas to help diabetics. For him, the growth is limitless.

"I think it will be exponential," he said. "It will be the same thing (we saw) with deciphering the human genome. The knowledge will go up exponentially, and the cost will go exponentially down. For me, the most exciting thing is to see how you can help patients that have been desperate for which there was no other option, no hope, and how well they do."

For Marlette, it has meant a wrist free from pain and a life free from pain medication.

Since the procedure in August, he hasn't taken any of the anti-inflammatory drugs. "I have more range of motion with my wrist, shaking hands didn't hurt anymore," he said. "My wrist seems to continue to improve, and there's less and less pain all the time."

Read more here:
Patient uses fat stem cells to repair his wrist - CNN

Science World Report

Bone Marrow Stem Cell Transplants Could Advance ALS Treatment Science World Report The researchers discovered that bone marrow stem cell transplants may advance the treatment of the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The transplants enhanced the motor functions and nervous system conditions in mice with ALS that modeled in ... Stem cell transplants beneficial to mice with ALSLife Science Daily all 2 news articles »

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Bone Marrow Stem Cell Transplants Could Advance ALS Treatment - Science World Report

Back to Browse Journals Clinical Ophthalmology Volume 11

Carina Costa Cotrim, Luiza Toscano, Andr Messias, Rodrigo Jorge, Rubens Camargo Siqueira

Department of Ophthalmology, Otorhinolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery, Ribeirao Preto School of Medicine, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil

Purpose: To evaluate the therapeutic potential and safety of intravitreal injections of bone marrow mononuclear fraction (BMMF) containing CD34+ cells in patients with atrophic age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Methods: Ten patients with atrophic AMD and best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) in the worse-seeing eye of 20/100 were enrolled in this study. The bone marrow from all patients was aspirated and processed for mononuclear cell separation. A 0.1mL suspension of BMMF CD34+ cells was injected into the vitreous cavity of the worse-seeing eye. Patients were evaluated at Baseline and 1,3,6,9 and 12 months after injection. Ophthalmic evaluation included BCVA measurement, microperimetry, infrared imaging, fundus autofluorescence and SD-optical coherence tomography at all study visits. Fluorescein angiography was performed at Baseline and at 6and 12 months after intravitreal therapy. Results: All patients completed the 6-month follow-up, and six completed the 12-month follow-up. Prior to the injection, mean BCVA was 1.18 logMAR (20/320-1), ranging from 20/125 to 20/640-2, and improved significantly at every follow-up visit, including the 12-month one, when BCVA was 1.0 logMAR (20/200) (P<0.05). Mean sensitivity threshold also improved significantly at 6, 9 and 12 months after treatment (P<0.05). Considering the area of atrophy identified by fundus autofluorescence, significant mean BCVA and mean sensitivity threshold improvement were observed in patients with the smallest areas of atrophy. Fluorescein angiography did not identify choroidal new vessels or tumor growth. Conclusion: The use of intravitreal BMMF injections in patients with AMD is safe and is associated with significant improvement in BCVA and macular sensitivity threshold. Patients with small areas of atrophy have a better response. The paracrine effect of CD34+ cells may explain the functional improvement observed; however, larger series of patients are necessary to confirm these preliminary findings. Keywords: AMD, stem cells, hematopoietic cells

This work is published and licensed by Dove Medical Press Limited. The full terms of this license are available at https://www.dovepress.com/terms.php and incorporate the Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial (unported, v3.0) License. By accessing the work you hereby accept the Terms. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. For permission for commercial use of this work, please see paragraphs 4.2 and 5 of our Terms.

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Intravitreal use of bone marrow mononuclear fraction containing CD34 + stem cells in patients with atrophic age ... - Dove Medical Press

With gene-editing techniques such as CRISPR-Cas9, offending genes could one day be snipped out of hematopoietic stem cells, then be returned to their owners to generate new lines of disease-free blood cells

