StemCell Therapy

A U.S. biotech company is preparing to start experiments using stem cells to try to stimulate 20 brain-dead patients back to life. And no, this isn't an elevator pitch for a sci-fi horror film.

The Mind Unleashed reports the company Bioquark will be trying to use stem cells to regrow and stimulate neurons to bring the patients back from brain death. It works like this: They implant stem cells in the patient's brain while also infusing the spinal cord with chemicals typically used to try and wake up coma patients. Then, hopefully, brain activity is essentially 'jump-started.' The technique is untested, so these experiments will go a long way toward proving (or disproving) the viability of the process.

Bioquark CEO Ira Pastor said they hope to see some results within 2-3 months after treatment begins, with the long-term goal being to develop techniques for brain-dead patients to eventually be able to make a full recovery. Which is certainly a heady, and ethically tricky, goal. You know, and also kind of scary. Ambitious and potentially live-saving, but still a little freaky.

What do you think of the technique? Is this going to revolutionize brain recovery or be the first step toward the T-virus?

(via The Mind Unleashed)

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Scientists moving ahead with research to resurrect the dead with stem cells - Blastr

By Jos Cibelli By Jos Cibelli March 3 at 12:41 PM

In 1997 Dolly the sheep was introduced to the world by biologists Keith Campbell, Ian Wilmut and colleagues. Not just any lamb, Dolly was a clone. Rather than being made from a sperm and an egg, she originated with a mammary gland cell of a no-longerliving six-year-old Fynn Dorset ewe.

With her birth, a scientific and societal revolution was also born.

Some prominent scientists thought it was too good to be true. But more animals were cloned: first the laboratory mouse, then cows, goats, pigs, horses, even dogs, ferrets and camels. By early 2000, the issue was settled: Dolly was real and cloning adults was possible.

The implications of cloning animals in our society were self-evident from the start. Our advancing ability to reprogram adult, already specialized cells and start them over as something new may one day be the key to creating cells and organs that match the immune system of each individual patient in need of replacements.

But what somehow got lost was the fact that a clone was born at Day Zero created from the cell of another animal that was six years old. Researchers have spent the past 20 years trying to untangle the mysteries of how clones age. How old, biologically, are these animals born from other adult animals cells?

Decades of cloning research

Dolly became an international celebrity, but she was not the first vertebrate to be cloned from a cell taken from the body of another animal. In 1962, developmental biologist John Gurdon cloned the first adult animal by taking a cell from the intestine of one frog and injecting it into an egg of another. Gurdons work did not go unnoticed he went on to share the 2012 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. But it was Dolly who captured our imagination. Was it because she was a warm-blooded animal, a mammal, much closer to human? If you could do it in a sheep, you could do it in us!

Dolly, along with Gurdons frogs from 35 years earlier and all the other experiments in between, redirected our scientific studies. It was amazing to see a differentiated cell an adult cell specialized to do its particular job transform into an embryonic one that could go on to give rise to all the other cells of a normal body. We researchers wondered whether we could go further: Could we in the lab make an adult cell once again undifferentiated, without needing to make a cloned embryo?

A decade after Dolly was announced, stem cell researcher Shynia Yamanakas team did just that. He went on to be the Nobel co-recipient with Gurdon for showing that mature cells could be reprogrammed to become pluripotent: able to develop into any specialized adult cell.

Now we have the possibility of making individualized replacement cells potentially any kind to replace tissue damaged by injury, genetic disorders and degeneration. Not only cells: We may soon be able to have our own organs grown in a nonhuman host, ready to be transplanted when needed.

If Dolly was responsible for unleashing the events that culminate in new methods of making fully compatible cells and organs, then her legacy would be to improve the health of practically all human beings on this planet. And yet I am convinced that there are even better things to come.

Dollys secrets still unfolding

In the winter of 2013, I found myself driving on the wrong side of the road through the Nottingham countryside. In contrast to the luscious landscape, I was in a state of gloom: I was on my way to see Keith Campbells family after his sudden death a few weeks earlier.

Keith was a smart, fun, loving friend who, along with Ian Wilmut and colleagues at the Roslin Institute, had brought us Dolly 15 years earlier. We had met at a conference in the early 1990s, when we were both budding scientists playing around with cloning, Keith with sheep, I with cows. An extrovert by nature, he quickly dazzled me with his wit, self-deprecating humor and nonstop chat, all delivered in a thick West Midlands accent. Our friendship that began then continued until his death.

When I knocked at the door of his quaint farmhouse, my plan was to stay just a few minutes, pay my respects to his wife and leave. Five hours and several Guinnesses later, I left feeling grateful. Keith could do that to you, but this time it wasnt Keith, it was his latest work speaking for him. Thats because his wife very generously told me about the project Keith had been working on at the time of his death. I couldnt hide my excitement: Could it be possible that after 20 years, the most striking aspect of Dollys legacy was not yet revealed?

See, when Dolly was cloned, she was created using a cell from a six-year-old sheep. And she died at age 6 , a premature death for a breed that lives an average of nine years or more. People assumed that an offspring cloned from an adult was starting at an age disadvantage; rather than truly being a newborn, it seemed as though a clones internal age would be more advanced than the length of its own life would suggest. Thus the notion that clones biological age and their chronological one were out of sync and that cloned animals will die young.

Some of us were convinced that if the cloning procedure was done properly, the biological clock should be reset: A newborn clone would truly start at Day Zero. We worked very hard to prove our point. We were not convinced by a single DNA analysis done in Dolly showing slightly shorter telomeres, the repetitive DNA sequences at the end of chromosomes that count how many times a cell divides. We presented strong scientific evidence showing that cloned cows had all the same molecular signs of aging as a non-clone, predicting a normal life span. Others showed the same in cloned mice. But we couldnt ignore reports from colleagues interpreting biological signs in cloned animals that they attributed to incomplete resetting of the biological clock. So the jury was out.

Aging studies are very hard to do because there are only two data points that really count: date of birth and date of death. If you want to know the life span of an individual, you have to wait until its natural death. Little did I know, that is what Keith had been doing back in 2012.

On that Saturday afternoon I spent in Keiths house in Nottingham, I saw a photo of the animals in Keiths latest study: several cloned Dollies, all much older than Dolly at the time she had died, and they looked terrific. I was in awe.

The data were confidential, so I had to remain silent until late last year when the work was posthumously published. Keiths co-authors humbly said: For those clones that survive beyond the perinatal period ... the emerging consensus, supported by the current data, is that they are healthy and seem to age normally.

These findings became even more relevant when in December researchers at the Scripps Research Institute found that induced pluripotent stem cells reprogrammed using the Yamanaka factors retain the aging epigenetic signature of the donor individual. In other words, using these four genes to attempt to reprogram the cells does not seem to reset the biological clock.

The new Dollies are now telling us that if we take a cell from an animal of any age and we introduce its nucleus into a non-fertilized mature egg, we can have an individual born with its life span fully restored. They confirmed that all signs of biological and chronological age matched between cloned and non-cloned sheep.

There seems to be a natural, built-in mechanism in the eggs that can rejuvenate a cell. We dont know what it is yet, but it is there. Our group as well as others are hard at work, and as soon as someone finds it, the most astonishing legacy of Dolly will be realized.

