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Cancer Treatment Clears Two Australian Men of HIV

By Dr. Matthew Watson

Melbourne: In a discovery that raises hope for a cure for AIDS, two Australian men have been found to be HIV-free after receiving stem cells to treat cancer. The two patients' virus levels became undetectable after bone-marrow therapy with stem cells.

They are still on antiretroviral therapy (ART) "as a precaution", but those drugs alone could not be responsible for bringing the virus to such low levels, said David Cooper, director of the Kirby Institute at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, who led the discovery.

Cooper began searching for patients who had been purged of the HIV virus after attending a presentation by a United States team last year at a conference of the International AIDS Society in Kuala Lumpur.

At that meeting, researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, reported that two patients who had received stem-cell transplants were virus-free.

Cooper and his collaborators scanned the archives of St Vincent's hospital in Sydney, one of the largest bone-marrow centres in Australia.

"We went back and looked whether we had transplanted [on] any HIV-positive patients, and found these two," said Cooper. The first patient had received a bone-marrow transplant for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2011.

His replacement stem cells came from a donor who carried one copy of a gene thought to afford protection against the virus. The other had been treated for leukaemia in 2012.

Because of the risk of relapse, Cooper's team will not claim that their patients are cured, 'nature.com' reported. However, Cooper said the results show that "there is something about bone-marrow transplantation in people with HIV that has an anti-HIV reservoir effect, such that the reservoirs go down to very low levels. And if we can understand what that is and how that happens, it will really accelerate the field of cure search."

Stem-cell transplant in itself cannot be used as a routine HIV treatment, because of the high mortality (10 per cent) associated with the procedure, researchers said.

Earlier this month, the search for AIDS cure suffered a major setback when a child in the US, who was thought to have been cured of HIV after intensive drug therapy, was found with detectable levels of the virus.

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Montreal woman with leukemia desperately seeks Vietnamese stem cell donors

By raymumme

Leukemia patient Mai Duong is in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant -- something doctors say the Montreal resident requires within a matter of weeks.

While finding a well-matched stem cell donor is already a difficult task, the 34-year-old mother of one faces an added challenge: shes Vietnamese.

Duong was first diagnosed with acute leukemia in 2013, when she was 15 weeks pregnant with her second child. She was forced to terminate the pregnancy as she underwent seven months of chemotherapy, putting her cancer into remission for seven months.

But it returned in May, and doctors gave her two months to find a stem cell match.

"The only option for me to get cured is with the generosity of people," she says.

Duongs case is raising the alarm about a need for stem cell donors among Canada's minority groups, as those in need of transplants are more likely to find a donor from the same ethnic background.

Canadian Blood Services says less than 25 per cent of individuals in need of a stem cell transplant will be able to find a match within their own families and will have to turn to the public inthe hopes of finding a suitable donor.

But ethnic minorities are under-represented on donor lists in North America.

Less than one per cent of registered stem cell donors in Quebec are of South Asian descent, according to Hema-Quebec, the provinces blood services agency. The statistics are similar across Canada and in the international donor database.

"There is a cultural effect and religious effect," spokesperson Susie Joron told CTV News. "The other issue is that the biggest registries are in America and Germany, which has a big Caucasian population."

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HIV Cleared in Two Patients via Cancer Treatment

By Dr. Matthew Watson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Montreal woman desperately seeks Vietnamese stem cell donors

By Dr. Matthew Watson

Leukemia patient Mai Duong is in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant -- something doctors say the Montreal resident requires within a matter of weeks.

While finding a well-matched stem cell donor is already a difficult task, the 34-year-old mother of one faces an added challenge: shes Vietnamese.

Duong was first diagnosed with acute leukemia in 2013, when she was 15 weeks pregnant with her second child. She was forced to terminate the pregnancy as she underwent seven months of chemotherapy, putting her cancer into remission for seven months.

But it returned in May, and doctors gave her two months to find a stem cell match.

"The only option for me to get cured is with the generosity of people," she says.

Duongs case is raising the alarm about a need for stem cell donors among Canada's minority groups, as those in need of transplants are more likely to find a donor from the same ethnic background.

