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."

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Patient uses fat stem cells to repair his wrist - CNN

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

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

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

Rio Sugimura

Researchers made these blood stem cells and progenitor cells from human induced pluripotent stem cells.

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 today in Nature1, 2, offers hope to people with leukaemia 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 nature1. 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 cells2.

For many years, people have figured out parts of this recipe, but theyve never quite gotten there, says Mick Bhatia, a stem-cell researcher at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, who was not involved with either study. This is the first time researchers have checked all the boxes and made blood stem cells.

Daleys team chose skin cells and other cells taken from adults as their starting material. Using a standard method, they reprogrammed the cells into induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which are capable of producing many other cell types. Until now, however, iPS cells have not been morphed into cells that create blood.

The next step was the novel one: Daley and his colleagues inserted seven transcription factors genes that control other genes into the genomes of the iPS cells. Then they injected these modified human cells into mice to develop. Twelve weeks later, the iPS cells had transformed into progenitor cells capable of making the range of cells found in human blood, including immune cells. The progenitor cells are tantalizingly close to naturally occurring haemopoetic blood stem cells, says Daley.

Bhatia agrees. Its pretty convincing that George has figured out how to cook up human haemopoetic stem cells, he says. That is the holy grail.

By contrast, Rafiis team generated true blood stem cells from mice without the intermediate step of creating iPS cells. The researchers began by extracting cells from the lining of blood vessels in mature mice. They then inserted four transcription factors into the genomes of these cells, and kept them in Petri dishes designed to mimic the environment inside human blood vessels. There, the cells morphed into blood stem cells and multiplied.

When the researchers injected these stem cells into mice that had been treated with radiation to kill most of their blood and immune cells, the animals recovered. The stem cells regenerated the blood, including immune cells, and the mice went on to live a full life more than 1.5 years in the lab.

Because he bypassed the iPS-cell stage, Rafii compares his approach to a direct aeroplane flight, and Daleys procedure to a flight that takes a detour to the Moon before reaching its final destination. Using the most efficient method to generate stem cells matters, he adds, because every time a gene is added to a batch of cells, a large portion of the batch fails to incorporate it and must be thrown out. There is also a risk that some cells will mutate after they are modified in the lab, and could form tumours if they are implanted into people.

But Daley and other researchers are confident that the method he used can be made more efficient, and less likely to spur tumour growth and other abnormalities in modified cells. One possibility is to temporarily alter gene expression in iPS cells, rather than permanently insert genes that encode transcription factors, says Jeanne Loring, a stem-cell researcher at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. She notes that iPS cells can be generated from skin and other tissue that is easy to access, whereas Rafiis method begins with cells that line blood vessels, which are more difficult to gather and to keep alive in the lab.

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, Bhatia says. I hoped the critics were wrong, and now I know they were.

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Lab-grown blood stem cells produced at last - Nature.com

News

Published online 22 May 2017

Two teams of Arab and American researchers are tantalizingly close to generating primordial blood stem cells in the lab.

Louise Sarant

Hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPC) from human iPS cells. Rio Sugimura Two teams of scientists have developed methods that make lab-grown blood stem cells a realistic prospect a goal for hematology researchers since human embryonic stem (ES) cells were first isolated in 1998.

Scientists have previously succeeded in genetically reprogramming skin cells to make pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which are later used to generate multiple human cell types. However, the ability to induce blood stem cells that self-regenerate, for the treatment of millions affected by blood cancers and genetic disorders, has eluded researchers.

The two papers newly published in Nature describe methods that pave the way for safe, artificial and bona fide hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) generation. Hematopoietic stem (HSC) cells are the common ancestor of all cells created in the body, producing billions of blood cells every day.

This bears major implications for cell therapy, drug screening and leukemia research. The root causes of blood diseases can be scrutinized and creating immune-matched blood cells, derived from a patients own cells, is now conceivable.

The first team, based at the Boston Childrens Hospital, has generated blood-forming stem cells (HSCs) in the lab using pluripotent stem cells for the first time.

Were tantalizingly close to generating bona fide human blood stem cells in a dish, says senior investigator George Daley, who heads the research lab in Boston Childrens Hospitals stem cell program and who is dean of Harvard Medical School. This work is the culmination of over 20 years of striving.