Cibelli is scientific director of the Larcel-Bionand laboratory in Spain and a professor of animal biotechnology at Michigan State University. This article was originally published on theconversation.com.

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We know Dolly the sheep was cloned 20 years ago, but how old was she at birth? - Washington Post

Auditory Illnesses

One of the most common causes of hearing loss is damage to the thousands of hair cells found within the inner ear. These hair cells detect and translate sound waves into nerve signals, enabling us to hear sound. As crucial as these hair cells are to hearing, these are susceptible to damage caused by excessive noise, old age, or certain medications. Once these hair cells are destroyed in a human ear, they dont regenerate.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), sensory hair cell injuryaccounts for 90 percent of hearing loss cases in the United States. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) reportsthat about 360 million people worldwide have disabling hearing loss, and 32 million of these are children.

But what if these hair cells could be regrown? Thats the idea behind astudy conducted by a team of scientists from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Their research has long been in the making and is now published in the journal Cell Reports.

In 2012, lead scientist Albert Edge discovered stem cells in the ear called Lgr5+ cells. These were also found in the lining of human intestines, where they actively regenerate every eight days. Edges team found a way to convincethese stem cells to developinto hair cells instead of intestinal cells. The process took a great deal of time, however, and it only yielded 200 hair cells.Now, the team had managed to grow 11,500 hair cells from the Lgr5+ cells in mice, which are among the few mammals whose cells can regenerate when they are newly born.

The researchers achieved this higher yield by adding a new step to their process. After taking the Lgr5+ cells from the mice, they coaxed them to divide within a special growth medium. This increased the number of Lgr5+ cells two-thousandfold. The stem cells were then moved to a different kind of growth culture, at which point certain chemicals were added that turned the Lgr5+ cells into hair cells.

Each human ear has about 16,000 hair cells in itscochlea, the actual hearing organ found deep in the ear canal. These hair cells are divided into outer hair cells and inner hair cells, each with a specialized role in handling sound.

While these lab-grown hair cells seem to have many characteristics similar to these outer and inner hair cells, Edge admits that they may not yet be fully functional. His team tested their technique on a sample of healthy ear tissue taken from a 40-year-old brain tumor patient that underwent a labyrinthectomy. The isolated adult human stem cells did differentiate into hair cells, but not as robustly as the mouse cells had.

Still, neuroscience professor and hair-cell regeneration expert Jeff Corwin from the University of Virginia School of Medicinetold Live Science he found the research to be a very impressive studyby a dream team of scientists. Corwin, who wasnt involved in the study, called it a big advance in sensory hearing cell regeneration. You can see in their paper that they are perfecting their technique as they go along, he added.

While the team works to continue improving their methods, Edge said that their lab-grown hair cells may have one immediate application large sets of the cells can be made and used to test drugs and identify which compounds can heal damaged hair cells or induce regeneration.

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A New Breakthrough in Lab-Grown Cells Could Restore Hearing - Futurism

Swiss Engineer Michele Angelo Besso was a close friend of Einsteins. Upon his death, the father of relativity said, "Now Besso has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us ... know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

We often think of the afterlife as a spiritual or religious belief, when in a way, its pursuit is also somewhat familiar to science. Robert Lanza, M.D. takes things one step further. He thinks we start out with a wrong assumption, that we have it all backward. It isnt the universe which is supreme, but life. In fact, life and in particular consciousness are essential to the makeup of the universe, he says. Through the theory of biocentrism, he believes he can prove that space and time do not exist, unless our consciousness says they do.

This is an all-encompassing theory which in Greek means life center. Though radical, if one day proven correct, it could have ramifications for the study of physics, biology, consciousness, the brain, and even AI. Consider a blade of grass. Your brain through your eyes tells you its green. But what if a neuroscientist could reconnoiter that part of the brain where the concept registers, and make it indicate red or yellow instead? Lanza reminds us that all reality is sensory information interpreted by our brain.

Its our consciousness that puts our reality together. For instance, space-time in physics is different from how we experience these, separate concepts in real life. Science treats the space-time continuum as a solid principle. According to Lanza they are simply tools of our mind. Death too in his view cannot exist in any real sense.

Dr. Robert Lanza in his laboratory, 2009.

Notice how, for instance, when you are a child, days and weeks seem to drag on, while when you get older, they fly by. Time itself hasnt changed, just our perception of it. Whether the universe actually works the way in which we perceive it isnt readily known. One of the fundamental laws of Newtonian physics is that energy isnt created or destroyed, it simply takes another form. The energy trapped in our brain must take another form then, even when a person dies. Meanwhile, our senses tell us that its their end. But where does this energy go? In a world with endless space and time, could death really exist? If not, is immortality a phenomenon which occurs within space-time or outside of it?

Dr. Lanza isnt some newfangled guru. Hes a biotech Zion, and currently, the Chief Scientific Officer of the Astellas Institute for Regenerative Medicine (http://www.robertlanza.com/). Hes studying stem cells and their application for treating disease. Previous to this, he did some research on embryonic stem cells and in cloning, both with animals and humans. Lanza is also an adjunct professor at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina.

In quantum physics, particles can be observed in several different states at the same time. This is called superposition. They in fact, exist in all possible states simultaneously. In terms of predicting what a particle will do, nothing is absolute. Each state has its own range of probability. In Lanzas view, each corresponds with a different universe.

This coincides with the many worlds theory, also known as the multiverse. Each universe is thought to operate with its own physical laws. Anything that can occur does, with one possibility playing out in each realm. Our life, Lanza believes, at one stage or another, is occurring across many universes simultaneously. Yet, your life on one world wouldnt influence your life in another.

What are the chances that death is a portal into another universe?

What has long plagued particle physicists is that observation affects reality. Consider the famous double-slit test. In this classic experiment, physicists observe a particle passing through two slits in a barrier. When the phenomenon is observed, it behaves like a particle, a little cannonball shooting directly through the slits. If it isnt observed, it performs like a wave, gliding through both openings at once. This shows that energy and matter are made up of both particles and waves, and that ones mere observation changes its form.

Such inconsistencies dont prove the existence of the multiverse, however. Yet, through the scaffolding of biocentrism or this new Theory of Everything, the physics begins to take shape. Consciousness is an essential force in the universe, according to this theory, which shows why the properties of energy, matter, space, and time, depend on whether or not a conscious mind is observing them. Lanza uses other research to support his view.

A 2002 study of photons or light particles, showed that they communicated with one another. When one photon was guided to a certain place, it was picked up by a detector. Researchers used a scrambler to force it to remain a particle rather than a wave. After one was sent out and reached its destination, the second photon crossed the same space instantaneously. It was as if it knew where it was going, and the knowledge must have traveled back to it faster than the speed of light. Another supporting factor in an entirely different category, is the Goldilocks principle. This is the theory that the universe was made just right for supporting life.

Photons being smashed at the CERN large hadron collider. By ESO/M. Kornmesser [CC BY 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Critics argue that unexplained phenomena in physics only occurs on the quantum level. They also point out that there is no direct evidence of the existence of other universes. Several physicists have told Forbes that Lanzas writings look more like works of philosophy rather than science. The doctor himself states that he is healing a glaring rift, and applying innovative methods from biotech to physics. He also admits his theory lacks a mathematical basis. As such, Lanzas working on the supporting mathematical structure. Papers are expected to follow in scientific journals.

