Irvine, Calif., March 26, 2015 -- Leslie Thompson of the Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center at UC Irvine has been awarded $5 million by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to continue her CIRM-funded effort to develop stem cell treatments for Huntington's disease.

The grant supports her next step: identifying and testing stem cell-based treatments for HD, an inherited, incurable and fatal neurodegenerative disorder. In this project, Thompson and her colleagues will establish an HD therapy employing human embryonic stem cells that can be evaluated in clinical trials.

Over the past seven years, Thompson, a UCI professor of psychiatry & human behavior and neurobiology & behavior, and her team have used CIRM funding to produce stem cell lines "reprogrammed" from the skin cells of individuals carrying the Huntington's genetic mutation in order to study the disease. In addition, they conducted basic and early-stage transitional studies to develop a stem cell-based technique to treat areas of the brain susceptible to HD.

"These stem cells offer a possible long-term treatment approach that could relieve the tremendous suffering experienced by HD patients and their families," said Thompson, who's also affiliated with UCI's Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders (UCI MIND). "We appreciate CIRM and the millions of people in the state of California for generously supporting breakthrough stem cell research."

With this award, CIRM has granted Thompson $10.3 million for her HD work. Overall, UCI has received $105 million from the state-funded agency.

Thompson said that her group has identified a highly promising neural stem cell line that shows disease-modifying activity in HD mice. These neural stem cells were grown from human embryonic stem cells at UC Davis. The researchers also will conduct essential preclinical efficacy and safety studies in HD mice with these cells.

Over the span of the 2-year grant, Thompson said, the goal is to finalize work that will lead to a pre-investigational-new-drug meeting with the Food & Drug Administration and a path forward for clinical trials with the neural stem cells.

"This investment will let us further test the early promise shown by these projects," said Jonathan Thomas, chair of the CIRM governing board. "Preclinical work is vital in examining the feasibility, potential effectiveness and safety of a therapy before we try it on people. These projects all showed compelling evidence that they could be tremendously beneficial to patients. We want to help them build on that earlier research and move the projects to the next level."

HD is a devastating degenerative brain disorder with no disease-modifying treatment or cure. Current approaches only address certain symptoms of HD and do not change its course.

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UCI team gets $5 million to create stem cell treatment for Huntington's disease

Stem Cell Therapy For Multiple Sclerosis
Back for round 2. After treatment in 2014 Beverly had improvement in her energy level, balance, walking and had colors come into her vision for the first time in 10 years. Beverly went blind...

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Bobby Chia (Foto by Allan Defensor)

THERE is a lot of hype going on in some circles about stem cell therapy: Is it a cure-all? Is it the elusive fountain of youth?

Wikipedia definesstem cell therapy as the use of stem cells to treat or prevent a disease or condition.The process involves the administration of live whole cells or maturation of a specific cell population in a patient for the treatment of the disease as has been done in bone marrow transplants.

Bobby Chia, a Thai national who was in Cebu for a brief visit, said that stem cell therapy has been done in Villa Medica, Germany, since the 1960s. He learned about it 10 years ago when his mother had cancer and he looked around for the best medical care for her and found it in Villa Medica. It made her so much better (she can even play tennis now) that four years ago, Chia bought the clinic being run by Dr. Geoffrey Huertgen, a third generation doctor of that clinic.

The stem cell can be taken from the patient himself, but Chia says this stem source is naturally as old as the patient himself. Villa Medica chooses to use stem cells from fetuses of sheep (he said that stem cells from any mammal would be the same, but sheep stem cells are the ones more readily available). The process for Villa Medica, says Chia, involves the designing of a cocktail of stem cells to address whatever needs correction. If the eyes are not good, we choose the eyes. If the ears are not good, we choose the ears. If the heart is not good, we choose the heart. The procedure has been known to treat diseases and ailments like Parkinsons, diabetes, hypertension, migraine, allergies etc.

It (stem cell therapy) does not make you 18 years old all over again but it energizes you; from not being able to walk to walking again. It gives you a better quality of life. It is not a quick cure, but for a lot of people it is. We offer a choice for people who have no hope, Chia shares. But my main target is people who are not sick, Chia states, referring to athletes, models, professionals who want to have a better quality of life.

Chia says there are four doctors in Villa Medica. Since the cell therapy is patient-specific, the patient needs to stay four days and four nights at the clinic: for a detox program, for physical check-up, for interview, for determining the cocktail of stem cells to be used and how. The result, Chia says,is not immediate. It may take six weeks or even longer for the stem cells to do their work.