Ryohichi Rio Sugimura, the studys first author and a postdoctoral fellow in the Daley Lab, says his team exposed human pluripotent stem cells (both ES and iPS cells) to chemical signals to prompt them to differentiate into specialized cells and tissues during embryonic development.

"Sugimura and his colleagues delivered transcription factors proteins that control and regulate the transcription of specific genes into the cells using a lentivirus, a vector to deliver genes. The resultant cells were transplanted to immune deficient mice, where human blood and immune cells were made, he says.

A few weeks after the transplant, a small number of rodents were found to be carrying multiple types of blood cells in their bone marrow and blood; cells that are also found in human blood. This is a major step forward for our ability to investigate genetic blood disease, says Daley.

The second team, a group of scientists from Weill Cornell Qatar and Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, used mature mouse endothelial cells cells that line blood vessels as their starting material for generating HSCs.

Image of human CD45+ blood cells differentiated from iPS cells. Rio Sugimura Based on previous work, we hypothesized that endothelial cells are the mastermind of organ development, explains Jeremie Arash Rafii Tabrizi, paper co-author and researcher at the stem cell and microenvironment laboratory at Weill Cornell Medicine, Qatar.

The team isolated the cells, and then pushed key transcription factors into their genomes. Between days 8 and 20 into the process, the cells specified and multiplied.

Our research showed that endothelial cells can be converted into competent HSCs with the ability to both regenerate the myeloid and lymphoid lineage, he explains.

The method brings hope for people afflicted with leukemia requiring HSCs transplantation, or genetic disorders affecting the myeloid or lymphoid lineages. The clinical generation of HSCs, derived from the same individual, can eventually help scientists correct genetic abnormalities.

As exciting as the two studies are, rigorous tests are still required to check the normality of lab-grown cells before the clinical phase, says Alexander Medvinsky, professor of hematopoietic stem cell biology at the University of Edinburgh Medical Research Council Centre for Regenerative Medicine. Medvinsky was not involved in either study.

The risks of infusion of genetically engineered cells in humans should not be underestimated, he weighs in. Tests and trials to generate safe fully functional human blood stem cells may take many years, in contrast to similar assessment in short-living mice. It is not clear now whether blood stem cells can become cancerous in the longer term.

He adds however that this type of research is exactly what is required to potentially meet clinical needs.

doi:10.1038/nmiddleeast.2017.89

Link:
Lab-grown blood stem cells - Nature Middle East

By Anette Breindl Senior Science Editor

"With the advent of targeted cancer therapies, what we've found is that many of them are cardiotoxic," Saptarsi Haldar told BioWorld Today. "Pathways that are effective in cancer are toxic in the heart."

In the May 17, 2017, issue of Science Translational Medicine, Haldar, who is an associate investigator at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, and his colleagues showed that a class of epigenetic drugs, the BET bromodomain inhibitors, may be not just an exception to that rule, but a class of drugs that has therapeutic utility in heart failure.

The team showed that the bromodomain inhibitor JQ-1 had therapeutic benefits in two separate animal models of advanced heart failure, but did not affect the beneficial changes to heart muscle cells that are a consequence of exercise.

The paper shows a potential new approach to heart failure an indication that, with a five-year survival rate of 60 percent, needs them.

It also shows a potential approach to another vexing problem, namely drugging transcription factors.

"There's a surprisingly tractable therapeutic index for drugging transcription in diseases," Haldar said.

While BRD4 is not itself a transcription factor, inhibiting it "dampens the transcription factor-driven network that's driving the disease . . . This is really about dampening transcriptional rewiring," he added.

In heart failure, those happen to be innate immune signaling and fibrotic signaling. Experiments in cardiac cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) showed that JQ-1 acted by blocking the activation of innate immune and profibrotic pathways, essentially preventing heart cells from rewiring themselves in maladaptive ways in response to being chronically overworked.

Haldar said the original idea to test whether the compound would have an effect in heart failure was based on "an educated guess."

Previous work had shown that certain epigenetic marks, namely acetyl marks on lysines, play a role in heart failure.