New research has nudged scientists closer to one of regenerative medicines holy grails: the ability to create customised human stem cells capable of forming blood that would be safe for patients. Advances reported in the journal Nature could not only give scientists a window on what goes wrong in such blood cancers as leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma, but they could also improve the treatment of those cancers, which affect some 1.2 million Americans. The stem cells that give rise to our blood are a mysterious wellspring of life. In principle, just one of these primitive cells can create much of a human beings immune system, not to mention the complex slurry of cells that courses through a persons arteries, veins and organs. While the use of blood-making stem cells in medicine has been common since the 1950s, it remains pretty crude. After patients with blood cancers have undergone powerful radiation and chemotherapy treatments to kill their cancer cells, they often need a bone-marrow transplant to rebuild their white blood cells, which are destroyed by that treatment. The blood-making stem cells that reside in a donors bone marrow and in umbilical cord blood that is sometimes harvested after a babys birth are called hematopoietic, and they can be life-saving. But even these stem cells can bear the distinctive immune system signatures of the person from whom they were harvested. As a result, they can provoke an attack if the transplant recipients body registers the cells as foreign. This response, called graft-versus-host disease, affects as many as 70 percent of bone-marrow transplant recipients in the months following the treatment, and 40 percent develop a chronic version of the affliction later. It can overwhelm the benefit of a stem cell transplant. And it kills many patients. Rather than hunt for a donor whos a perfect match for a patient in need of a transplant a process that can be lengthy, ethically fraught and ultimately unsuccessful doctors would like to use a patients own cells to engineer the hematopoietic stem cells. The patients mature cells would be reprogrammed to their most primitive form: stem cells capable of becoming virtually any kind of human cell. Then factors in their environment would coax them to become the specific type of stem cells capable of giving rise to blood. Once reintroduced into the patient, the cells would take up residence without prompting rejection and set up a lifelong factory of healthy new blood cells. If the risk of deadly rejection episodes could be eliminated, physicians might also feel more confident treating blood diseases that are painful and difficult but not immediately deadly diseases such as sickle cell disease and immunological disorders with stem cell transplants. The two studies published on Wednesday demonstrate that scientists may soon be capable of pulling off the sequence of operations necessary for such treatments to move ahead. One of two research teams, led by stem cell pioneer Dr George Q. Daley of Harvard Medical School and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, started their experiment with human pluripotent stem cells primitive cells capable of becoming virtually any type of mature cell in the body. Some of them were embryonic stem cells and others were induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, which are made by converting mature cells back to a flexible state. The scientists then programmed those pluripotent stem cells to become endothelial cells, which line the inside of certain blood vessels. Past research had established that those cells are where blood-making stem cells are born. Here, the process needed a nudge. Using suppositions gleaned from experiments with mice, Daley said his team confected a special sauce of proteins that sit on a cells DNA and programme its function. When they incubated the endothelial cells in the sauce, they began producing hematopioetic stem cells in their earliest form. Daleys team then transferred the resulting blood-making stem cells into the bone marrow of mice to see if they would take. In two out of five mice who got the most promising cell types, they did. Not only did the stem cells establish themselves, they continued to renew themselves while giving rise to a wide range of blood cells. A second research team, led by researchers from Weill Cornell Medicines Ansary Stem Cell Institute in New York, achieved a similar result using stem cells from the blood-vessel lining of adult mice. After programming those cells to revert to a more primitive form, the scientists also incubated those stem cells in a concoction of specialised proteins. When the team, led by Raphael Lis and Dr Shahin Rafii, transferred the resulting stem cells back into the tissue lining the blood vessels of the mice from which they came, that graft also took. For at least 40 weeks after the incubated stem cells were returned to their mouse owners, the stem cells continued to regenerate themselves and give rise to many blood-cell types without provoking immune reactions. In addition to making a workhorse treatment for blood cancers safer, the new advances may afford scientists a unique window on the mechanisms by which blood diseases take hold and progress, said Lee Greenberger, chief scientific officer for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. From a research point of view you could now actually begin to model diseases, said Greenberger. If you were to take the cell thats defective and make it revert to a stem cell, you could effectively reproduce the disease and watch its progression from the earliest stages. That, in turn, would make it easier to narrow the search for drugs that could disrupt that disease process early. And it would speed the process of discovering which genes are implicated in causing diseases. With gene-editing techniques such as CRISPR-Cas9, those offending genes could one day be snipped out of hematopoietic stem cells, then be returned to their owners to generate new lines of disease-free blood cells. But Daley cautioned that significant hurdles remain before studies like these will transform the treatment of blood diseases. We do know the resulting cells function like blood stem cells, but they still are at some distance, molecularly, from native stem cells, he said. By tinkering with the processes by which pluripotent stem cells mature into blood-producing stem cells, Daley said his team hopes to make these lab-grown cells a better match for the real things. Los Angeles Times/TNS

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Regenerative medicine: holy grail within grasp? - Gulf Times

Exercise can burn the fat found within bone marrow, according to new research. The work, conducted with mice, offers evidence that this process improves bone quality and increases the amount of bone in a matter of weeks.

The study also suggests obese individuals who often have worse bone quality may derive even greater bone health benefits from exercising than their leaner counterparts. Lead author Maya Styner, a physician and assistant professor of endocrinology and metabolism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said:

One of the main clinical implications of this research is that exercise is not just good, but amazing for bone health. In just a very short period of time, we saw that running was building bone significantly in mice.

Although research in mice is not directly translatable to the human condition, the kinds of stem cells that produce bone and fat in mice are the same kind as those that produce bone and fat in humans.

In addition to its implications for obesity and bone health, Styner says the research also could help illuminate some of the factors behind bone degradation associated with conditions like diabetes, arthritis, anorexia, and the use of steroid medications.