Chia says he has had about 150 patients coming from Cebu. Leaf through the pages of the local papers, one of them might just be there!

Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on March 27, 2015.

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Newswise (New York March 25, 2015) Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs)adult cells reprogrammed back to an embryonic stem cell-like statemay better model the genetic contributions to each patient's particular disease. In a process called cellular reprogramming, researchers at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have taken mature blood cells from patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and reprogrammed them back into iPSCs to study the genetic origins of this rare blood cancer. The results appear in an upcoming issue of Nature Biotechnology.

In MDS, genetic mutations in the bone marrow stem cell cause the number and quality of blood-forming cells to decline irreversibly, further impairing blood production. Patients with MDS can develop severe anemia and in some cases leukemia also known as AML. But which genetic mutations are the critical ones causing this disease?

In this study, researchers took cells from patients with blood cancer MDS and turned them into stem cells to study the deletions of human chromosome 7 often associated with this disease.

With this approach, we were able to pinpoint a region on chromosome 7 that is critical and were able to identify candidate genes residing there that may cause this disease, said lead researcher Eirini Papapetrou, MD, PhD, Department of Oncological Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Chromosomal deletions are difficult to study with existing tools because they contain a large number of genes, making it hard to pinpoint the critical ones causing cancer. Chromosome 7 deletion is a characteristic cellular abnormality in MDS and is well-recognized for decades as a marker of unfavorable prognosis. However, the role of this deletion in the development of the disease remained unclear going into this study.

Understanding the role of specific chromosomal deletions in cancers requires determining if a deletion has observable consequences as well as identifying which specific genetic elements are critically lost. Researchers used cellular reprogramming and genome engineering to dissect the loss of chromosome 7. The methods used in this study for engineering deletions can enable studies of the consequences of alterations in genes in human cells.

Genetic engineering of human stem cells has not been used for disease-associated genomic deletions, said Dr. Papapetrou. This work sheds new light on how blood cancer develops and also provides a new approach that can be used to study chromosomal deletions associated with a variety of human cancers, neurological and developmental diseases.

Reprogramming MDS cells could provide a powerful tool to dissect the architecture and evolution of this disease and to link the genetic make-up of MDS cells to characteristics and traits of these cells. Further dissecting the MDS stem cells at the molecular level could provide insights into the origins and development of MDS and other blood cancers. Moreover, this work could provide a platform to test and discover new treatments for these diseases.

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Mount Sinai Researchers Discover Genetic Origins of Myelodysplastic Syndrome Using Stem Cells

(New York - March 25, 2015) Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) -- adult cells reprogrammed back to an embryonic stem cell-like state--may better model the genetic contributions to each patient's particular disease. In a process called cellular reprogramming, researchers at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have taken mature blood cells from patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and reprogrammed them back into iPSCs to study the genetic origins of this rare blood cancer. The results appear in an upcoming issue of Nature Biotechnology.

In MDS, genetic mutations in the bone marrow stem cell cause the number and quality of blood-forming cells to decline irreversibly, further impairing blood production. Patients with MDS can develop severe anemia and in some cases leukemia also known as AML. But which genetic mutations are the critical ones causing this disease?

In this study, researchers took cells from patients with blood cancer MDS and turned them into stem cells to study the deletions of human chromosome 7 often associated with this disease.

"With this approach, we were able to pinpoint a region on chromosome 7 that is critical and were able to identify candidate genes residing there that may cause this disease," said lead researcher Eirini Papapetrou, MD, PhD, Department of Oncological Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Chromosomal deletions are difficult to study with existing tools because they contain a large number of genes, making it hard to pinpoint the critical ones causing cancer. Chromosome 7 deletion is a characteristic cellular abnormality in MDS and is well-recognized for decades as a marker of unfavorable prognosis. However, the role of this deletion in the development of the disease remained unclear going into this study.

Understanding the role of specific chromosomal deletions in cancers requires determining if a deletion has observable consequences as well as identifying which specific genetic elements are critically lost. Researchers used cellular reprogramming and genome engineering to dissect the loss of chromosome 7. The methods used in this study for engineering deletions can enable studies of the consequences of alterations in genes in human cells.

"Genetic engineering of human stem cells has not been used for disease-associated genomic deletions," said Dr. Papapetrou. "This work sheds new light on how blood cancer develops and also provides a new approach that can be used to study chromosomal deletions associated with a variety of human cancers, neurological and developmental diseases."