"There is a lot known about lysine acetylation in heart failure," Haldar said, and there had been previous attempts at targeting the process, which had "fallen to the wayside, in part because of issues with therapeutic index."

Even studying the molecular details of lysine acetylation's role in heart failure was challenging, because genetic approaches are not viable.

The problem became tractable with the synthesis of JQ-1 in the laboratory of James Bradner, who is a co-author on the Science Translational Medicine paper. The compound, which has been used to gain insight into epigenetic aspects of a large number of biological processes thanks to the decision of its developers to distribute it freely, targets BRD4, a "reader" protein that recognizes acetylated lysines. (See BioWorld Insight, Aug. 12, 2013.)

With the advent of JQ-1, Haldar said, "we immediately made the connection that here's a target BRD4 that you could specifically modulate that is recognizing acetyl-lysines on chromatin."

The team initially published work in 2013 showing that JQ-1 affected cellular processes in heart failure, and was an effective therapeutic in mice when given very early in the disease.

Patients, though, don't show up in their doctor's office very early in the disease. They show up with "pre-existing, often chronic heart failure," Haldar said.

At that point, the heart has already undergone significant remodeling that includes fibrosis and an activation of innate immune pathways.

The work now published in Science Translational Medicine showed that JQ-1 had effects even when given to mice that had established heart failure either due to a heart attack, or pressure overload, but did not block exercise-induced remodeling.

The team is hoping to test JQ-1 derivatives in large animal models, and ultimately take them into the clinic. Haldar is a co-founder of Tenaya Therapeutics Inc., a company launched in December with a $50 million series A financing from The Column Group. Haldar said that while he holds a patent on BET protein inhibition in heart disease, BET proteins are only "one of many targets/pathways that Tenaya is considering."

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Researchers show cancer drug class has cardiac benefits - BioWorld Online

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

Nearly 40 years after the world was jolted by the birth of the first test-tube baby, a new revolution in reproductive technology is on the horizon and it promises to be far more controversial than in vitro fertilization ever was.

Within a decade or two, researchers say, scientists will likely be able to create a baby from human skin cells that have been coaxed to grow into eggs and sperm and used to create embryos to implant in a womb.

The process, in vitro gametogenesis, or I.V.G., so far has been used only in mice. But stem cell biologists say it is only a matter of time before it could be used in human reproduction opening up mind-boggling possibilities.

With I.V.G., two men could have a baby that was biologically related to both of them, by using skin cells from one to make an egg that would be fertilized by sperm from the other. Women with fertility problems could have eggs made from their skin cells, rather than go through the lengthy and expensive process of stimulating their ovaries to retrieve their eggs.

It gives me an unsettled feeling because we dont know what this could lead to, said Paul Knoepfler, a stem cell researcher at UC Davis. You can imagine one man providing both the eggs and the sperm, almost like cloning himself. You can imagine that eggs becoming so easily available would lead to designer babies.

Some scientists even talk about what they call the Brad Pitt scenario when someone retrieves a celebritys skin cells from a hotel bed or bathtub. Or a baby might have what one law professor called multiplex parents.

There are groups out there that want to reproduce among themselves, said Sonia Suter, a George Washington University law professor who began writing about I.V.G. even before it had been achieved in mice. You could have two pairs who would each create an embryo, and then take an egg from one embryo and sperm from the other, and create a baby with four parents.

Three prominent academics in medicine and law sounded an alarm about the possible consequences in a paper published this year.

I.V.G. may raise the specter of embryo farming on a scale currently unimagined, which might exacerbate concerns about the devaluation of human life, Dr. Eli Y. Adashi, a medical science professor at Brown; I. Glenn Cohen, a Harvard Law School professor; and Dr. George Q. Daley, dean of Harvard Medical School, wrote in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Still, how soon I.V.G. might become a reality in human reproduction is open to debate.

I wouldnt be surprised if it was five years, and I wouldnt be surprised if it was 25 years, said Jeanne Loring, a researcher at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla who, with the San Diego Zoo, hopes to use I.V.G. to increase the population of the nearly extinct northern white rhino.