I see a lot of patients with poor bone health, and I always talk to them about what a dramatic effect exercise can have on bones, regardless of what the cause of their bone condition is, says Styner. With obesity, it seems that you get even more bone formation from exercise. Our studies of bone biomechanics show that the quality and the strength of the bone is significantly increased with exercise and even more so in the obese exercisers.

Bone marrow coordinates the formation of bone and cartilage while simultaneously churning out blood cells, immune cells, and cancerous cells.

Marrow also produces fat, but the physiological role of bone marrow fat in the body and even whether it is beneficial or harmful for ones health has remained somewhat mysterious.

Generally, marrow fat has been thought to comprise a special fat reserve that is not used to fuel energy during exercise in the same way other fat stores are used throughout the body during exercise. The new study offers evidence to the contrary.

Styners work also offers fundamental insights on how marrow fat forms and the impact it has on bone health. Previous studies have suggested that a higher amount of marrow fat increases the risk of fractures and other problems.

Theres been intense interest in marrow fat because its highly associated with states of low bone density, but scientists still havent understood its physiologic purpose, says Styner. We know that exercise has a profound effect on fat elsewhere in the body, and we wanted to use exercise as a tool to understand the fat in the marrow.

The research leaves a few lingering mysteries. A big one is figuring out the exact relationship between burning marrow fat and building better bone.

It could be that when fat cells are burned during exercise, the marrow uses the released energy to make more bone. Or, because both fat and bone cells come from parent cells known as mesenchymal stem cells, it could be that exercise somehow stimulates these stem cells to churn out more bone cells and less fat cells.

More research will be needed to clarify all this.

What we can say is theres a lot of evidence suggesting that marrow fat is being used as fuel to make more bone, rather than there being an increase in the diversion of stem cells into bone, says Styner.

The National Institutes of Health Funded this research.

Styner, M., Pagnotti, G. M., McGrath, C., Wu, X., Sen, B., Uzer, G., Xie, Z., Zong, X., Styner, M. A., Rubin, C. T. and Rubin, J. (2017) Exercise Decreases Marrow Adipose Tissue Through -Oxidation in Obese Running Mice J Bone Miner Res. doi:10.1002/jbmr.3159

Originally posted here:
Exercise Decreases Fat In Bone Marrow Through -Oxidation - ReliaWire

Welsh rockers The Alarm are using their shows to encourage fans to become bone marrow donors.

The band, who are set to play at the Electric Ballroom in London, on Saturday, have arranged for swabbing station to be set up at the venue.

It means fans will be able to join a bone marrow donor registry with a simple cheek swab.

Leader singer Mike Peters, who has battled cancer three times, co-founded the Love Hope Strength Foundation in 2007 with the aim to "save lives, one concert at a time".

It hosts donor drives at concerts and festivals around the world by encouraging music fans aged 18 to 55 to sign up to the International Bone Marrow Registry.

To date, more than 150,000 music fans have joined the registry, and more than 3,100 potentially-lifesaving matches for blood cancer patients.

Bone marrow is a soft tissue found in the middle of certain bones. It contains stem cells, which are the "building blocks" for other normal blood cells (like red cells, which carry oxygen, and white cells, which fight infection).

Some diseases, such as leukaemia, prevent people's bone marrow from working properly. And for certain patients, the only cure is to have a stem cell transplant from a healthy donor.

Peters, 58, from North Wales, was first diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma in 1995. He has also battled leukaemia twice.

He said: "It's humbling to see how many people have responded to the Get On The List campaign so far."

Blood cancer charity DKMS, which is the world's largest donor centre, has worked with the LHS Foundation since 2013.

Joe Hallett, senior donor recruitment manager at the charity, said: "Only one in three people with a blood cancer in the UK and in need of a life-saving blood stem cell transplant will be lucky enough to find a suitable match within their own family.

"Finding a match from a genetically similar person can offer the best treatment, a second chance of life."

Last updated Fri 19 May 2017

See more here:
Rock band encourages fans to become bone marrow donors - ITV.com - ITV News

BENGLURU: Fateh Singh, a six-year-old thalassemia major patient from Amritsar, underwent a bone marrow transplant last May which gave him a new lease of life. A year later, the boy met his saviour, Naval Chaudhary, whose stem cells were used for the procedure. The child was diagnosed with the condition when he was one-and-a-half years old.

On Thursday, the donor and recipient met for the first time. Naval, 28, a professional living in Bengaluru, had registered with DATRI, an unrelated blood stem cell donors registry in 2015. He said: "I was very happy to hear I was a potential match for a patient. But then I was told the donation process had to be done through bone marrow harvesting. Initially, I was a tad hesitant but then I researched the procedure and was counselled by Dr Sunil Bhat, paediatric haemato-oncologist from Mazumdar Shaw Cancer Centre."