Reprogramming MDS cells could provide a powerful tool to dissect the architecture and evolution of this disease and to link the genetic make-up of MDS cells to characteristics and traits of these cells. Further dissecting the MDS stem cells at the molecular level could provide insights into the origins and development of MDS and other blood cancers. Moreover, this work could provide a platform to test and discover new treatments for these diseases.

###

This study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the American Society of Hematology, the Sidney Kimmel Foundation for Cancer Research, the Aplastic Anemia & MDS International Foundation, the Ellison Medical Foundation, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, the University of Washington Royalty Research Fund, and a John H. Tietze Stem Cell Scientist Award.

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Julie Gramyk, Medical Esthetic, explains how Momentis #39; new skincare system is the first in the world to penetrate beyond the skin #39;s barrier and target the skin #39;s stem cells resulting in rebuilding...

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Scientists at the University of Copenhagen have captured thousands of progenitor cells of the pancreas on video as they made decisions to divide and expand the organ or to specialize into the endocrine cells that regulate our blood sugar levels.

The study reveals that stem cells behave as people in a society, making individual choices but with enough interactions to bring them to their end-goal. The results could eventually lead to a better control over the production of insulin-producing endocrine cells for diabetes therapy.

The research is published in the scientific journal PLOS Biology.

Why one cell matters

In a joint collaboration between the University of Copenhagen and University of Cambridge, Professor Anne Grapin- Botton and a team of researchers including Assistant Professor Yung Hae Kim from DanStem Center focused on marking the progenitor cells of the embryonic pancreas, commonly referred to as 'mothers', and their 'daughters' in different fluorescent colours and then captured them on video to analyse how they make decisions.

Prior to this work, there were methods to predict how specific types of pancreas cells would evolve as the embryo develops. However, by looking at individual cells, the scientists found that even within one group of cells presumed to be of the same type, some will divide many times to make the organ bigger while others will become specialized and will stop dividing.

The scientists witnessed interesting occurrences where the 'mother' of two 'daughters' made a decision and passed it on to the two 'daughters' who then acquired their specialization in synchrony. By observing enough cells, they were able to extract logic rules of decision-making, and with the help of Pau Ru, a mathematician from the University of Cambridge, they developed a mathematical model to make long-term predictions over multiple generations of cells.

Stem cell movies

'It is the first time we have made movies of a quality that is high enough to follow thousands of individual cells in this organ, for periods of time that are long enough for us to follow the slow decision process. The task seemed daunting and technically challenging, but fascinating", says Professor Grapin-Botton.

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Researchers at the University of Cambridge have grown functional "mini-lungs" using stems cells derived from the skin cells of patients with a debilitating lung disease. Not only can the development help them in coming up with effective treatments for specific lung diseases like cystic fibrosis, but the process has the potential to be scaled up to screen thousands of new compounds to identify potential new drugs.

Creating miniature organoids has been the focus of many a research group, as it allows scientists to better understand the processes that take place inside an organ, figure out how specific diseases occur and develop or even work towards creating bioengineered lungs.

The research team from the Wellcome Trust-Medical Research Council Cambridge Stem Cell Institute studied a lung disease called cystic fibrosis, which is caused by genetic mutation and shortens a patient's average lifespan. Patients have great difficulty breathing as the lungs are overwhelmed by thickened mucus.

To create working mini-lungs, the researchers took skin cells from patients with the most common form of cystic fibrosis and reprogrammed them to an induced pluripotent state (iPS), which allows the cells to grow into a different type of cell inside the body.

They then activated a process called gastrulation which pushes the cells to form distinct layers such as the endoderm and foregut. The cells were then pushed further to form distal airway tissue, the part of the lung that deals with exchange of gases.

In a sense, what weve created are mini-lungs," says Dr Nick Hannan, the lead researcher. While they only represent the distal part of lung tissue, they are grown from human cells and so can be more reliable than using traditional animal models, such as mice."

To find out whether the mini lungs could actually be used to screen drugs, the team tested them out with the aid of chloride-sensitive fluorescent dye. Cells from cystic fibrosis patients typically malfunction and don't allow the chloride to pass through, so there's no change in fluorescence levels.

The team added a molecule that's currently undergoing clinical trials and noted a change in fluorescence, signaling that it was effective in getting the diseased lung cells to function properly and that the mini lungs could, in principle, be used to test potential new drugs.