Loring said that when she discussed I.V.G. with colleagues who initially said it would never be used with humans, their skepticism often melted away as the talk continued. But not everyone is convinced that I.V.G. will ever become a regularly used process in human reproduction even if the ethical issues are resolved.

People are a lot more complicated than mice, said Susan Solomon, chief executive of the New York Stem Cell Foundation. And weve often seen that the closer you get to something, the more obstacles you discover.

I.V.G. is not the first reproductive technology to challenge the basic paradigm of baby-making. Back when in vitro fertilization was beginning, many people were horrified by the idea of creating babies outside the human body. And yet, I.V.F. and related procedures have become so commonplace that they now account for about 70,000, or almost 2 percent, of the babies born in the United States each year. According to the latest estimate, there have been more than 6.5 million babies born worldwide through I.V.F. and related technologies.

Of course, even I.V.F. is not universally accepted. The Catholic Church remains firm in its opposition to in vitro fertilization, in part because it so often leads to the creation of extra embryos that are frozen or discarded.

I.V.G. requires layers of complicated bioengineering. Scientists must first take adult skin cells other cells would work as well or better, but skin cells are the easiest to get and reprogram them to become embryonic stem cells capable of growing into different kinds of cells.

Then, the same kind of signaling factors that occur in nature are used to guide those stem cells to become eggs or sperm. (Cells taken from women could be made to produce sperm, the researchers say, but the sperm, lacking a Y chromosome, would produce only female babies.)

Last year, researchers in Japan, led by Katsuhiko Hayashi, used I.V.G. to make viable eggs from the skin cells of adult female mice, and produced embryos that were implanted into female mice, who then gave birth to healthy babies.

The process strikes some people as inherently repugnant.

There is a yuck factor here, said Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University. It strikes many people as intuitively yucky to have three parents, or to make a baby without starting from an egg and sperm. But then again, it used to be that people thought blood transfusions were yucky, or putting pig valves in human hearts.

Whatever the social norms, there are questions about the wisdom of tinkering with basic biological processes. And there is general agreement that reproductive technology is progressing faster than consideration of the legal and ethical questions it raises.

We have come to realize that scientific developments are outpacing our ability to think them through, Adashi said. Its a challenge for which we are not fully prepared. It would be good to be having the conversation before we are actually confronting the challenges.

Some bioethicists take the position that while research on early stages of human life can deepen the understanding of our genetic code, tinkering with biological mechanisms that have evolved over thousands of years is inherently wrongheaded.

Basic research is paramount, but its not clear that we need new methods for creating viable embryos, said David Lemberg, a bioethicist at National University in California. Attempting to apply what weve learned to create a human zygote is dangerous, because we have no idea what were doing, we have no idea what the outcomes are going to be.

Lewin writes for The New York Times.

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Growing an entire baby from skin cells could happen in a decade ... - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Its one of those times when serendipity went to work. As a team of UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers were studying a rare form of genetic cancer called Neurofibromatosis Type 1 that causes tumors to grow on nerves, what they discovered instead were hair progenitor cells. Essentially, these are the cells that cause hair to grow. With this new information on hand, the path towards managing hair growth problems, including hair discoloration (a.k.a greying of hair) now seems to have become clearer.

As explained by Dr. Lu Le, one of the researchers and currently an Associate Professor of Dermatology: With this knowledge, we hope in the future to create a topical compound or to safely deliver the necessary gene to hair follicles to correct these cosmetic problems.

Prior to this discovery, researchers were already aware that skin stem cells located in the bulge on bottom of hair follicles were involved, in one way or another, in the growth of hair. What they didnt know was how these skin cells turn into hair cells, specifically, what happens after those cells move down to the bulb or the base of hair follicles. This also meant they had no idea what to do to stimulate and manipulate their growth.

As they were studying the nerve cells and how tumors formed on them, they discovered a protein that differentiates the skin stem cells from other types of cells. The protein is called KROX20 and as far as they knew, this protein was more commonly associated with nerve development. In the hair follicles of their mice test subjects, however, they found out that KROX20 becomes activated in the skin cells which eventually turn into hair shafts that cause hair to grow. That said, though, its not as simple as that.

It turned out that KROX20 works in tandem with another protein called SCF (short for stem cell factor) and without either one, hair growth happens abnormally, or not at all.