"I realized that saving a life is more important than the type of procedure I had to go through. So I decided to go ahead," he added.

View post:
6-year-old thalassemia patient from Punjab meets his stem cell ... - Times of India

Exercise can burn the fat found within bone marrow, according to new research. The work, conducted with mice, offers evidence that this process improves bone quality and increases the amount of bone in a matter of weeks.

The study, published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, also suggests obese individualswho often have worse bone qualitymay derive even greater bone health benefits from exercising than their lean counterparts.

One of the main clinical implications of this research is that exercise is not just good, but amazing for bone health, says lead author Maya Styner, a physician and assistant professor of endocrinology and metabolism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In just a very short period of time, we saw that running was building bone significantly in mice.

Although research in mice is not directly translatable to the human condition, the kinds of stem cells that produce bone and fat in mice are the same kind as those that produce bone and fat in humans.

In addition to its implications for obesity and bone health, Styner says the research also could help illuminate some of the factors behind bone degradation associated with conditions like diabetes, arthritis, anorexia, and the use of steroid medications.

I see a lot of patients with poor bone health, and I always talk to them about what a dramatic effect exercise can have on bones, regardless of what the cause of their bone condition is, says Styner. With obesity, it seems that you get even more bone formation from exercise. Our studies of bone biomechanics show that the quality and the strength of the bone is significantly increased with exercise and even more so in the obese exercisers.

Bone marrow coordinates the formation of bone and cartilage while simultaneously churning out blood cells, immune cells, and cancerous cells.

Marrow also produces fat, but the physiological role of bone marrow fat in the bodyand even whether it is beneficial or harmful for ones healthhas remained somewhat mysterious.

Generally, marrow fat has been thought to comprise a special fat reserve that is not used to fuel energy during exercise in the same way other fat stores are used throughout the body during exercise. The new study offers evidence to the contrary.

Styners work also offers fundamental insights on how marrow fat forms and the impact it has on bone health. Previous studies have suggested that a higher amount of marrow fat increases the risk of fractures and other problems.

Theres been intense interest in marrow fat because its highly associated with states of low bone density, but scientists still havent understood its physiologic purpose, says Styner. We know that exercise has a profound effect on fat elsewhere in the body, and we wanted to use exercise as a tool to understand the fat in the marrow.

The researchers performed their experiments in two groups of mice. One group was fed a normal diet (lean mice) and the other received a high-fat diet (obese mice) starting a month after birth. When they were four months old, half the mice in each group were given a running wheel to use whenever they liked for the next six weeks. Because mice like to run, the group with access to a wheel tended to spend a lot of time exercising.

The researchers analyzed the animals body composition, marrow fat, and bone quantity at various points. Predictably, the obese mice started with more fat cells and larger fat cells in their marrow. After exercising for six weeks, both obese and lean mice showed a significant reduction in the overall size of fat cells and the overall amount fat in the marrow. In these respects, the marrow fat of exercising obese mice looked virtually identical to the marrow fat of lean mice, even those that exercised.

Perhaps more surprising was the dramatic difference in the number of fat cells present in the marrow, which showed no change in lean mice but dropped by more than half in obese mice that exercised compared to obese mice that were sedentary. The tests also revealed that exercise improved the thickness of bone, and that this effect was particularly pronounced in obese mice.

According to Styner, all of this points to the conclusion that marrow fat can be burned off through exercise and that this process is good for bones.

Obesity appears to increase a fat depot in the bone, and this depot behaves very much like abdominal and other fat depots, says Styner. Exercise is able to reduce the size of this fat depot and burn it for fuel and at the same time build stronger, larger bones.

The research leaves a few lingering mysteries. A big one is figuring out the exact relationship between burning marrow fat and building better bone. It could be that when fat cells are burned during exercise, the marrow uses the released energy to make more bone. Or, because both fat and bone cells come from parent cells known as mesenchymal stem cells, it could be that exercise somehow stimulates these stem cells to churn out more bone cells and less fat cells.

More research will be needed to parse this out. What we can say is theres a lot of evidence suggesting that marrow fat is being used as fuel to make more bone, rather than there being an increase in the diversion of stem cells into bone, says Styner.

Coauthors of the study are from UNC and State University of New York, Stony Brook. The National Institutes of Health Funded this research.

Source: UNC-Chapel Hill

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Exercise can even burn off fat in bone marrow - Futurity: Research News

Two different groups of researchers have developed ways to generate red and white blood cells in the lab Photograph: Steve Gschmeissner/Getty Images/Science Photo Library RM

How might blood cells be made?

Different groups of researchers say they have developed a way of producing blood cells from human or mouse cells that have been reprogrammed in the lab an advance that has been touted as offering a solution to the need for blood donation. The latest studies are the result of 20 years work in the field.

How exactly did they do it?