Another competing theory accounts for inconsistencies in quantum physics by stating that the universe is an illusion. It could be for instance, a projection created by a highly advanced quantum computer. Though still entirely theoretical, biocentrism offers those of us who want the comfort of an afterlife scenario or even of reincarnation, without giving up a devotion to science, an avenue to explore. In this vein, Lanza wrote, Life is an adventure that transcends our ordinary linear way of thinking. When we die, we do so not in the random billiard-ball-matrix but in the inescapable-life-matrix. Life has a non-linear dimensionality; it's like a perennial flower that returns to bloom in the multiverse.

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Biocentrism Posits That Death Is Merely Transport into Another Universe - Big Think

Suicide Switch for Transplanted Stem Cells The Scientist The researchers took advantage of a previously developed inducible Caspase 9 system, called iCaspase9, in which a chemical that can be administered to cells or injected intraperitoneally in mice causes dimerization and rapid cell death. They used a ... and more »

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Suicide Switch for Transplanted Stem Cells - The Scientist

SPOKANE, Wash. - Spokane rallied to save her life once before, and now she needs the community's help again.

The "Cure For Cat" campaign helped Cat Davis pay for a transplant that doctors thought would save her life, but she relapsed, and now needs another transplant.

"My gut feeling is that if this doesn't happen, she might have a year, at best," said Sally Davis, Cat's mother.

Living with scleroderma means everyday is a fight for survival for Cat.

"Right now I'm alive, but I'm not living," she said. "I want more for myself and I want more for everyone else who struggles with scleroderma."

The 29-year-old has spent most of her adult life raising awareness for the disease, which hardens the skin and internal organs. It all began with a diagnosis, which sparked the Cure For Cat campaign.

Four years ago the Spokane community raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for a stem cell transplant that helped Cat keep the disease at bay. Until it didn't.

"We had such high hopes for the first transplant and now that she's relapsed from them, we have to face the fact that we have to do this all over again," said Sally Davis.

Cat must now fight again, this time going through a transplant using her brother's stem cells. The chance of death for Cat this time around is somewhere near 50%.

"I want to fight for those who have died and because of everything that's happened to me over the last few years because of Scleroderma, I'm ready to take that risk," Davis said.

She's launching round two of the Cure For Cat campaign. It began with a video release Wednesday. She hopes the second time through this, she can provide hope for everyone who fights each day to survive. Cat would be the first person with scleroderma to receive this second groundbreaking transplant.

"Yesterday, on Wednesday, we launched the second Cure For Cat campaign and it's been awesome. And the main thing I want people to understand is it's so much different than the first campaign," she said.

On March 18th, Cat will hold a benefit concert at the Service Station as a kickoff fundraiser. She says there are also some events in the works that will be announced soon.

"Spokane is an incredible community and we can do this together and I know, in the end, together we are better and we're going to make a difference," she said.

For more information about events and how you can donate, visit cureforcat.com.

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Cure For Cat campaign launches a second time to save Cat Davis' life - KXLY Spokane

March 1, 2017 Neural progenitor cells (green) in the lateral ganglionic eminence (LGE), the region in the developing brain that produces the majority of adult neural stem cells. Credit: Sven Falk

Neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, but also strokes or other types of traumatic brain damage, result in the death of nerve cells in the brain. Since the mammalian brain is capable of replacing nerve cells only in certain restricted regions, such nerve-cell loss is in most cases permanent. Similarly, the capacity to form new nerve cells in the mature brain is limited to specific areas. The cells responsible for neurogenesis in the mature brain are called adult neural stem cells, but little is known about their developmental origins. Now an international research collaboration led by Magdalena Gtz, Professor of Physiological Genomics at LMU's Biomedical Center and Director of the Institute for Stem Cell Research at the Helmholtz Zentrum Munich, has demonstrated that the mode of division of stem cells has a profound influence on the numbers of adult neural stem cells formed during embryonic development.

The new findings appear in the journal Neuron.

Neural cells develop from progenitors called neural stem cells, which are produced in large numbers during embryonic development. However, in the mature mammalian brain, very few of these progenitors survive as so-called adult neural stem cells capable of generating new nerve cells. In order to determine what enables these cells to retain their stem-cell character into adulthood, Gtz and her colleagues took a closer look at neural stem cells in the developing mouse embryo called radial glia cells (RGCs). RGCs form long processes that span the apicobasal axis of the neuroepithelium and their nuclei come to lie close to the apical surface which faces a fluid-filled cavity known as the ventricle. When RGCs divide, some of the daughter cells again are RGCs, i.e. the RGC self-renews. These cells that retain the self-renewing capacity, a characteristic of stem cells, are the source of the adult neural stem cells found in a specific region of the developing brain called the lateral ganglionic eminence, which forms the lateral wall of the ventricle in the adult brain. The nerve cells derived from the adult neural stem cells subsequently migrate into the olfactory bulb, one of the regions in which new nerve cells are integrated in the mature brain.

"We have now shown that the orientation of the plane of division of embryonic progenitor cells has a major impact on the production of adult neural stem cells," Gtz says. The plane of cleavage during cell division determines which parts of the cytoplasm are inherited by the two daughter cells. Most of the RGCs in the lateral ganglionic eminence were found to divide along a plane that is approximately vertical (at an angle of 60-90) to the apical cell surface. However, when the researchers genetically randomized the orientation of the cleavage plane such that the frequency of oblique or horizontal divisions was increased the number of adult neural stem cells generated was significantly reduced. Hence the orientation of the cleavage plane of RGCs is a crucial factor that affects the number of adult stem cells. However, timing also plays a crucial role. Adult neural stem cells are produced only during a specific, temporally and regionally restricted phase in embryonic development. Genetic randomization of the cleavage plane progenitor cells in the post-natal mouse brain proved to have no effect on the number of adult stem cells.

The total number of adult neural stem cells produced is a crucial determinant of the brain's capacity for repair and regeneration, because each of these cells can generate only a limited number of new nerve cells. "With a better understanding of how the formation of adult neural stem cells is regulated, we could look for ways of ensuring that other embryonic neural stem cells maintain this capacity, and perhaps even persuade other cell types to do so. Our new results represent an important step toward this goal," says Sven Falk, first author of the new study. The researchers hope that their findings will open up new approaches to the therapy of neurodegenerative diseases.

Explore further: Specific roles of adult neural stem cells may be determined before birth

More information: Sven Falk et al. Time-Specific Effects of Spindle Positioning on Embryonic Progenitor Pool Composition and Adult Neural Stem Cell Seeding, Neuron (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2017.02.009

Adult neural stem cells, which are commonly thought of as having the ability to develop into many type of brain cells, are in reality pre-programmed before birth to make very specific types of neurons, at least in mice, according ...

Stem cells in the brain can produce neurons and are consequently seen as a hope for treatment. A team of researchers from the Helmholtz Zentrum Mnchen and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitt Mnchen (LMU) has now discovered ...

Prof. Fiona Doetsch's research team at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, has discovered that the choroid plexus, a largely ignored structure in the brain that produces the cerebrospinal fluid, is an important regulator ...