Canadian Blood Services says less than 25 per cent of individuals in need of a stem cell transplant will be able to find a match within their own families and will have to turn to the public inthe hopes of finding a suitable donor.

But ethnic minorities are under-represented on donor lists in North America.

Less than one per cent of registered stem cell donors in Quebec are of South Asian descent, according to Hema-Quebec, the provinces blood services agency. The statistics are similar across Canada and in the international donor database.

"There is a cultural effect and religious effect," spokesperson Susie Joron told CTV News. "The other issue is that the biggest registries are in America and Germany, which has a big Caucasian population."

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Researchers Find Gene That Could Make It Easier To Develop Life-saving Stem Cells

By Sykes24Tracey

July 21, 2014

Michigan State University

Not unlike looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack, a team of Michigan State University researchers have found a gene that could be key to the development of stem cells cells that can potentially save millions of lives by morphing into practically any cell in the body.

The gene, known as ASF1A, was not discovered by the team. However, it is at least one of the genes responsible for the mechanism of cellular reprogramming, a phenomenon that can turn one cell type into another, which is key to the making of stem cells.

In a paper published in the journal Science, the researchers describe how they analyzed more than 5,000 genes from a human egg, or oocyte, before determining that the ASF1A, along with another gene known as OCT4 and a helper soluble molecule, were the ones responsible for the reprogramming.

This has the potential to be a major breakthrough in the way we look at how stem cells are developed, said Elena Gonzalez-Munoz, a former MSU post-doctoral researcher and first author of the paper. Researchers are just now figuring out how adult somatic cells such as skin cells can be turned into embryonic stem cells. Hopefully this will be the way to understand more about how that mechanism works.

In 2006, an MSU team identified the thousands of genes that reside in the oocyte. It was from those, they concluded, that they could identify the genes responsible for cellular reprogramming.

In 2007, a team of Japanese researchers found that by introducing four other genes into cells, stem cells could be created without the use of a human egg. These cells are called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs.

This is important because the iPSCs are derived directly from adult tissue and can be a perfect genetic match for a patient, said Jose Cibelli, an MSU professor of animal science and a member of the team.

The researchers say that the genes ASF1A and OCT4 work in tandem with a ligand, a hormone-like substance that also is produced in the oocyte called GDF9, to facilitate the reprogramming process.

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Motoneuron-like cell transplantation and GDNF delivery for repair of SCI

By LizaAVILA

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

18-Jul-2014

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

Adipose-derived stem cells-transdifferentiated motoneurons after transplantation can integrate in the host cord. However, cell survival has been restricted by a lack of ideal environment for nerve cell growth. Taki Tiraihi, Shefa Neuroscience Research Center at Khatam Al-Anbia Hospital, Iran developed rat models of spinal cord injury (SCI) and injected adipose-derived stem cells-transdifferentiated motoneurons into the epicenter, rostral and caudal regions of the impact site and simultaneously transplanted glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF)-gelfoam complex into the myelin sheath. Motoneurons-like cell transplantation combined with GDNF delivery reduced cavity formations and increased cell density in the transplantation site. The combined therapy exhibited superior promoting effects on recovery of motor function to transplantation of GDNF, adipose-derived stem cells or motoneurons alone. These findings suggest that motoneuron-like cell transplantation combined with GDNF delivery holds a great promise for repair of spinal cord injury. Related results were published in Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 9, No. 10, 2014).

###

Article: "Intraspinal transplantation of motoneuron-like cell combined with delivery of polymer-based glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor for repair of spinal cord contusion injury" by Alireza Abdanipour, Taki Tiraihi, Taher Taheri (Shefa Neuroscience Research Center at Khatam Al-Anbia Hospital, Tehran, Iran) Abdanipour A, Tiraihi T, Taheri T. Intraspinal transplantation of motoneuron-like cell combined with delivery of polymer-based glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor for repair of spinal cord contusion injury. Neural Regen Res. 2014;9(10):1003-1013.