The two pieces of work, published at the same time in Nature but by different research groups, take differing approaches. One study, led by George Daley at Harvard Medical School, began with human cells known as induced pluripotent stem cells cells that can make any type of human cell, and which can be produced by genetically reprogramming adult cells, such as those in skin. These were chemically tinkered with to create a tissue that can give rise to blood stem cells and implanted into mice, where blood stem cells were made, which then churned out the different types of cells found in blood, including white blood cells and red blood cells. The approach also worked starting with human embryonic stem cells.

The big achievement is being able to do that transition from a pluripotent stem cell to a blood stem cell, which has never been [done] before, said Cedric Ghevaert of the Cambridge Blood Centre at the University of Cambridge. That is a big story and there is no denying the impact of that.

The other research, led by Raphael Lis, at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, took a different tack, converting cells taken from the lungs of mice directly into blood stem cells. Once implanted into mice, they too churned out the panoply of blood cells.

Will these breakthroughs remove the need for blood donation?

No. Both of the approaches ultimately produced a collection of different types of blood cells. This, said Ghevaert, is not so useful for transfusions, where particular components of blood, for example, red blood cells, are needed separately. Instead, the research is more relevant for patients who need bone marrow transplants, for example, those withleukaemia.

This is what you get when you get a bone marrow transplant youre given another persons stem cells, said Ghevaert. That has got drawbacks because that other person is never quite a complete match to you, which is why bone marrow transplant is quite a serious procedure. For years we have been asking the question: Could we make the blood stem cells from something else that belongs to the patients that needs those stem cells? he added. This [research] shows the first glimpse of hope. However, there is still some way to go. They have generated enough to transplant a mouse, but if you wanted to transplant a human or indeed produce vast vats of blood cells, you would need an awful lot more and by that, I dont mean even 10 times more, you would need 1,000, 100,000 cells, said Ghevaert. One of biggest problems in this is the manufacturing process, because there is no point in making a pint of blood that costs 1m. As for the second approach, carried out in mice alone, Ghevaert is more cautious. I have seen a lot of very good things done in mice that then dont translate to anything in humans.

Is anyone trying to make blood for transfusions?

Yes, a number of researchers around the world are attempting to manufacture specific components of blood, including Ghevaert, who has been working on using human pluripotent stem cells to produce platelets (the component of blood that helps it to clot).

Is laboratory blood better than donatedblood?

It depends. Blood given in a transfusion has to be of the right type, matching the recipients blood group. For most people, transfusion from donor blood will continue to be the norm such blood is cheap, readily available and safe. But blood manufactured in alaboratory could help some. The only advantage of producing cells in the lab is, for example, to make blood cells that are compatible with patients who are very difficult to transfuse because we simply cant find them a blood group match, said Ghevaert. Donated blood works extremely well for 99.99% of people, therefore I think we have to see these products as a niche product.

Manufactured blood, said Ghevaert, could be a boon in developing countries. If you consider countries where the rate of HIV is 30%, and hepatitis B 60%, finding safe blood is extremely difficult, he said. Manufactured blood in a country where you have endemic viral infections that make the blood supply extremely unsafe, that would be extremely relevant.

Does all this mean that we dont need togive blood any more?

No. A spokesperson for NHS Blood and Transplant said: It will be some time before this research leads to manufactured blood cells being used for patient treatment. Volunteer donors remain a vital lifeblood for patients and will remain so for many years to come.

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Can you manufacture blood cells? - The Guardian

Athlone mother's desperate search for bone marrow donor for son (3)

Raqeeb Palm was diagnosed with Aplastic Anaemia in October after his mother noticed unusual bruises on his body.

Three-year-old Raqeeb Palm was diagnosed with Aplastic Anaemia in October after his mother noticed unusual bruises on his body. Picture: Monique Mortlock/EWN.

CAPE TOWN A mother from Heideveld in Athlone is desperately trying to find a bone marrow donor for her three-year-old son.

Raqeeb Palm was diagnosed with Aplastic Anaemia in October after his mother noticed unusual bruises on his body.

The boy had to undergo various blood tests and two bone marrow biopsies over a two-month period, before being diagnosed with the rare disease which damages bone marrow and stem cells.

Zaida Palm says her outgoing child can no longer play outside or do many of the activities three-year-olds enjoy due to his severely weakened immune system.

Hes got practically no immune system. So going out, malls, play areas, doing fun things is on a stop. Because any germ, he gets admitted [to the hospital] for a cold, he needs to go to the hospital.

Palm says they have been unable to find a bone marrow donor in South Africa.

A transplant is her son's only chance of survival.

Her medical aid won't cover an investigation for international donors, which is why she's turned to online crowd-funding.

The hundred thousand on the Backabuddy [website] is just the start to the campaign.

Palm has also urged people to become bone marrow donors.