Blood vessels play a vital role in stem cell reproduction, enabling the brain to grow and develop in the womb, reveals new UCL research in mice.

A wireless arm patch may be a promising new treatment for migraine headaches, researchers report.

Scientists have used a unique computational technique that sifts through big data to identify a subset of concussion patients with normal brain scans, who may deteriorate months after diagnosis and develop confusion, personality ...

(HealthDay)Multiple sclerosis (MS) is more likely to progress to advanced disease among patients who suffer from fatigue and limited use of their legs, new research suggests.

How does consciousness arise? Researchers suspect that the answer to this question lies in the connections between neurons. Unfortunately, however, little is known about the wiring of the brain. This is due also to a problem ...

(Medical Xpress)A team of researchers with the Allen Institute for Brain Science led by Christof Koch gave a presentation recently at the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies meeting outlining ...

Scientists at the Institute for Infectious Diseases, University of Bern have developed an in vitro stem cell-based bioassay grown on multi-electrode arrays capable of detecting the biological activity of Clostridium botulinum ...

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Findings reveal effect of embryonic neural stem cell development on later nerve regeneration capacity - Medical Xpress

February 28, 2017 08:30 ET | Source: International Stem Cell Corporation

CARLSBAD, Calif., Feb. 28, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- International Stem Cell Corporation (OTCQB:ISCO), a California-based clinical stage biotechnology company developing stem cell-based therapies and biomedical products, today announced the third patient in the clinical trial for Parkinson's Disease was successfully transplanted with ISC-hpNSCcells and is already discharged from the Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH). The operation was successfully performed without complications by the team of the RMH neurosurgeons.

Russell Kern, PhD, executive vice president and chief scientific officer of ISCO commented: "The third operation went according to plan and we are on track to dosing all of our clinical trial participants in 2017. We have enrolled the fourth patient and we expect to perform the surgery in March. No test article related adverse events have been recorded for any of the patients transplanted in 2016.

About the clinical study

The Phase I clinical study is a dose escalation safety and preliminary efficacy study of ISC-hpNSC, intracranially transplanted into patients with moderate to severe Parkinson's disease. The open-label, single center, uncontrolled clinical trial will evaluate three different dose regimens of 30,000,000 to 70,000,000 neural cells. A total of 12 participants with moderate to severe Parkinson's disease will be treated. Following transplantation, the patients will be monitored for 12 months at specified intervals, to evaluate the safety and biologic activity of ISC-hpNSC. PET scan will be performed at baseline, as part of the screening assessment, and at 6 and 12 months after surgical intervention. Clinical responses compared to baseline after the administration of ISC-hpNSCwill be evaluated using various neurological assessments such as Unified Parkinson Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS), Hoehn and Yahr and other rating scales.

About Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system mainly affecting the motor system. The motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease result from the death of dopamine-generating cells in the substantia nigra, a region of the midbrain. Early in the course of the disease, the most obvious symptoms are movement-related; these symptoms include shaking, rigidity, slowness of movement and difficulty with walking and gait. Later, thinking and behavioral problems may arise, with dementia commonly occurring in the advanced stages of the disease, and depression is the most common psychiatric symptom. Parkinson's disease is more common in older people, with most cases occurring after the age of 50.

Currently, medications typically used in the treatment of Parkinson's, L-DOPA and dopamine agonists, improve the early symptoms of the disease. As the disease progresses and dopaminergic neurons continue to be lost, the drugs eventually become ineffective while at the same time frequently producing a complication marked by involuntary writhing movements. In 2013 PD resulted in about 103,000 deaths globally, up from 44,000 deaths in 1990.

About ISC-hpNSC

International Stem Cell Corporation's proprietary ISC-hpNSCconsists of a highly pure population of neural stem cells derived from human parthenogenetic stem cells. ISC-hpNSCis a suspension of clinical grade cells manufactured under cGMP conditions that have undergone stringent quality control measures and are clear of any microbial and viral contaminants. Preclinical studies in rodents and non-human primates have shown improvement in Parkinson's disease symptoms and increase in brain dopamine levels following the intracranial administration of ISC-hpNSC. ISC-hpNSCprovides neurotrophic support and cell replacement to the dying dopaminergic neurons of the recipient PD brain. Additionally, ISC-hpNSCis safe, well tolerated and does not cause adverse events such as dyskinesia, systemic toxicity or tumors in preclinical models. International Stem Cell Corporation believes that ISC-hpNSCmay have broad therapeutic applications for many neurological diseases affecting the brain, the spinal cord and the eye.

About International Stem Cell Corporation

International Stem Cell Corporation (ISCO) is focused on the therapeutic applications of human parthenogenetic stem cells (hpSCs) and the development and commercialization of cell-based research and cosmetic products. ISCO's core technology, parthenogenesis, results in the creation of human pluripotent stem cells from unfertilized oocytes (eggs). hpSCs avoid ethical issues associated with the use or destruction of viable human embryos. ISCO scientists have created the first parthenogenetic, homozygous stem cell line that can be a source of therapeutic cells for millions of individuals of differing genders, ages and racial background with minimal immune rejection after transplantation. hpSCs offer the potential to create the first true stem cell bank, UniStemCell. ISCO also produces and markets specialized cells and growth media for therapeutic research worldwide through its subsidiary Lifeline Cell Technology (www.lifelinecelltech.com), and stem cell-based skin care products through its subsidiary Lifeline Skin Care (www.lifelineskincare.com). More information is available atwww.internationalstemcell.com.

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Statements pertaining to anticipated developments, expected results and timing of clinical studies, progress of research and development initiatives, and other opportunities for the company and its subsidiaries, along with other statements about the future expectations, beliefs, goals, plans, or prospects expressed by management constitute forward-looking statements. Any statements that are not historical fact (including, but not limited to statements that contain words such as "will," "believes," "plans," "anticipates," "expects," "estimates,") should also be considered to be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, risks inherent in the development and/or commercialization of potential products, regulatory approvals, need and ability to obtain future capital, application of capital resources among competing uses, and maintenance of intellectual property rights. Actual results may differ materially from the results anticipated in these forward-looking statements and as such should be evaluated together with the many uncertainties that affect the company's business, particularly those mentioned in the cautionary statements found in the company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The company disclaims any intent or obligation to update forward-looking statements.

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International Stem Cell Corporation Announces Third Patient with Parkinson's Disease in Phase I Clinical Trial - GlobeNewswire (press release)

Medical device company Creo Medical Group said it was taking part in a European programme researching a stem-cell cancer treatment for brain tumours.

The AIM-listed company is to join the Semiconductor-based Ultrawideband Micromanipulation of Cancer Stem Cells (SUMCASTEC) H2020 FET open research programme, led by the XLIM Research Institute at the University of Limoges in France.

Creo will be one of six European partners in a consortium of neurologists, microbiologists and engineers, who are aiming to develop a "micro-optofluidic lab-on-chip platform that deploys semi-conductor technology to neutralize cancer stem cells with electromagnetic waves".

The consortium was awarded a 4m (3.4m) grant, and 530,000 of which will be allocated to Creo, which lead on the development of the cell neutralisation aspect of the programme with a view to potentially commercialise the lab-on-chip platform.