"Were confident this process could be scaled up to enable us to screen tens of thousands of compounds and develop mini-lungs with other diseases such as lung cancer and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis," says Dr Hannan. "This is far more practical, should provide more reliable data and is also more ethical than using large numbers of mice for such research."

The research was published in the journal Stem Cells and Development.

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CRISPR-Cas9 is a powerful new tool for editing the genome. For researchers around the world, the CRISPR-Cas9 technique is an exciting innovation because it is faster and cheaper than previous methods. Now, using a molecular trick, Dr. Van Trung Chu and Professor Klaus Rajewsky of the Max Delbrck Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch and Dr. Ralf Khn, MDC and Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), have found a solution to considerably increase the efficiency of precise genetic modifications by up to eightfold.

"What we used to do in years, we can now achieve in months," said gene researcher and immunologist Klaus Rajewsky, indicating the power of this new genome-editing technology. CRISPR-Cas9 not only speeds up research considerably - at the same time it is much more efficient, cheaper and also easier to handle than the methods used so far.

The CRISPR-Cas9 technology allows researchers to transiently introduce DNA double-strand breaks into the genome of cells or model organisms at genes of choice. In these artificially produced strand breaks, they can insert or cut out genes and change the genetic coding according to their needs.

Mammalian cells are able to repair DNA damage in their cells using two different repair mechanisms. The homology-directed repair (HDR) pathway enables the insertion of preplanned genetic modifications using engineered DNA molecules that share identical sequence regions with the targeted gene and which are recognized as a repair template. Thus, HDR repair is very precise but occurs only at low frequency in mammalian cells.

The other repair system, called non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ) is more efficient in nature but less precise, since it readily reconnects free DNA ends without repair template, thereby frequently deleting short sequences from the genome. Therefore, NHEJ repair can only be used to create short genomic deletions, but does not support precise gene modification or the insertion and replacement of gene segments.

Many researchers, including Van Trung Chu, Klaus Rajewsky and Ralf Khn, are seeking to promote the HDR repair pathway to make gene modification in the laboratory more precise in order to avoid editing errors and to increase efficiency. The MDC researchers succeeded in increasing the efficiency of the more precisely working HDR repair system by temporarily inhibiting the most dominant repair protein of NHEJ, the enzyme DNA Ligase IV. In their approach they used various inhibitors such as proteins and small molecules.

"But we also used a trick of nature and blocked Ligase IV with the proteins of adeno viruses. Thus we were able to increase the efficiency of the CRISPR-Cas9 technology up to eightfold," Ralf Khn explained. For example, they succeeded in inserting a gene into a predefined position in the genome (knock-in) in more than 60 per cent of all manipulated mouse cells. Khn has just recently joined the MDC and is head of the research group for "iPS cell based disease modeling." Before coming to the MDC, he was on the research staff of Helmholtz Zentrum Mnchen. "The expertise of Ralf Khn is very important for gene research at MDC and especially for my research group," Klaus Rajewsky said.

Concurrent with the publication of the article by the MDC researchers, Nature Biotechnology published another, related paper on CRISPR-Cas9 technology. It comes from the laboratory of Hidde Ploegh of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, MA, USA.

Somatic gene therapy with CRISPR-Cas9 is a goal

The new CRISPR-Cas9 technology, developed in 2012, is already used in the laboratory to correct genetic defects in mice. Researchers also plan to modify the genetic set up of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), which can be differentiated into specialized cell types or tissues. That is, researchers are able to use the new tool to introduce patient-derived mutations into the genome of iPS cells for studying the onset of human diseases. "Another future goal, however, is to use CRISPR-Cas9 for somatic gene therapy in humans with severe diseases," Klaus Rajewsky pointed out.

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Researchers greatly increase precision of new genome editing tool

CRISPR-Cas9 is a powerful new tool for editing the genome. For researchers around the world, the CRISPR-Cas9 technique is an exciting innovation because it is faster and cheaper than previous methods. Now, using a molecular trick, Dr. Van Trung Chu and Professor Klaus Rajewsky of the Max Delbrck Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch and Dr. Ralf Khn, MDC and Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), have found a solution to considerably increase the efficiency of precise genetic modifications by up to eightfold (Nature Biotechnology: doi:10.1038/nbt.3198)**.