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Athlone mother's desperate search for bone marrow donor for son (3) - Eyewitness News

Islamabad

The Ministry of National Health Services signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Armed Forces Bone Marrow Transplant Centre here Thursday for provision of bone marrow transplant facility to the general public and federal government employees and their families, along with Armed Forces personnel and their families and defence paid employees.

Under the MOU, the National Institute of Blood and Marrow Transplant shall be established at the Armed Forces Bone Marrow Transplant Centre and will be designated as the National Institute of Blood and Marrow Transplant (NIBMT). This new facility will broaden the scope of the hospital, so that bone marrow/stem cell transplant can be extended to federal government employees and the general public. It will also serve to extend training facilities in the field of Bone Marrow Transplant and Clinical Haematology.

The MOU was signed on behalf of National Health Services by Director General Health Dr. Assad Hafeez whereas Major General Tariq Mehmood Satti Commandant Armed Forces Bone Marrow Transplant Centre, Rawalpindi, signed on behalf of his organization. Commandant of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology Maj. Gen. Parvez Ahmed was also present on the occasion.

Speaking on the occasion, the Secretary of the Ministry of Health Services Muhammad Ayub Shaikh expressed gratitude to the Commandant of AFIP and AFBMPC for their efforts in making the MOU possible. This noble initiative will benefit a large number of patients, he projected. Major General Parvez Ahmed elaborated the efforts and initiatives taken to make the MOU possible.

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Bone marrow transplant facility to be available to public, government employees - The News International

Science Daily

Another reason to exercise: Burning bone fat a key to better bone health Science Daily It could be that when fat cells are burned during exercise, the marrow uses the released energy to make more bone. Or, because both fat and bone cells come from parent cells known as mesenchymal stem cells, it could be that exercise somehow stimulates ... and more »

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Another reason to exercise: Burning bone fat a key to better bone health - Science Daily

Potential for a new supply line

Burger/Phanie/REX/Shutterstock

By Jessica Hamzelou

The stem cells that produce our blood have been created in the lab for the first time. These could one day be used to treat people who have blood diseases and leukaemia with their own cells, rather than bone marrow transplants from a donor. They could also be used to create blood for transfusions.

This is a very big deal, says Carolina Guibentif at the University of Cambridge, who was not involved in the research. If you can develop [these cells] in the lab in a safe way and in high enough numbers, you wouldnt be dependent on donors.

In a healthy adult, blood stem cells are found in bone marrow, where they replenish the supply of red and white blood cells and platelets. They are sort of master cells, says George Daley at Harvard Medical School.

When these cells dont work properly, they fail to maintain an adequate supply of blood cells. As a result, not enough oxygen reaches the bodys tissues. This can cause serious disease if organs such as the heart are affected. Blood stem cells can also be wiped out by chemotherapy for leukaemia and other cancers.

People with these disorders tend to be treated with bone marrow complete with blood stem cells from a healthy donor. The difficulty is finding a match. There is a one in four chance of achieving this from a healthy sibling, but the odds are slashed to one in a million if a stranger needs to be found, says Daley.

In an attempt to create blood stem cells in the lab, Daley and his colleagues started with human pluripotent stem cells which have the potential to form almost any other type of body cell.

The team then searched for chemicals that might encourage these to become blood stem cells.

After studying the genes involved in blood production, the researchers identified proteins that control these genes and applied them to their stem cells.

They tested many combinations of the proteins, and found five that worked together to encourage their stem cells to become blood stem cells. When they put these into mice, they went on to produce new red and white blood cells and platelets. Its very cool, says Daley. Were very excited about the results.

A separate team has achieved the same feat with stem cells taken from adult mice. Raphael Lis at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York and his colleagues started with cells taken from the walls of the animals lungs, based on the idea that similar cells in an embryo eventually form the bodys first blood stem cells. The team identified a set of four factors that could encourage these lung stem cells to make them.

Both sets of results represent a breakthrough, says Guibentif. This is something people have been trying to achieve for a long time, she says. By working with adult mouse epithelial cells, Lis and his team show that the feat could potentially be achieved with cells taken from an adult person. Daleys team used human stem cells that could in theory be made from skin cells, bolstering the prospect that lab-made human blood could be next.

The lab-made stem cells are not quite ready to be used in people just yet, says Daley. Although all of his mice were healthy throughout the experiments, there is a risk that the cells could mutate and cause cancer. And the cells are not quite as efficient at making blood as those found in the body.

But once Daley and his team have honed their procedure, they might be able to make platelets and red blood cells for hospital use. These cell types dont have a nucleus, so are unable to divide and potentially cause cancer. He hopes this procedure could be used within the next couple of years.

Eventually, Daley hopes his cells could be used to create whole blood suitable for transfusions. Not only would such a supply be more reliable than that from donors, but it would also be free of disease. When new pathogens like Zika pop up, you have to make sure that blood is safe, says Daley. Wed be able to have more quality control.