Creo said that certain aspects of the project are closely related to the work it is already doing for the treatment of lung tumours.

SUMCASTEC is based on the isolation and neutralisation of cancer cells associated with some of the most aggressive brain tumours, specifically Glioblastoma Multiforme and Medulloblastoma.

Brain cancers are a leading cause of death in Europe, as according to the World Health Organisation 57,000 new cases and 45,000 deaths were reported in Europe in 2012.

Chris Hancock, chief technology officer of Creo, said: "This grant recognises the potential of Creo Medical's innovative ablation technology and its potential application in new and challenging fields. This new system has the potential to provide a new treatment option for some of the most aggressive brain tumours."

Arnaud Pothier, main project leader and senior researcher at Limoges University, added: "Creo's development expertise and growing commercial infrastructure makes them an ideal consortium partner to bring the lab-on-chip into human use and then to market."

Shares in Creo Medical Group were up 0.77% to 92.2p at 1524 GMT.

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Creo Medical Group joins European stem-cell cancer project ... - DIGITALLOOK

Researchers in Singapore have developed a wayto use patients'stem cells to see whether acancerdrug is safe for them(Credit: Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology)

In a promising development that strengthens the case for personalized cancer care, scientists in Singapore have demonstrated the possibility of predicting the potential for an individual to have adverse side effects to different drugs by first testing them on stem cells made from the patient's own blood.

For doctors, prescribing cancer drugs is often a hit-or-miss affair. Even though a therapy has been approved by a regulatory body, there's still a chance someone could have a bad reaction and develop severe side effects, such as liver failure. Such cases are termed idiosyncratic, as opposed to intrinsic, which can be predicted and therefore avoided. As the name suggests, with idiosyncratic drug-induced liver injury (DILI) it is difficult to predict a drug's side effects on an individual patient in advance, which could lead to hospitalization and even death.

Pazopanib is a drug commonly prescribed for advanced kidney cancer. However, like many cancer therapies, it doesn't work for everyone and has been known to cause liver damage in patients who react badly to it. In the study, researchers at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) and the National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS) used induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) adult cells that have been genetically reprogrammed into an embryonic cell-like state to create liver cells from the blood of five kidney cancer patients, three of whom were known to have adverse reactions to the cancer drug. The goal was to find out if they could reproduce adverse reactions to pazopanib in these cells.

When these newly created liver cells were exposed to the drug, the researchers found that not only were the results similar to post-treatment data derived from liver biopsies, they were also able to gain a better understanding of how the drug caused liver damage, which was previously unknown to doctors. This is the first time that a study has demonstrated the ability of genetically matched iPSCs to model drug-induced idiosyncratic side effects, which may result from predisposing genetic factors that an individual patient might have. What the results make clear is that idiosyncratic DILI has multiple causative factors and cannot be attributed to a single risk factor.

"Our hypothesis was that liver cells made from the individual's blood might show similar sensitivity or resistance to pazopanib," says study author Min-Han Tan, a medical oncologist. "This study is the first proof-of-concept that our approach can predict drug-induced liver damage for an individual. Importantly, we were able to figure out how the drug works from the way they react to the liver cells, which was unknown to doctors, even after many years of using this drug."

Among the findings was the identification of the role altered iron metabolism could play in pazopanib-induced liver injury. NCCS consultant Ravindran Kanesvaran believes understanding the mechanism of this particular side effect of the drug could lead to ways to overcome it.

While the study's small sample size might bring with it statistical limitations, the researchers, who are currently planning formal clinical trials, believe these findings could provide impetus for using patient-specific stem cells to screen for idiosyncratic drug reactions, especially since there is currently no suitable test for these cases.

Further studies on drugs that affect other organs are in the pipeline, and the researchers say in the future it might be possible to predict a patient's reaction to a drug by screening personalized stem cells comprising a range of liver, lung, kidney and heart cells.

Apart from benefitting patients, such a procedure could also help keep promising therapies on the market. Presently, phase III clinical trials (i.e. the stage that assesses the effectiveness of a new therapy) involve patient groups comprising between 300 and 3,000 people. And because they are so rare, it is easy for cases of idioscyncratic DILI to slip under the radar during these trials. As the study's authors note, this results in "considerable morbidity, mortality, treatment dose attenuation and interruption," which often leads to drugs being pulled off the market, depriving patients who do not have such reactions of what could be a promising treatment for them.

"Currently, new drugs are tested for toxicity using generic liver cells, which cannot model patient-specific reaction," says team leader and principal research scientist Hanry Yu. "By personalizing liver cells from the blood of individual patients, we can help doctors to prescribe safer and more effective therapies."

The paper was published in Scientific Reports.

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Stem cells make potential drug side effects personal - New Atlas

Trials at UNC yield 'rebirth' for 2-time cancer survivor WRAL.com Shea, a UNC Lineberger member and medical director at the UNC Bone Marrow and Stem Cell Transplant Program, suggested that Dale participate in the trial in which researchers remove a patient's immune cells, called T cells, then genetically engineer ... and more »

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Trials at UNC yield 'rebirth' for 2-time cancer survivor - WRAL.com

International Stem Cell Corporation Announces Third Patient with Parkinson's Disease in Phase I Clinical Trial P&T Community 28, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- International Stem Cell Corporation (OTCQB:ISCO), a California-based clinical stage biotechnology company developing stem cell-based therapies and biomedical products, today announced the third patient in the clinical trial ... and more »

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International Stem Cell Corporation Announces Third Patient with Parkinson's Disease in Phase I Clinical Trial - P&T Community

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Cells behave differently when removed from their environments, just as cells that develop in cultures do not behave like cells in living creatures.

To study the effects of Alzheimers disease in a more natural environment, scientists from the lab of Professor Bart De Strooper (VIB-KU Leuven, Dementia Research Institute-UK) in collaboration with scientists from ULB (Professors Pierre Vanderhaeghen and Jean-Pierre Brion) successfully circumscribed this challenge by transplanting human neural cells into mouse brains containing amyloid plaques, one of the hallmarks of Alzheimers disease.

The results of their research showed that, unlike mouse neurons, human neurons that developed in this environment were extremely susceptible to Alzheimers disease.

The study of the development of Alzheimers disease on a molecular level presents unique challenges, as neurons behave differently in vivo vs in vitro. Using mice as models presents useful insights, but mouse models never fully develop the disease, despite the fact that their brains and neurons share many similarities with those of humans.

A team of researchers has now transplanted human neurons into mouse brains which mimic some of the hallmarks of Alzheimers disease, including the presence of amyloid plaques. They found that, compared to mouse neurons, human neurons were much more sensitive to amyloid plaque pathology.

This novel model allows for a better characterisation of the disease processes that actually take place in the brain of human patients.

Much of the work was performed in close cooperation with Professor Pierre Vanderhaeghen (ULB-WELBIO, VIB-KULeuven), whose lab previously pioneered the technology to differentiate human pluripotent stem cells into neural cells in vitro, and then transplant them in the mouse brain, generating a human/mouse chimera.

Professor Bart De Strooper (VIB-KU Leuven, Dementia Research Institute-UK), We relied heavily on the insights and expertise of Pierre Vanderhaeghen and his lab to set up this new AD model.