"What we used to do in years, we can now achieve in months," said gene researcher and immunologist Klaus Rajewsky, indicating the power of this new genome-editing technology. CRISPR-Cas9 not only speeds up research considerably - at the same time it is much more efficient, cheaper and also easier to handle than the methods used so far.

The CRISPR-Cas9 technology allows researchers to transiently introduce DNA double-strand breaks into the genome of cells or model organisms at genes of choice. In these artificially produced strand breaks, they can insert or cut out genes and change the genetic coding according to their needs.

Mammalian cells are able to repair DNA damage in their cells using two different repair mechanisms. The homology-directed repair (HDR) pathway enables the insertion of preplanned genetic modifications using engineered DNA molecules that share identical sequence regions with the targeted gene and which are recognized as a repair template. Thus, HDR repair is very precise but occurs only at low frequency in mammalian cells.

The other repair system, called non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ) is more efficient in nature but less precise, since it readily reconnects free DNA ends without repair template, thereby frequently deleting short sequences from the genome. Therefore, NHEJ repair can only be used to create short genomic deletions, but does not support precise gene modification or the insertion and replacement of gene segments.

Many researchers, including Van Trung Chu, Klaus Rajewsky and Ralf Khn, are seeking to promote the HDR repair pathway to make gene modification in the laboratory more precise in order to avoid editing errors and to increase efficiency. The MDC researchers succeeded in increasing the efficiency of the more precisely working HDR repair system by temporarily inhibiting the most dominant repair protein of NHEJ, the enzyme DNA Ligase IV. In their approach they used various inhibitors such as proteins and small molecules.

"But we also used a trick of nature and blocked Ligase IV with the proteins of adeno viruses. Thus we were able to increase the efficiency of the CRISPR-Cas9 technology up to eightfold," Ralf Khn explained. For example, they succeeded in inserting a gene into a predefined position in the genome (knock-in) in more than 60 per cent of all manipulated mouse cells. Khn has just recently joined the MDC and is head of the research group for "iPS cell based disease modeling". Before coming to the MDC, he was on the research staff of Helmholtz Zentrum Mnchen. "The expertise of Ralf Khn is very important for gene research at MDC and especially for my research group," Klaus Rajewsky said.

Concurrent with the publication of the article by the MDC researchers, Nature Biotechnology published another, related paper on CRISPR-Cas9 technology. It comes from the laboratory of Hidde Ploegh of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, MA, USA.

Somatic gene therapy with CRISPR-Cas9 is a goal

The new CRISPR-Cas9 technology, developed in 2012, is already used in the laboratory to correct genetic defects in mice. Researchers also plan to modify the genetic set up of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), which can be differentiated into specialized cell types or tissues. That is, researchers are able to use the new tool to introduce patient-derived mutations into the genome of iPS cells for studying the onset of human diseases. "Another future goal, however, is to use CRISPR-Cas9 for somatic gene therapy in humans with severe diseases," Klaus Rajewsky pointed out.

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Celprogen Released Stem Cell Active Ingredients for the Cosmetic Industry Tested and Validated in Cosmetic Products for a Decade

The present invention relates to culturing stem cells in animal free conditions has been developed and optimized by Celprogen utilizing single use bioreactor technology. The cosmetic industry has benefited from this technology for their regenerative skin care product lines. The topical application of these skin care products utilizing Celprogens Stem Cell Derived Conditioned Media have been in the market for 10 plus years.

About Celprogen Inc. Celprogen Inc. is a global Stem Cell Research & Therapeutics company which is developing a proprietary portfolio of unique therapeutics products and life science research tools that includes genetic engineering technologies, stem cell technologies for regenerative medicine, as well as bio-engineering products for tissue & organ transplants. Headquartered in Torrance, California, Celprogen is committed to the research, development, and manufacture of quality Stem Cell, Cancer Stem Cell and Primary Cell Culture products to serve our global community. Additional information about Celprogen is available at http://www.celprogen.com.

For additional information on the product line contact: Jay Sharma Phone: 310 542 8822 info@celprogen.com http://www.celprogen.com

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Newswise March 24, 2015, NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. - Mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) transplantation reduced opioid tolerance and opioid-induced hyperalgesia caused by daily morphine injections in rats, according to new research. The results could herald stem cell transplantation as an innovative, safe, efficacious and cost-effective therapy to treat pain and opioid tolerance, said researchers, who presented results in a Plenary Research Highlight session at the 31st Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Pain Medicine.

Not only was opioid tolerance prevented when the rats were transplanted with MSC before repeated morphine injections, but tolerance was reversed when the rats were treated after opioid tolerance had developed, results demonstrated.