Journal references: Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature22326; Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature22370

Read more: Synthetic bone implant can make blood cells in its marrow; Lab-grown blood given to volunteer for the first time

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Human blood stem cells grown in the lab for the first time - New Scientist

New research has nudged scientists closer to one of regenerative medicines holy grails: the ability to create customized human stem cells capable of forming blood that would be safe for patients.

Advances reported Wednesday in the journal Nature could not only give scientists a window on what goes wrong in such blood cancers as leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma. They could also improve the treatment of those cancers, which affect some 1.2 million Americans.

The stem cells that give rise to our blood are a mysterious wellspring of life. In principle, just one of these primitive cells can create much of a human beings immune system, not to mention the complex slurry of cells that courses through a persons arteries, veins and organs.

While the use of blood-making stem cells in medicine has been common since the 1950s, it remains pretty crude. After patients with blood cancers have undergone powerful radiation and chemotherapy treatments to kill their cancer cells, they often need a bone-marrow transplant to rebuild their white blood cells, which are destroyed by that treatment.

The blood-making stem cells that reside in a donors bone marrow and in umbilical cord blood that is sometimes harvested after a babys birth are called hematopoietic, and they can be life-saving. But even these stem cells can bear the distinctive immune system signatures of the person from whom they were harvested. As a result, they can provoke an attack if the transplant recipients body registers the cells as foreign.

This response, called graft-versus-host disease, affects as many as 70% of bone-marrow transplant recipients in the months following the treatment, and 40% develop a chronic version of the affliction later. It can overwhelm the benefit of a stem cell transplant. And it kills many patients.

Rather than hunt for a donor whos a perfect match for a patient in need of a transplant a process that can be lengthy, ethically fraught and ultimately unsuccessful doctors would like to use a patients own cells to engineer the hematopoietic stem cells.

The patients mature cells would be reprogrammed to their most primitive form: stem cells capable of becoming virtually any kind of human cell. Then factors in their environment would coax them to become the specific type of stem cells capable of giving rise to blood.

Once reintroduced into the patient, the cells would take up residence without prompting rejection and set up a lifelong factory of healthy new blood cells.

If the risk of deadly rejection episodes could be eliminated, physicians might also feel more confident treating blood diseases that are painful and difficult but not immediately deadly diseases such as sickle cell disease and immunological disorders with stem cell transplants.

The two studies published Wednesday demonstrate that scientists may soon be capable of pulling off the sequence of operations necessary for such treatments to move ahead.

One of two research teams, led by stem-cell pioneer Dr. George Q. Daley of Harvard Medical School and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, started their experiment with human pluripotent stem cells primitive cells capable of becoming virtually any type of mature cell in the body. Some of them were embryonic stem cells and others were induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, which are made by converting mature cells back to a flexible state.

The scientists then programmed those pluripotent stem cells to become endothelial cells, which line the inside of certain blood vessels. Past research had established that those cells are where blood-making stem cells are born.

Here, the process needed a nudge. Using suppositions gleaned from experiments with mice, Daley said his team confected a special sauce of proteins that sit on a cells DNA and program its function. When they incubated the endothelial cells in the sauce, they began producing hematopioetic stem cells in their earliest form.

Daleys team then transferred the resulting blood-making stem cells into the bone marrow of mice to see if they would take. In two out of five mice who got the most promising cell types, they did. Not only did the stem cells establish themselves, they continued to renew themselves while giving rise to a wide range of blood cells.

A second research team, led by researchers from Weill Cornell Medicines Ansary Stem Cell Institute in New York, achieved a similar result using stem cells from the blood-vessel lining of adult mice. After programming those cells to revert to a more primitive form, the scientists also incubated those stem cells in a concoction of specialized proteins.

When the team, led by Raphael Lis and Dr. Shahin Rafii, transferred the resulting stem cells back into the tissue lining the blood vessels of the mice from which they came, that graft also took. For at least 40 weeks after the incubated stem cells were returned to their mouse owners, the stem cells continued to regenerate themselves and give rise to many blood-cell types without provoking immune reactions.

In addition to making a workhorse treatment for blood cancers safer, the new advances may afford scientists a unique window on the mechanisms by which blood diseases take hold and progress, said Lee Greenberger, chief scientific officer for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

From a research point of view you could now actually begin to model diseases, said Greenberger. If you were to take the cell thats defective and make it revert to a stem cell, you could effectively reproduce the disease and watch its progression from the earliest stages.

That, in turn, would make it easier to narrow the search for drugs that could disrupt that disease process early. And it would speed the process of discovering which genes are implicated in causing diseases. With gene-editing techniques such as CRISPR-Cas9, those offending genes could one day be snipped out of hematopoietic stem cells, then be returned to their owners to generate new lines of disease-free blood cells.