With this novel experimental technique, we can study how different cell types in the human brain respond to the Alzheimer pathology, hopefully unravelling the link between amyloid and tau protein pathology which leads to neuron death and is the holy grail of current Alzheimers research.

Professor Pierre Vanderhaeghen (ULB-WELBIO and VIB), While many features of the brain are conserved between different species such as humans and mice, the human brain displays a number of characteristics, which make us what we are, as a species and as individuals. However, studying this human-specific part remains a big challenge in neuroscience. This study is exciting because it constitutes a first proof of principle that stem cell-based models of transplanted human neurons can be applied to study an important neurological disease.

Moving forward, Professor De Strooper and his team are already planning a screen to identify human genes that protect against cell death associated with Alzheimers disease.

Professor Bart De Strooper (VIB-KU Leuven, Dementia Research Institute-UK), Now that we are able to investigate the disease by observing human cells directly, we can make progress in this field of research at a considerably faster pace.

The eventual end goal of the screening is to identify new drug targets within human cells themselves, something that was never possible before.

A breakthrough in research is not the same as a breakthrough in medicine. The realizations of VIB researchers can form the basis of new therapies, but the development path still takes years. This can raise a lot of questions. For any questions about the research please email: [emailprotected] Everyone can submit questions concerning this and other medically-oriented research directly to VIB via this address.

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Human neurons in mouse brains are more susceptible to Alzheimer's pathology - Drug Target Review

Human neurons in mouse brains are more susceptible to Alzheimer's pathology Science Daily Pierre Vanderhaeghen (ULB-WELBIO, VIB-KULeuven), whose lab previously pioneered the technology to differentiate human pluripotent stem cells into neural cells in vitro, and then transplant them in the mouse brain, generating a human/mouse chimera ... and more »

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Human neurons in mouse brains are more susceptible to Alzheimer's pathology - Science Daily

Merck & Co.'s fast-tracked antiviral letermovir hit its main target of reducing infections in a trial involving bone marrow transplant patientsand topped that by also reducing patient deaths.

Armed with the new data the drugmaker said it intends to move ahead with regulatory filings for letermovir in both the U.S. and EUin 2017, providing the first alternative to the current crop of generic drugs that are underused in these patients because they either lack efficacy or have toxicity issues.

The phase 3 test looked at how well letermovir was able to prevent cytomegalovirus (CMV) infections in adults undergoing a bone marrow or hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT), a procedure typically used for patients with serious hematological cancers. All patients were seropositive for the virus, meaning they had been exposed to it before but had no active infection.

CMV is a common virus and usually causes no harm, but when immunity is lowered as in HSCT, it can cause serious complications including organ damage and failure. Some patients carry CMV before transplant, while in others the virus hitches a ride with the transplanted cells.

The results showed that 37.5% of patients treated with letermovir developed CMV by week 24, compared to 60.6% for a matched placebo group. And Merck's drug also led to lower all-cause mortality at 24 weeks, at 9.8% compared to 15.9% for placebo, which, as lead investigator Francisco Marty, M.D., of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute told OncLive, was "very compelling and interesting."

The positive effect of letermovir on mortality ties in with findings from a study by Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center scientists last year that HSCT patients who develop high levels of CMV and other viruses in the blood post-transplant have a significantly higher mortality rate.

Letermovir could grow quickly to reach $370 million in sales by 2020, according to Credit Suisse analysts, although the drug could see a rival in the shape of Chimerix's brincidofovir, which is being tested not only for prevention of CMV but also other opportunistic infections that can affect HSCT patients.

Oral brincidofovir flopped in two phase 3 trials, but the company is pressing ahead with the development of an intravenous formulation that it hopes will protect against not only CMV but also adenovirus, another major cause of death in HSCT patients, and other DNA viruses.

The result is a welcome boost for Merck's antiviral unit after the company's $2.9 billion write-down of hepatitis C virus candidate uprifosbuvir last week in the face of a declining eligible patient population and a more difficult pricing environment for HCV drugs.

There was also good news for the Big Pharma ahead of the weekend when its shingles vaccine V212 successfully passed a first phase 3 test, preventing infections in immunocompromised patients.

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Merck's letermovir aces bone marrow transplant study, cutting death rate - FierceBiotech

Drs. Norbert Herzog and David Niesel, Medical Discovery News 8:58 a.m. CT Feb. 27, 2017

Medical Discovery News(Photo: Contributed photo)

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S. for both men and women, killing 610,000 Americans each year. Someone in the U.S. has a heart attack every 42 seconds. A recent study has revealed that stem cells derived from one Macaque monkey transplanted into five other animals helped them heal after a heart attack. This could pave the way for using stem cells from one person in the treatment of other people with heart attacks.

It is now possible to reprogram any almost any cell in the body into a pluripotent stem cell or iPSC that can become any cell in the body. These iPSCs are made by adding four genes that change the genes used in specialized cells such skin cells. The new genes restart genes from early development, allowing these cells to become almost any type of cell in the body.Under very specific laboratory conditions iPSCs can be then used to make cells to repair damaged organs, such as neurons to treat damaged or diseased brains, heart muscle cells or cardiomyocytes to treat a heart attack or any other cells in other damaged organs.

Harvesting cells from an individual to make iPSCs to treat that person would greatly help to avoid the type of rejection that you would see in organ transplantation. However, it is very laborious and expensive to make iPSCs for each person needing cell replacement therapy.Also, treatment after a heart attack requires the infusion of a large number of heart cells derived from iPSCs, which would also consume quite a bit of time and expense. What if iPSCs could be generated from one person and then used to create large numbers of heart cells that could be stored and used to treat several people?Just as in organ transplantation, you would have to use a donor whose cells were compatible with the recipient so that the cells would not be rejected.

To test this possibility, researchers created iPSCs from one macaque and used them to treat five other monkeys with heart attacks. Skin cells were isolated from the donor macaque and four genes were used to reprogram them into iPSCs.The iPSCs were then programmed to develop into cardiomyocytes.Five hundred million cells were injected into the damaged hearts of five organ-matched monkeys. After 12 weeks, there was no rejection of the donor cells in monkeys treated with two anti-rejection drugs that are routinely used in humans after transplantation.

The implanted heart cells became integrated into the recipient hearts and developed the electrical connections required for them to beat. The recipient hearts contractile functions were improved at four and 12 weeks after receiving the grafted heart cells.

This study demonstrates that grafted heart cells improve the contractile functions of the heart and could benefit humans after a heart attack.This study provides hope that rather than having a permanent scar in the heart muscle after a heart attack and decreased function, this type of therapy could replace the dead heart cells with new cells that would then function normally.

Medical Discovery News is hosted by professors Norbert Herzog at Quinnipiac University, and David Niesel of the University of Texas Medical Branch. Learn more at http://www.medicaldiscoverynews.com.

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Medical Discovery News: Heart cells on demand - ReporterNews.com

A study has demonstrated that a new, one-off stem cell treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS) can 'freeze' progression of the disease for five years in some patients.

The treatment called autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (AHSCT) 'reboots' the patient's faulty immune system, which in MS patients attacks the central nervous system, causing damage to nerve fibres.