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

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

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Hello Doctor Nandani Gokulchandran On Stem Cell Therapy Treatment 20th July 2014 – Video

By daniellenierenberg


Hello Doctor Nandani Gokulchandran On Stem Cell Therapy Treatment 20th July 2014

By: zee chovis taas

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ViaCyte asks FDA for go-ahead with human trials of cell replacement therapy for diabetes

By daniellenierenberg

ViaCyte, a privately held regenerative medicine company developing a cell replacement therapy for the treatment of diabetes, has filed an Investigational New Drug application with the United States Food and Drug Administration, seeking to start a Phase 1/2 clinical trial in patients with type 1 diabetes, it was reported on Friday.

The trial will assess the safety and efficacy of ViaCyte's VC-01 product candidate, a stem cell-derived, encapsulated cell replacement therapy. The company has also submitted a Medical Device Master File to the United States Food and Drug Administration in support of the Encaptra drug delivery system, the device component of the VC-01 product candidate. The company's VC-01 product candidate includes pancreatic progenitor cells, called PEC-01 cells, which are derived from a proprietary human embryonic stem cell line.

Paul Laikind, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of ViaCyte, said, 'The filing of this IND represents the culmination of many years of research and development by a dedicated team focused on developing a cell replacement therapy for patients with type 1 diabetes and advancing our VC-01 product candidate to human clinical trials. The ViaCyte team has been assisted and supported by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) a leading organisation focused on advancing the field of stem cell-based technologies, and JDRF, the leading advocacy organisation for patients with type 1 diabetes.'

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Montreal woman pleading with B.C. residents to save her life

By NEVAGiles23

VANCOUVER Mai Duong, 34, only has six weeksleft to get a life-saving stem cell or bone marrow transplant and shes pleading with the Lower Mainlands Asian population tosave her.

The mother of one was born and raised in Montreal. Shes had good health for most of her life, until she was diagnosed with leukemia in January 2013, while pregnant with her second child. Doctors told her she had to terminate the pregnancy she was at 15 weeks and start chemotherapy immediately.

Duongwent into remission, but ten months later the cancer was back. And this time it was more aggressive and chemotherapy wouldnt work, she was told. Instead, she needed stem cells or a bone marrow transplant.

Even though Im on the international registry list for donors, I did not have a match for the bone marrow. I was devastated when they told me that, she toldGlobal News.

It turns out the problem of finding a match, and a perfect one at that, is more common among those of Asian descent. In 2012, 2-year-old Jeremy Kong of San Francisco was diagnosed with leukemia and couldnt find a match until he went public. After doing so, he found a nine out of tenbone marrow donor match and underwent a transplant, but died a year later. Experts say Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino and other South Asian populations are behind Caucasians when it comes to donating blood and organs.

Were severely underrepresented in the international list. So its not even a local or a national problem; its a global problem, said Duong.

Duong is turning to Vancouver because of its large Asian population, and urging people to get tested. She needs a donor of Vietnamese or Filipino descent for a perfect match, and she needs to find them within six weeks or its unlikely shell survive.

For more information on how you can help Duong, visit her Facebook pageor websiteand get tested at OneMatch.ca.

With files from Darlene Heidemann.

Shaw Media, 2014

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Human blood created from human stem cells in lab

By JoanneRUSSELL25

Scientists have discovered two genetic programs that are responsible for taking blank-slate stem cells to turn them into both red and white cells that make up human blood.

Igor Slukvin, the lead researcher from University of Wisconsin-Madison explained that this was the first demonstration of the production of different kinds of cells from human pluripotent stem cells, using transcription factors.

Slukvin said that by over-expressing just two transcription factors, they could reproduce the sequence of events they see in the "embryo" where blood was made, in the laboratory dish.

The method developed by Slukvin's group was shown to produce blood cells in abundance. For every million stem cells, the researchers were able to produce 30 million blood cells.

According to Slukvin, an unfulfilled aspiration is to produce hematopoietic stem cells, multipotent stem cells found in bone marrow that are used to treat some cancers, including leukemia and multiple myeloma, in the lab.

The study is published in the journal Nature Communications.