When KROX20 turns on in a skin cell, it causes the cell to produce SCF. With both proteins now active, they move up the hair bulb, interact with melanocyte cells (the cells that produce pigment), and grow into healthy, colored hairs.

When the team removed the KROX20-producing cells, the mice did not grow any hair, meaning, they became bald. And when they removed the SCF gene, the mices hair started out as gray-colored, then turned white with age.

From these results, the obvious way forward is to backtrack whats happening, possibly try to figure out why and how aging affects KROX20 protein production. Another aspect that will also be looked at is the reason why the SCF gene stops functioning, thereby resulting in gray hair production. The findings could also help provide answers on why hair loss and graying of hair are among the first indications of aging.

The research was recently published in the journal Genes & Development.

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Cells Responsible for Hair Growth Discovered - Wall Street Pit

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

Researchers in the U.K. are set to test whether the Zika virus can fight difficult-to-treat brain cancer by attacking its cells, potentially opening up new pathways to treat the aggressive disease. Researchers will focus on glioblastoma, which is the most common form of brain cancer and has a five-year survival rate of 5 percent, Reuters reported.

QUINOA 'MILK' DIET KILLED BABY, AUTHORITIES SAY

The Zika virus causes severe birth defects in an unborn fetus when contracted during pregnancy by attacking developing stem cells in the brain. However, the disease does not have the same devastating effect on fully developed brains, suggesting that if scientists can harness the virus ability to attack the cancer cells, which are similar to developing brain stem cells, healthy brain tissue will go unharmed.

Were taking a different approach, and want to use these new insights to see if the virus can be unleashed against one of the hardest-to-treat cancers, Harry Bulstrode, a lead researcher at Cambridge University, said, in a statement to Reuters.

ITALY VOTES TO MAKE VACCINES MANDATORY

Researchers will use tumor cells in mice to test the virus, and hope that it will slow tumor growth.

If we can learn lessons from Zikas ability to cross the blood-brain barrier and target brain stem cells selectively, we could be holding the key to future treatments, Bulstrode told Reuters.

Active outbreaks of the mosquito-borne illness were reported in at least 51 countries and territories, with pregnant women advised to avoid travel to so-called virus hotbeds. In addition to birth defects, Zika has been associated with neurological disorders including brain and spinal cord infections. Long-term health consequences remain unclear.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Researchers consider Zika virus for brain cancer treatment - Fox News

By Anette Breindl Senior Science Editor

"With the advent of targeted cancer therapies, what we've found is that many of them are cardiotoxic," Saptarsi Haldar told BioWorld Today. "Pathways that are effective in cancer are toxic in the heart."

In the May 17, 2017, issue of Science Translational Medicine, Haldar, who is an associate investigator at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, and his colleagues showed that a class of epigenetic drugs, the BET bromodomain inhibitors, may be not just an exception to that rule, but a class of drugs that has therapeutic utility in heart failure.

The team showed that the bromodomain inhibitor JQ-1 had therapeutic benefits in two separate animal models of advanced heart failure, but did not affect the beneficial changes to heart muscle cells that are a consequence of exercise.

The paper shows a potential new approach to heart failure an indication that, with a five-year survival rate of 60 percent, needs them.

It also shows a potential approach to another vexing problem, namely drugging transcription factors.

"There's a surprisingly tractable therapeutic index for drugging transcription in diseases," Haldar said.

While BRD4 is not itself a transcription factor, inhibiting it "dampens the transcription factor-driven network that's driving the disease . . . This is really about dampening transcriptional rewiring," he added.

In heart failure, those happen to be innate immune signaling and fibrotic signaling. Experiments in cardiac cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) showed that JQ-1 acted by blocking the activation of innate immune and profibrotic pathways, essentially preventing heart cells from rewiring themselves in maladaptive ways in response to being chronically overworked.

Haldar said the original idea to test whether the compound would have an effect in heart failure was based on "an educated guess."

Previous work had shown that certain epigenetic marks, namely acetyl marks on lysines, play a role in heart failure.

"There is a lot known about lysine acetylation in heart failure," Haldar said, and there had been previous attempts at targeting the process, which had "fallen to the wayside, in part because of issues with therapeutic index."