MSCs have a remarkable anti-inflammatory effect and a powerful anti-tolerance effect, said the studys principal investigator, Jianguo Cheng, M.D., Ph.D., who led the research team from the Cleveland Clinic, in Ohio. Although clinical trials are still three to five years away, he said, eventually, The results may apply to millions of patients with a wide range of pain states, including cancer pain and other intractable chronic pain that requires long-term opioid therapy.

Furthermore, Cheng characterized the procedure as practical, in light of readily available sources of stem cells, reliable stem cell technology, the simplicity of transplantation procedures and the fact that clinical trials are already underway involving autoimmune and other diseases.

The Institute of Medicine report on pain in America documented millions who suffer with chronic pain (Relieving Pain in America: A Blueprint for Transforming Prevention, Care, Education, and Research. National Academies Press [US]; 2011). Opioid therapy is a cornerstone component of pain management for many people with severe, ongoing pain; however, side effects such as tolerance and the risks posed by abuse, addiction and drug overdose limit its utility. Tolerance, a physiologic process in which the patients body adjusts to a dose and no longer achieves pain relief, is a common limitation with opioid therapy. The higher doses that result can limit effectiveness and compromise safety.

Glial cells are of growing interest in pain research and have been implicated in the development of tolerance. Glial cell activity also produces pain through the release of products that excite the nervous system, playing an important role in the spinal cord during nerve injury. Furthermore, the opioids used to treat pain, also can induce glial activity, causing pain relief to drop and unwanted opioid effects, including tolerance, dependence, reward and decreased breathing, to grow. A focus of research, then, is to separate the desired effect of pain relief from the unwanted opioid effects (Watkins et al, Trends in Pharmacological Sciences 2009;30(11): 581-91).

Interest in transplant of stem cells is another maturing research avenue (Hsu et al, Cell Transplant 2007;16(2):133-50). MSCs can differentiate into a variety of cell types and have been investigated for potential repair of damaged neural cells and for calming inflammation in the immune system to promote recovery after traumatic brain injury (Zhang et al, J Neuroinflammation 2013;10(1):106).

Following this line of research, the study investigators wondered whether they could create an anti-tolerance therapy by transplanting MSCs into the intrathecal space surrounding the spinal cord. With approval by the Cleveland Clinic Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee and funding through the Department of Defenses Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs, they compared the withdrawal thresholds of the hind paws in response to painful mechanical and thermal stimuli in two groups of rats that received daily morphine injections. The first group was treated with MSC transplantation and the control group with phosphate-buffered saline (PBS).

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Mar 23, 2015 by Denis Paiste MIT biological engineering graduate student Frances Liu works with a spiral-shaped inertial microfluidic separation device for separating stem cell populations in the Laboratory for Material Chemomechanics at MIT. This device was adapted from previous designs to separate cells as a function of diameter. Liu also grows bone marrow-derived stem cells and studies how those stem cells release certain chemicals in response to mechanical interactions with materials in the surrounding environment. Credit: Denis Paiste/Materials Processing Center

Researchers in MIT Associate Professor Krystyn J. Van Vliet's group last year showed that three biomechanical and biophysical markers could accurately identify the most desirable stem cells from a mixed group of bone marrow-derived cells. Now, MIT biological engineering graduate student Frances Liu is trying to advance that work by understanding how to alter the stem cells' physical environment to get them to produce the most desirable chemical output.

The bone marrow cells secrete special chemicals called cytokines that are needed in the body to repair bone tissue, fat tissue, and connective tissue like cartilage. "These so-called factors that the cells produce are associated with those tissue growth functions and tissue repair functions," Van Vliet says.

Liu grows bone marrow-derived stem cells and studies how those stem cells release certain chemicals in response to mechanical interactions with materials in their surrounding environment. "I would like to manipulate the cells, using cell-material interactions, or synthetic materials, to produce certain chemicals beneficial to tissue repair," Liu explains in the Laboratory for Material Chemomechanics at MIT. "Right now we are in the characterization phase, quantifying which and how much of different cytokines the cells secrete in response to different chemical and mechanical cues that we provide. Down the line, we aim to engineer those cytokine profiles using cell-material interactions." Liu, 24, is a third-year PhD student and expects to complete her doctorate in 2017. She received her bachelor of science degree in biomedical engineering from Brown University.