(Posted on 20-07-2014)

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TRAGIC STORY! Paid $25,000 for Stem Cells @ Hospital Angeles Tijuana www.RegenerativeMedicine.mx – Video

By daniellenierenberg


TRAGIC STORY! Paid $25,000 for Stem Cells @ Hospital Angeles Tijuana http://www.RegenerativeMedicine.mx
TWO Websites: http://www.regenerativemedicinemx.com AND http://www.regenerativemedicinetijuana.com STEM CELL Resources: http://www.cellmedicinesociety.org/component/content/article/86-news/410-mex...

By: KyaLarae

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TRAGIC STORY! Paid $25,000 for Stem Cells @ Hospital Angeles Tijuana http://www.RegenerativeMedicine.mx - Video

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ViaCyte files investigational new drug application and device master file with FDA for novel cell replacement therapy …

By LizaAVILA

Published 18 July 2014

ViaCyte a privately held regenerative medicine company developing a cell replacement therapy for the treatment of diabetes, announced that it has filed an Investigational New Drug application (IND) with the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seeking to initiate a Phase 1/2 clinical trial in patients with type 1 diabetes.

The trial would evaluate the safety and efficacy of ViaCyte's VC-01 product candidate, a stem cell-derived, encapsulated cell replacement therapy. In a related development, ViaCyte submitted a Medical Device Master File (called MAF) to the FDA in support of the Encaptra drug delivery system, the device component of the VC-01 product candidate.

"The filing of this IND represents the culmination of many years of research and development by a dedicated team focused on developing a cell replacement therapy for patients with type 1 diabetes and advancing our VC-01 product candidate to human clinical trials," said Paul Laikind, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of ViaCyte.

"The ViaCyte team has been assisted and supported by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) a leading organization focused on advancing the field of stem cell-based technologies, and JDRF, the leading advocacy organization for patients with type 1 diabetes," added Dr. Laikind.

ViaCyte's VC-01 product candidate consists of pancreatic progenitor cells, called PEC-01 cells, which are derived from a proprietary human embryonic stem cell line. These cells are then encapsulated by use of ViaCyte's Encaptra device.

When implanted under the skin, the PEC-01 cells are designed to mature and further differentiate into insulin-producing beta and other endocrine cells that regulate blood glucose in a manner similar or identical to the normal islets that comprise the endocrine pancreas.

Based on a pre-IND meeting with the FDA and subsequent consultations, ViaCyte is proposing to initiate clinical evaluation of the VC-01 product candidate directly in patients with type 1 diabetes who have minimal to no insulin-producing beta cell function.

In addition to evaluating the safety of the product candidate in these patients, the study is designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the VC-01 product candidate in replacing lost endocrine function that is central to the disease.

In the proposed clinical trial, insulin production from the VC-01 implant would be assessed by measuring C-peptide, a biomarker for insulin produced by beta cells that is expected to provide a sensitive measure of efficacy in these patients.

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Stem Cell Therapy in Cardiac Disease – Charles Murry, MD, Ph.D. – Video

By LizaAVILA


Stem Cell Therapy in Cardiac Disease - Charles Murry, MD, Ph.D.
How can we harness the power of stem cells to repair the heart or other damaged organs? Dr. Chuck Murry, Dept. of Pathology; Director, Center for Cardiovascular Biology at the University of...

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Common shoulder conditions treated with stem cell therapy – Video

By raymumme


Common shoulder conditions treated with stem cell therapy
In this video, Ross Hauser, MD discusses the types of shoulder conditions our Prolotherapy team specializes in treating with stem cell therapy and platelet rich plasma Prolotherapy. If you...

By: Caring Medical and Rehabilitation Services

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Scientists working on biological pacemaker

By NEVAGiles23

Washington No batteries required: Scientists are creating a biological pacemaker by injecting a gene into the hearts of sick pigs that changed ordinary cardiac cells into a special kind that induces a steady heartbeat.

The study, published Wednesday, is one step toward developing an alternative to electronic pacemakers that are implanted into 300,000 Americans each year.

There are people who desperately need a pacemaker but cant get one safely, said Dr. Eduardo Marban, director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles, who led the work. This development heralds a new era of gene therapy that one day might offer them an option.