While it was already known that AHSCT can reset the immune system and pause the deterioration of MS symptoms, which can range from fatigue, vision problems and spasms to severe disability,it was not known how long the positive effects of AHSCT would last.

'In this study, which is the largest long-term follow-up study of this procedure, we've shown we can "freeze" a patient's disease and stop it from becoming worse, for up to five years,' said lead author Dr Paolo Muraro, from the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London.

After examining clinical data from 281 people with advanced MS who had received AHSCT between 1995 and 2006, the researchers observed that 46 percent of the patients showed no worsening of symptoms in five years. All the patients had failed to respond to other types of treatment.

However, the procedure carries riskand may not be suitable for all patients. AHSCT involves harvesting stem cells from the patient's body before the remaining immune cells are destroyed with chemotherapy. The patient's immune system is then regrown by transplanting the stem cells back into the body.

There is arisk of infection in the period where the immune system is disabledand, of the 281 patients in the study, eight died in the 100 days following treatment. 'We must take into account that the treatment carries a small risk of death, and this is a disease that is not immediately life-threatening,' cautioned Dr Muraro.

Last year, BBC Panorama reported on the 'miraculous' results of a current trial of AHSCT in Sheffield, which saw patients with severe paralysis regaining movement in just a couple of days (see BioNews 836).

The latest study, published in the journal JAMA Neurology,revealed that young people and those with less advanced MS benefited most from the treatment. The outcome was also strongly dependent on the form of MS being treated. Three out of ever four patients with 'relapsing' MS saw no disease progression compared with one in threewith the more severe, progressive form. Some patients even reported improvements in their symptoms.

'These findings are very promising but crucially we didn't have a placebo group, in this study,of patients who didn't receive the treatment,' said Dr Muraro. 'We urgently need more effective treatments for this devastating condition, and so a large, randomised controlled trial of this treatment should be the next step.'

Dr Sorrel Bickley, head of biomedical research at the MS Society, welcomed the results.'The findings offer some encouraging insights,' he said. '[MS] is a challenging and unpredictable condition to live with and that's why the MS Society is funding research like this to further our knowledge and find treatments for everyone.'

AHSCT is not routinely available on the NHS and the MS Society says that anyone considering the treatment should speak to their neurologist.

MS is an incurable disease that affects around 100,000 people in the UK and 2.3 million worldwide.

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Stem cell treatment halts multiple sclerosis for five years - BioNews

A high-level meeting has paved the way for global trials to begin on hundreds of patients.

British scientists have found a way to use stem cells to repair damaged tissue which could help millions living with heart failure, the UKs leading cause of death.

Scarring due to disease or heart attacks affects more than two million people in Britain.

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This would be the biggest breakthrough since the first transplants three decades ago

Professor Steve Westaby

Initial trials involving more than 100 patients are being planned for the autumn at two London hospitals.

World renowned cardiac surgeon Professor Steve Westaby, who helped pioneer the revolutionary technique, said it had been thought that repairing heart damage was impossible.

But results from a long-term trial that began in Greece five years ago have shown that this is not the case.

Preliminary data from this trial showed the engineered stem cells, known as Heartcel, can reverse scarring by up to 79 per cent.

The data, presented at the European Society of Cell and Gene Therapy in Florence, showed an average of 40 per cent reduction in heart damage in those on the treatment.

Last month researchers finalised talks with European and US regulators to discuss the timetable for global trials next year involving 500 people.

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6 early signs of a heart attack

Professor Westaby, from the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, said: I am very excited at the prospect of a trial which will hopefully lead to the availability of this stem cell treatment to thousands of patients annually in the UK.

Other scientists have tried in vain to repair damaged heart muscle using stem cells over the past few decades.

This is the first time scarring has been shown to be reversible. It could herald an end to transplants and lead to a treatment for heart failure within three to five years.

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Professor Westaby said: This would be the biggest breakthrough since the first transplants three decades ago.

Professor Westaby has been working on the technique for more than a decade and is carrying out the study with Professor Kim Fox, head of the National Heart and Lung Institute, at Imperial College London.

The implanted stem cells were created by medical outfit Celixir, co-founded by Nobel laureate Professor Martin Evans, the first scientist to culture mice embryonic stem cells in a laboratory.

Professor Westaby was inspired to work on the breakthrough in 1999 after a four-month-old baby girls heart healed itself after he carried out a major life-saving operation.

Kirsty Collier, from Swindon, was dying of a serious and rare heart defect. In a last ditch effort Professor Westaby cut away a third of her badly damaged heart.

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Surprisingly it began to beat. Fourteen years later a scan has shown that the heart had healed itself.

Now Kirsty, 18, has a normal one. Professor Westaby said: She was essentially dead and was only resurrected by what I regarded at the time as a completely bizarre operation.

The fact there was no sign of heart damage told me there were foetal stem cells in babies hearts that could remove scarring of heart muscle. That never happens in adults.

Its all down to the clues we got from Kirstys operation.

Originally posted here:
Heart failure BREAKTHROUGH: Stem cells trial offers hope to millions - Express.co.uk

In 1997Dolly the sheep was introducedto the world by biologists Keith Campbell, Ian Wilmut and colleagues. Not just any lamb, Dolly was a clone. Rather than being made from a sperm and an egg, she originated from a mammary gland cell of another, no-longer-living, six-year-old Fynn Dorset ewe.

With her birth, a scientific and societal revolution was also born.

Some prominent scientistsraised doubts; it was too good to be true. But more animals were cloned: first thelaboratory mouse, thencows,goats,pigs,horses, evendogs,ferretsandcamels. By early 2000, the issue was settled: Dolly was real and cloning adults was possible.

The implications of cloning animals in our society were self-evident from the start. Our advancing ability to reprogram adult, already specialized cells and start them over as something new may one day be the key to creating cells and organs that match the immune system of each individual patient in need of replacements.

But what somehow got lost was the fact that a clone was born at day zero created from the cell of another animal that was six years old. Researchers have spent the past 20 years trying to untangle the mysteries of how clones age. How old, biologically, are these animals born from other adult animals cells?

Decades of cloning research

Dolly became an international celebrity, but she was not the first vertebrate to be cloned from a cell taken from the body of another animal. In 1962, developmental biologistJohn Gurdoncloned the first adult animalby taking a cell from the intestine of one frog and injecting it into an egg of another. Gurdons work did not go unnoticed he went on to share the2012 Nobel Prizein Physiology or Medicine. But it was Dolly who had captured our imagination. Was it because she was a warm-blooded animal, a mammal, much closer to human? If you could do it in a sheep, you could do it on us!

Dolly, along with Gurdons frogs from 35 years earlier and all the other experiments in between, redirected our scientific studies. It was amazing to see a differentiated cell an adult cell specialized to do its particular job transform into an embryonic one that could go on to give rise to all the other cells of a normal body. We researchers wondered if we could go further: Could we in the lab make an adult cell once again undifferentiated, without needing to make a cloned embryo?

A decade after Dolly was announced, stem cell researcherShynia Yamanakas teamdid just that. He went on to be the Nobel corecipient with Gurdon for showing that mature cells could bereprogrammed to become pluripotent: able to develop into any specialized adult cell.