Liu is examining how various groups of stem cells differ in response to lab-controlled changes in their environment in ways that might be important for tissue repair in the body. "Frances is determining the correlations between the mechanical properties of the materials the cells interact with and the chemical factors that they produce in response to that chemomechanical coupling," Van Vliet says.

Heterogeneous cellular factories

"You can think of the cells as factories; they're factories of chemicals," Van Vliet explains. "One of the main ways you change the way that factory operates is you change the material properties of its environment. How stiff that environment is, how acidic that environment is, how rough that environment is, all of those characteristics of the cell's outside world can directly correlate with the chemicals that that cell produces. We don't really understand all of why that happens yet, but part of Frances' thesis is to understand these particular stem cells and the subpopulations within them."

While other researchers previously studied mechanical factors such as stiffness on the function of these mesenchymal (bone marrow-derived) stem cells, it wasn't widely recognized that they were examining a mixed population of cells, not a single well-defined cell population. "Some of them were stem cells, but some were not," Van Vliet says.

One way that Liu sorts her stem cells into groups is using an inertial microfluidic separation device that separates cells of large diameter cells from those of small diameter. This device was adapted from previous designs of their collaborator, MIT Professor Jongyoon Han, as part of the interdisciplinary team that Van Vliet leads within the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART). The group showed in a 2014 paper that three markerssize, mechanical stiffness, and how much the nucleus inside the cell moves aroundare sufficient to identify stem cells in a heterogeneous population of chemically similar but non-stem cells. "We measured those three properties as well as several other properties, but only those three properties together, that triplet of properties, distinguished a stem cell from a non-stem cell," Van Vliet says.

By using the microfluidic device, we can better understand the differences between the subpopulations of these heterogeneous bone marrow cells and which cytokines each subpopulation may be secreting, both in the body and in the lab.

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FREDERICK, Md., March 23, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --Recent studies employing adult stem cells obtained from bone marrow and fat have been used in patients suffering from osteoarthritis of the knee. Results have indicated not only symptomatic improvement but also suggest that cartilage healing and regeneration may be taking place.

According to Director, Dr. Nathan Wei of the Arthritis Treatment Center, "Osteoarthritis options in the past have been limited to symptom relief. We are now entering an era where we have therapies that may also rebuild lost cartilage."

Osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee affects more than 20 million Americans. It is a disease due to loss of cartilage, the gristle that caps the ends of long bones and provides cushioning and shock absorption.

He goes on to say, "by administering adult stem cells, in a certain fashion, we may be able to restore lost cartilage. While this action has been demonstrated in multiple animal models, it has only been described in anecdotal reports in humans. Fortunately, we are now conducting clinical studies that are much better controlled and more scientifically valid."

Dr. Wei adds, "The positive effect on arthritis is not only due to multiplication, division, and transformation of the stem cell into cartilage, but it is also due to the fact the stem cell releases proteins that attract other reparative cells to the area. This is called the 'paracrine' effect."

"We are excited about the early results of our investigation and hope the results will continue to be positive. If so, I hope that knee replacement surgery might become a thing of the past," he concludes.

Dr. Wei is a board-certified rheumatologist and regenerative medicine expert. He is director of the Arthritis Treatment Center located in Frederick, Maryland.

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Newswise LA JOLLA, CA March 23, 2015 Stem cells can generate any type of cell in the body, but they are inactive most of the timeand for good reason. When stem cells become too active and divide too often, they risk acquiring cell damage and mutations. In the case of blood stem cells (also called hematopoietic stem cells or HSCs), this can lead to blood cancers, a loss of blood cells and an impaired ability to fight disease.

Now scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found that a particular enzyme in HSCs is key to maintaining healthy periods of inactivity. Their findings, published recently in the journal Blood, show that animal models without this enzyme experience dangerous HSC activation and ultimately succumb to lethal anemia.

These HSCs remain active too long and then disappear, said TSRI Associate Professor Karsten Sauer, senior author of the new study. "As a consequence, the mice lose their red blood cells and die."

With this new understanding of the enzyme, called Inositol trisphosphate 3-kinase B (ItpkB), scientists are closer to improving therapies for diseases such as bone marrow failure syndrome, anemia, leukemia, lymphoma and immunodeficiencies.

Stem Cells Need Rest

HSCs are a type of adult stem cell that live in little niches in the bone marrow. They are normally inactive, or quiescent, and only divide to self-renew about every two months.