Your heartbeat depends on a natural pacemaker, a small cluster of cells its about the size of a peppercorn, Marban said that generates electrical activity. Called the sinoatrial node, it acts like a metronome to keep the heart pulsing at 60 to 100 beats per minute or so, more when youre active. If that node quits working correctly, hooking the heart to an electronic pacemaker works very well for most people.

But about 2 percent of recipients develop an infection that requires the pacemaker to be removed for weeks until antibiotics wipe out the germs, Marban said. And some fetuses are at risk of stillbirth when their heartbeat falters, a condition called congenital heart block.

For more than a decade, teams of researchers have worked to create a biological alternative that might help those kinds of patients, trying such approaches as using stem cells to spur the growth of a new sinoatrial node.

Marbans newest attempt uses gene therapy to reprogram a small number of existing heart muscle cells so that they start looking and acting like natural pacemaker cells instead.

Because pigs hearts are so similar to human hearts, Marbans team studied the approach in 12 laboratory pigs with a defective heart rhythm.

They used a gene named TBX18 that plays a role in the embryonic development of the sinoatrial node. Working through a vein, they injected the gene into some of the pigs hearts in a spot that doesnt normally initiate heartbeats and tracked them for two weeks.

Two days later, treated pigs had faster heartbeats than control pigs who didnt receive the gene, the researchers reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine. That heart rate automatically fluctuated, faster during the day. The treated animals also became more active, without signs of side effects.

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Professor John Rasko on SBS Insight – Video

By NEVAGiles23


Professor John Rasko on SBS Insight
Royal Prince Alfred Hospital #39;s Director of Cell and Molecular Therapies, Professor John Rasko, was invited as a guest on SBS Insight #39;s special on stem cell medicine.

By: SydneyLHD

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Conflicts of interest pervasive on California stem cell board

By JoanneRUSSELL25

There's no good time for a public agency to be embroiled in a conflict-of-interest scandal, but this is an especially delicate time for California's stem cell agency.

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, as the program is known formally, is on track to finish doling out its $3 billion in funding from the state's voters as soon as 2017. Its original sponsor, Northern California real estate developer Robert Klein II, has been quoted talking about another $5-billion infusion, perhaps via the 2016 ballot.

Any such effort will refocus attention on the program board's inherent conflicts of interest, which were baked in by the terms of Proposition 71, Klein's 2004 ballot initiative that created CIRM and funded it through a bond issue. The prestigious Institute of Medicine in a 2012 report found these conflicts to lead to questions about "the integrity and independence of some of CIRM's decisions."

And now here comes another case. This one involves CIRM former President Alan Trounson, an Australian biologist who left the agency on June 30 and joined the board of one of its highest-profile financial partners a mere seven days later. Trounson's new employer, Stem Cells Inc., is the recipient of a nearly $20-million loan for Alzheimer's research.

CIRM says Trounson's quick move to Stem Cells Inc., where he'll receive a stipend of at least $90,000 a year, is legally "permissible." But officials there acknowledge they were blindsided; the agency learned about Trounson's new position from the company's press release.

Afterward, CIRM rushed out a statement acknowledging that Trounson's appointment to the board of a CIRM loan recipient "creates a serious risk of a conflict of interest." The agency says it will place the relationship between CIRM and the company under "a full review." Administrators reminded Trounson, board members and agency staff that state law bars him from communicating with them on any administrative matter involving Stem Cells Inc. The company declined to comment.

The relationship already reeked of cronyism. As we reported in 2012, the Newark, Calif.-based firm's co-founder, Irving Weissman, director of Stanford University's Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, had been one of the most prominent and outspoken supporters of Proposition 71.

He's also a leading recipient of CIRM funding, listed as the principal investigator on four Stanford grants totaling nearly $35 million. CIRM contributed $43.6 million toward the construction of his institute's $200-million research building at the Stanford campus. Weissman and his wife, Ann Tsukamoto, owned nearly 380,000 shares of the firm as of last April, according to a corporate disclosure. Tsukamoto is one of the company's top executives; Weissman is a board member.