Even studying the molecular details of lysine acetylation's role in heart failure was challenging, because genetic approaches are not viable.

The problem became tractable with the synthesis of JQ-1 in the laboratory of James Bradner, who is a co-author on the Science Translational Medicine paper. The compound, which has been used to gain insight into epigenetic aspects of a large number of biological processes thanks to the decision of its developers to distribute it freely, targets BRD4, a "reader" protein that recognizes acetylated lysines. (See BioWorld Insight, Aug. 12, 2013.)

With the advent of JQ-1, Haldar said, "we immediately made the connection that here's a target BRD4 that you could specifically modulate that is recognizing acetyl-lysines on chromatin."

The team initially published work in 2013 showing that JQ-1 affected cellular processes in heart failure, and was an effective therapeutic in mice when given very early in the disease.

Patients, though, don't show up in their doctor's office very early in the disease. They show up with "pre-existing, often chronic heart failure," Haldar said.

At that point, the heart has already undergone significant remodeling that includes fibrosis and an activation of innate immune pathways.

The work now published in Science Translational Medicine showed that JQ-1 had effects even when given to mice that had established heart failure either due to a heart attack, or pressure overload, but did not block exercise-induced remodeling.

The team is hoping to test JQ-1 derivatives in large animal models, and ultimately take them into the clinic. Haldar is a co-founder of Tenaya Therapeutics Inc., a company launched in December with a $50 million series A financing from The Column Group. Haldar said that while he holds a patent on BET protein inhibition in heart disease, BET proteins are only "one of many targets/pathways that Tenaya is considering."

Original post:
Cancer drug class has cardiac benefits - BioWorld Online

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

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Rock band encourages fans to become bone marrow donors - ITV.com - ITV 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.

Link:
Can you manufacture blood cells? - The Guardian

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

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.

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

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

The new technique heals burns much faster and more effectively than traditional skin grafting.

Burn victims may no longer be forced to undergo painful skin grafts, thanks to a revolutionary piece of technology that uses adult stem cells.

Instead of taking skin from one part of the body and transplanting it onto the burned area, a stem-cell spraying device simply covers the affected area with the victims own stem cells.

By taking adult stem cells from a healthy section of skin, placing them in a solution, and spraying the solution onto the wound, the patients own skin grows back and heals naturally.

The procedure has been in development for some time, and is not yet commercially available, but its capability was publicised in the press earlier this month.

The technology was featured in the Journal of the International Society for Burn Injuries, and showed incredible before and after images of the horrific injuries, and the victims almost full recoveries.

Patients who have benefitted from early treatments say their new skin is virtually indistinguishable from the rest of their body.

Commenting on the journals research, Thomas Bold, CEO of RenovaCare a company developing this technology said, the skin that regrows looks, feels and functions like the original skin.

By using adult stem cells, the healing process of the victims was also vastly accelerated.

While a skin graft treatment can take weeks or even months, and leave scarring, these patients were able to grow healthy skin in as little as four days.

In one case, a man who had suffered electrical burns to over a third of his body after touching a live wire had 24 million adult stem cells harvested and then sprayed back onto his body.

The process itself lasted only 90 minutes, and within four days, he had regrown a thin layer of skin over his arms and chest, where the burns were least severe.

After 20 days, all of the areas treated by the stem cell grafting process were described as completely healed.

RenovaCare is applying for a licence to use the technology in routine practice in Europe.

In January, it was revealed that a new technique allowed adult stem cells to be used in the treatment of heart problems.

The technique involves implanting synthetic cardiac stem cells which repair heart muscle. It has been praised as both an ethical and less risky alternative to other treatments.

Read the original here:
renovacareinc.com - The Christian Institute

fox6now.com

From hopeless to a miracle: How he got his life back after a crash left him paralyzed fox6now.com "We came to know he would be a good candidate for this regenerative treatment that we offer, meaning the stem cell injection into the spinal cord. ... "He was only the second to receive the stem cells -- at least that dose he received," added Dr. Kurpad.

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From hopeless to a miracle: How he got his life back after a crash left him paralyzed - fox6now.com