However, when mature blood cells are lost, for example through severe bleeding or during infections, HSCs become activated to generate new progenitor cellsthe cells that replenish the blood supply and produce immune cells to fight disease. Once the blood cells have been replenished, the HSCs become quiescent again.

The balance between inactivity and activity is important because HSC activation generates side products that harm HSCs. In addition, every division introduces a risk of mutation, sometimes leading to cancer. Its like a car wearing down its own engine while it is doing its work, said Sauer. "Like people, HSCs need long periods of rest to remain healthy and work well."

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TSRI Team Discovers Enzyme that Keeps Blood Stem Cells Functional to Prevent Anemia

Investigational Therapies and Stem Cell Research in PAH
From PHA #39;s 2014 International PH Conference and Scientific Sessions. Panelists: Raymond Benza, MD, Allegheny General Hospital, Pittsburgh, Pa. (Chair) Vallerie McLaughlin, MD, University of...

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Investigational Therapies and Stem Cell Research in PAH - Video

Boston, MA (PRWEB) March 24, 2015

The opening keynote address presented by Asymmetrex, LLC to an assembled audience of about 100 international experts in stem cell science, medicine, and engineering challenged attendees to consider whether the past 10 years of rapid growth of heterologous stem cell transplantation trials was the best path to achieving effective regenerative medicines. Among the participants there were a number of clinical and industry experts who pursued heterologous stem cell treatments. To a large extent, heterologous stem cell transplantation treatments involve evaluating bone marrow-derived or fat-derived cells as possible therapies for illnesses and disorders in other organs and tissues. Sherley suggested that such clinical trials were motivated primarily by the easier access and greater availability of these types of cell preparations instead of good biological rationale. This intentional provocation got the conference off to energetic discussion that continued throughout the day.

As the co-chair of the conferences first-days focus on stem cell medical engineering, Sherley shared with attendees Asymmetrexs essential technological basis, which is the asymmetric self-renewal of adult tissue stem cells. Sherley related how all Asymmetrexs innovative technologies for advancing stem cell medicine were derivative of the companys superior research position on asymmetric self-renewal, which is the unique property of adult tissue stem cells that defines their function in the body. Adult tissue stem cells multiply to continuously replenish expired mature tissue cells without losing their own stem cell identity. Because embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells do not have asymmetric self-renewal, they are incapable of providing lasting cellular therapies.

Sherley described how each of Asymmetrexs patented technologies for stem cell medicine was based on asymmetric self-renewal. Asymmetrex holds patents for the only method described for routine production of natural human tissue stem cells that retain their normal function. The company also holds patents for biomarkers that can be used to count tissue stem cells for the first time. The companys most recently developed technology was invented with computer-simulation leader, AlphaSTAR Corporation. In partnership, the two companies created a first-of-its-kind method for monitoring adult tissue stem cell number and function for any human tissue that can be cultured. This advance is the basis for the two companies AlphaSTEM technology for detecting adult tissue stem cell-toxic drug candidates before conventional preclinical testing in animals or clinical trials. Asymmetrex and AlphaSTAR plan to market the new technology to pharmaceutical companies. The implementation of AlphaSTEM technology would accelerate drug development and reduce adverse drug events for volunteers and patients. At full capacity use, AlphaSTEM could reduce U.S. drug development costs by $4-5 billion each year.

About Asymmetrex (http://asymmetrex.com/)

Asymmetrex, LLC is a Massachusetts life sciences company with a focus on developing technologies to advance stem cell medicine. Asymmetrexs founder and director, James L. Sherley, M.D., Ph.D. is an internationally recognized expert on the unique properties of adult tissue stem cells. The companys patent portfolio contains biotechnologies that solve the two main technical problems production and quantification that have stood in the way of successful commercialization of human adult tissue stem cells for regenerative medicine and drug development. In addition, the portfolio includes novel technologies for isolating cancer stem cells and producing induced pluripotent stem cells for disease research purposes. Currently, Asymmetrexs focus is employing its technological advantages to develop facile methods for monitoring adult stem cell number and function in clinically important human tissues.

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Asymmetrex Opens Up 5th World Congress on Cell and Stem Cell Research in Chicago with a Focus on Its New Technologies ...

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stem cell therapy Jakarta tangerang serpong bsd bintaro - Video

Bone Cancer - Chondrosarcoma 3 weeks after Surgery
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Bone Cancer - Chondrosarcoma 3 weeks after Surgery - Video