Trounson's move comes as CIRM must begin looking to the future, but any discussions about extending the agency's life span will have to address the flaws created by Proposition 71. Among them is the program's very structure, and even its scientific goals.

Klein's ballot proposition exempts CIRM from virtually any oversight or accountability. Each of the 29 governing board members has to be associated with a California public or private research institution or company, or an advocacy group for patients of one disease or another. The qualifications for board chairman are so specific they initially yielded a single credible candidate: Bob Klein.

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Stem RX Bioscience Solution Pvt Ltd hold awareness program on stem cell therapy – Video

By daniellenierenberg


Stem RX Bioscience Solution Pvt Ltd hold awareness program on stem cell therapy

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Okyanos Heart Institute Live on 850 WFTL: Adult Stem Cell Therapy for Heart Disease – Video

By LizaAVILA


Okyanos Heart Institute Live on 850 WFTL: Adult Stem Cell Therapy for Heart Disease
Okyanos #39; Chief Medical Officer Dr. Howard (Bo) Walpole and Chief Science Officer sat down with Karen Curtis at 850 WFTL in Ft. Lauderdale to discuss the promise of adult stem cell therapy as...

By: Okyanos Heart Institute

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Interleukin-10 aids survival of cells transplanted to repair cardiac tissues after MI

By Dr. Matthew Watson

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

18-Jul-2014

Contact: Robert Miranda cogcomm@aol.com Cell Transplantation Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair

Putnam Valley, NY. (July 18th 2014) The long-term, positive benefits of transplanted allogenic (other-donated) smooth muscle cells (SMCs) to repair cardiac tissues after myocardial infarction (MI) have been enhanced by the addition of interleukin 10 (IL-10) to the transplanted cells, report researchers in Canada. Their study with rats modeled with MI has shown that SMCs modified with IL-10 - a small, anti-inflammatory protein - benefitted cell survival, improved heart function, and also provided protection against the host's rejection of the allogenic SMCs.

The study will be published in a future issue of Cell Transplantation and is currently freely available on-line as an unedited early e-pub at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/pre-prints/content-CT1170Dhingra.

Three groups of rats modeled with MI were treated with SMC injections into the MI-damaged area of the heart. One group received unmodified autologous (self-donated) SMCs; a second group received unmodified allogenic (other-donated) SMCs; the third group received allogenic SMCs modified with IL-10. After three weeks, the unmodified autologous cells had engrafted while the unmodified allogenic cells had been rejected by the hosts. However, the IL-10-modified allogenic cells were found to greatly improve cell survival, improve ventricular function, increase myocardial wall thickness, and also prevent host immune response and rejection of the foreign cells.

"While the most appropriate cell type for cardiac repair remains controversial, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) that have been differentiated toward myogenic cells restore ventricular function better, as previous studies have shown," said study co-author Ren-Ke Li of the MaRS Centre in Toronto, Canada. "This study demonstrated that IL-10 gene-enhanced cell therapy prevented immune response, increased survival of SMCs in the heart, and improved cardiac function when compared to the results with the control groups."

The researchers noted that while the use of autologous SMCs donated by patients may be optimal for cell therapy, SMCs self-donated by older, debilitated patients who likely have other serious health problems, have limited regenerative capability. Thus, allogenic SMCs from young, healthy donors are the most beneficial cells, but rejection of foreign cells by the host has been a problem in allogenic cell transplantation. This study suggests that the use of allogenic SMCs modified with IL-10 can prevent host rejection.

"Future studies will be required to determine the long-term effects of IL-10 transduced SMCs to evaluate cell survival and cardiac function at six months and one year," concluded the researchers.

"The use of IL-10 overexpression to reduce rejection of allogenic SMCs is an interesting idea" said Dr. Amit N. Patel, director of cardiovascular regenerative medicine at the University of Utah and section editor for Cell Transplantation. "Further studies will help to determine if this manipulation could prove useful for translation of allogenic SMC therapies to humans".

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Interleukin-10 aids survival of cells transplanted to repair cardiac tissues after MI

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