Excerpt from:
Scientists get closer to making personalized blood cells by using patients' own stem cells - Los Angeles Times

On the morning of a game at Youngstown State earlier this season, Illinois-Chicago softball pitcher Karissa Frazier arrived armed for a successful road trip.

Frazier packed enough kits to perform cheek swabs on Youngstown State players who had agreed to add their samples to a worldwide bone-marrow registry. So Frazier hopped on a bus to the ballpark by herself, gave a presentation on the #swab2save campaign in her role as UIC's campus ambassador for Gift of Life, and helped swab the young women she would try to strike out later in the series.

And what a pitch the All-Horizon League hurler made.

One Youngstown State player was inspired enough by Frazier to request 200 swab kits to begin her own drive. Another immediately reached out to Gift of Life the global not-for-profit marrow and blood stem cell donor registry facilitating transplants and became the Ohio campus's representative.

"After Karissa was done swabbing players that day, she came back to our hotel and got ready for the game like normal," UIC coach Lynn Curylo said. "How amazing is that?"

For the UIC softball team, the trip to Eugene, Ore., to play Oregon on Friday in the NCAA tournament, its first appearance in six years, offers an opportunity to provide evidence of progress at the end of Curylo's promising first season. For Frazier, a junior right-hander with a 13-8 record and a 1.53 earned-run average, the journey represents that and more, another chance to spread awareness of a cause as powerful as her fastball.

"This has pushed me in the right direction and opened my eyes to all the things I could do to change people's lives for the better," Frazier said. "I'm hoping to swab all three teams at our NCAA regional. And I'd love to go to the College World Series and swab all the teams there."

Seeing an emotional meeting between a donor and recipient left an indelible impression on Frazier. But a brush with a family friend back home in Temecula, Calif., first lit a fire within the public health major. A friend's decision to become a bone-marrow donor allowed a woman to live an additional six years and see the birth of her first grandchild and the wedding of her daughter.

"I just knew this was something I'd really enjoy doing so one day I could help save someone's life,'' Frazier said.

Back at UIC last August, Frazier interviewed with Gift of Life, which sought college ambassadors to increase potential donors in the 18- to 25-year-old demographic. Frazier's bosses established two goals for her: Swab 500 people overall and 250 males research shows males are three times less likely to sign up than women but twice as likely to be a match. When Frazier left Wednesday for Oregon, she had accumulated more than 700 total swab samples, including nearly 300 from males.

"I used my softball player status to expand getting a broader range of people," Frazier said.

Last fall, Frazier set up a table next to the UIC ticket booth and attended more sporting events than Sparky the mascot. As people passed by, Frazier did her best to demystify the swabbing process.

"I tell people it's easy and if you're willing to take three to five minutes, you could save somebody's life," Frazier said.

Those who say yes start by taking a health survey on their smartphones. Then Frazier gives participants a kit that includes four Q-tips, each to be rubbed on the inside of the corners of a person's mouth. The samples are sealed in the kit, the person's name goes on a label, and the registry grows. It's that simple.

"A lot of people think the process is super scary, but I just explain there's only one in 500 chance of being a match for someone and, if you are a match, then 80 percent of the time you just donate peripheral stem cells via regular blood draw," Frazier said. "And 20 percent of the time, they take bone marrow from your hip. But for the rest of your life, you can say you literally saved someone's life."

Curylo not only encouraged her star pitcher to pursue her passion, even if that meant traveling to Tinley Park on some game days to get swabs from visiting teams, but challenged Frazier to think bigger. It was Curylo's idea to swab every team in the Horizon League, which created the unintended consequence of camaraderie.

"This brought teams in our conference together," said Curylo, the conference coach of the year. "We usually go to games, compete, get on our bus and go home. But after we beat Oakland, we hung out and talked because we were all helping Karissa. She's finding a way to make herself matter off the field as much as she does on it."

She's a college student attacking leukemia and lymphoma as fiercely as she does hitters, a young woman hoping to change the world with the Peace Corps after making it better at UIC.

"What's amazing is Karissa is so completely different as a person than she is as a pitcher," Curylo said. "Pitching, she's poker-faced, no emotion, gets the job done. But away from that, she's one of the sweetest, most giving, best teammates around. She has two sides."

You might say they're a perfect match.

dhaugh@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @DavidHaugh

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NCAA-bound UIC softball pitcher driven to expand bone-marrow donor pool - Chicago Tribune

Press Release: New Stem Cell Collection Center Opens in Boston The Scientist We support biomedical researchers globally by offering human hematopoietic stem cells and blood derived cell products from bone marrow, cord blood, peripheral blood and mobilized peripheral blood. StemExpress guarantees every sample delivers only ...

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Press Release: New Stem Cell Collection Center Opens in Boston - The Scientist