Now we have the possibility of making individualized replacement cells potentially any kind to replace tissue damaged due to injury, genetic disorders and degeneration. Not only cells; we may soon be able to haveour own organs grown in a nonhuman host, ready to be transplanted when needed.

If Dolly was responsible for unleashing the events that culminate with new methods of making fully compatible cells and organs, then her legacy would be to improve the health of practically all human beings on this planet. And yet, I am convinced that there are even better things to come.

Dollys secrets still unfolding

In the winter of 2013, I found myself driving on the wrong side of the road through the Nottingham countryside. In contrast to the luscious landscape, I was in a state gloom; I was on my way to see Keith Campbells family after his sudden death a few weeks earlier. Keith was a smart, fun, loving friend who, along with Ian Wilmut andcolleagues at the Roslin Institute, had brought us Dolly 15 years earlier. We had met at a conference in the early 1990s, when we were both budding scientists playing around with cloning, Keith with sheep, me with cows. An extrovert by nature, he quickly dazzled me with his wit, self-deprecating humor and nonstop chat, all delivered in a thick West Midlands accent. Our friendship that began then continued until his death.

When I knocked at the door of his quaint farmhouse, my plan was to stay just a few minutes, pay my respects to his wife and leave. Five hours and several Guinnesses later, I left feeling grateful. Keith could do that to you, but this time it wasnt him, it was his latest work speaking for him. Thats because his wife very generously told me the project Keith was working on at the time of his death. I couldnt hide my excitement: Could it be possible that after 20 years, the most striking aspect of Dollys legacy was not yet revealed?

See, when Dolly was cloned, she was created using a cell from a six-year-old sheep. Andshe died at age six and a half, a premature death for a breed that lives an average of nine years or more. People assumed that an offspring cloned from an adult was starting at an age disadvantage; rather than truly being a newborn, it seemed like a clones internal age would be more advanced that the length of its own life would suggest. Thus the notion that clones biological age and their chronological one were out of sync, and that cloned animals will die young.

Some of us were convinced that if the cloning procedure was done properly, the biological clock should be reset a newborn clone would truly start at zero. We worked very hard to prove our point. We were not convinced by a single DNA analysis done in Dolly showing slightly shortertelomeres the repetitive DNA sequences at the end of chromosomes that count how many times a cell divides. We presented strong scientific evidence showing that cloned cows had all thesame molecular signs of agingas a nonclone, predicting a normal lifespan. Othersshowed the same in cloned mice. But we couldnt ignore reports from colleagues interpretingbiological signs in cloned animalsthat they attributed toincomplete resetting of the biological clock. So the jury was out.

Aging studies are very hard to do because there are only two data points that really count: date of birth and date of death. If you want to know the lifespan of an individual you have to wait until its natural death. Little did I know, that is what Keith was doing back in 2012.

That Saturday afternoon I spent in Keiths house in Nottingham, I saw a photo of the animals in Keiths latest study: several cloned Dollies, all much older than Dolly at the time she had died, and they looked terrific. I was in awe.

The data were confidential, so I had to remain silent until late last year whenthe work was posthumously published. Keiths coauthors humbly said: For those clones that survive beyond the perinatal period [] the emerging consensus, supported by the current data, is that they are healthy and seem to age normally.

These findings became even more relevant when last December researchers at theScripps Research Institutefound that induced pluripotent stem cells reprogrammed using the Yamanaka factorsretain the aging epigenetic signature of the donor individual. In other words, using these four genes to attempt to reprogram the cells does not seem to reset the biological clock.

The new Dollies are now telling us that if we take a cell from an animal of any age, and we introduce its nucleus into a nonfertilized mature egg, we can have an individual born with its lifespan fully restored. They confirmed that all signs of biological and chronological age matched between cloned and noncloned sheep.

There seems to be a natural built-in mechanism in the eggs that can rejuvenate a cell. We dont know what it is yet, but it is there. Our group as well as others are hard at work, and as soon as someone finds it, the most astonishing legacy of Dolly will be realized.

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More lessons from Dolly the sheep: Is a clone really born at age zero ... - Salon

Posted on Feb. 23, 2017, 6 a.m. in Stem Cell Research Immune System Stem Cell

Autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation halted progression of Multiple Sclerosis for 5 years in 46% of patients.

Recent research indicates that the transplant of autologous hematopoietic stem cells (AHSCT) is an excellent treatment for multiple sclerosis. It has been determined that the procedure stops disease progression for half a decade in nearly 50 percent of multiple sclerosis patients.

About the Study

The study was spearheaded by Dr. Paolo Muraro from the Imperial College London's Department of Medicine. Dr. Muraro and his colleagues revealed their findings through JAMA Neurology. These results were released on the heels of a separate study that found the success of a similar treatment in patients suffering from relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS). Dr. Muraro and his research team are quick to point out that additional trials are necessary to gauge the efficacy and safety of AHSCT. It is important to note that some patients perished within the first 100 days of treatment.

About AHSCT

AHSCT involves the harvesting of a patient's own stem cells. The patient is subjected to a powerful dose of chemotherapy to destroy any diseased cells. The next step is the return of harvested stem cells to the patient's blood. The goal is to restart the production of normal blood cells.

In layman's terms, AHSCT is best understood as a resetting of the body's immune system. Though it was already known that this style of treatment resets the immune system and poses certain risks, the length of its benefits was not fully understood. We now have a better picture of these benefits. AHSCT Results

The research team studied data from over two dozen treatment centers in 13 countries. They pinpointed 281 patients who suffered from multiple sclerosis and underwent AHSCT from 1995 to 2006. Exactly 78 percent of these patients had a progressive form of multiple sclerosis. The team made use of the Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) to analyze patients' survival after five years of treatment as well as improvements in their multiple sclerosis symptoms. A whopping 46 percent of these patients enjoyed zero disease progression in the five years following treatment. Those with RRMS, characterized by flare-ups (inflammatory attacks) and periods of remission enjoyed the optimal outcomes.

An amazing 73 percent of these patients did not endure worsening of symptoms in the 5 years following AHSCT. Some patients also experienced minor improvements in their multiple sclerosis symptoms following AHSCT. Those with progressive multiple sclerosis enjoyed a rise in EDSS score by 0.14 in the year after treatment. Those with RRMS experienced an EDSS score increase of 0.76. Those of a younger age, minimal immunotherapies before AHSCT and a comparably lower EDSS score also displayed improved outcomes with AHSCT. Treatment Risk

The findings described above clearly show promise for the AHSCT use in individuals who suffer from multiple sclerosis. The research team would like to make it perfectly clear that some patients died in the 100 days following AHSCT. Exactly eight patients perished in this time period. It is assumed that the deaths were related to treatment. AHSCT makes use of aggressive chemotherapy that significantly weakens the immune system and spikes one's risk for infection. Since multiple sclerosis is not a disease that is immediately life-threatening, the risk of death posed by AHSCT must be weighed by all multiple sclerosis patients.

What's next Dr. Muraro is adamant that a follow-up study must be performed that includes a group of multiple sclerosis patients who have not received AHSCT. It is clear that additional studies are required to accurately gauge the efficacy and safety of AHSCT. Ideally, a massive randomized controlled trial of AHSCT will be performed in the coming months.

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Stem Cell Therapy Halts Multiple Sclerosis - Anti Aging News