StemCell Therapy

13-02-2012 16:06 Lyrics: I don't see how Iraq can hate from their side of the world. We're already in. My fellow Americans, leggo Red, white, and black. Flag of Iraq. Red white and blue. I pledge to the flag and you. Yeah, yeah. We just gave more rights to the gays. China gets what we get in centuries in 2 days. My country loves me. We're out of Afghanistan. We found and killed Osama in Pakistan. That girl in Somalia got rescued. Israel vs. Iran...Muslim vs. Jew Economy sucks, oh. Iran has nukes, yeah. Mitt Romney's winning. Israel's screwed, oh. Kim Jong-il died, yeah. Seal Team 6? Tough mothers. Twilight 4 just came out on DVD and it made lots of dough. Most people hate that series except for teenage girls, though. Oops, I said Twilight sucks. I ain't really mean to say Twilight sucks. Even though it kind of does, there's way more important stuff that we can discuss. Like such: Let's go! Republicans are running for the 2012 November election So far there's five left running for control of the entire nation. They'll solve the issues, see? Except the Twilight finale. I know it's either Gingrich or Romney, but Obama can still beat all four, see? In 2008 there were bets that Obama would get assassinated, but he's still alive and being president and ObamaCare's abortion policy was envied by Catholics across the globe and across America. You can bet that Barack will get another term. Rick S. is against stem cell research. And Newt won't stop at anything to make it clearer to Conservatives ...

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SAN BRUNO, Calif., Feb. 16, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Cord Blood Registry (CBR) is the exclusive partner for a growing number of clinical researchers focusing on the use of a child's own cord blood stem cells to help treat pediatric brain injury and acquired hearing loss. To ensure consistency in cord blood stem cell processing, storage and release for infusion, three separate trials have included CBR in their FDA-authorized protocol—including two at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) working in partnership with Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital, and a third at Georgia Health Sciences University, home of the Medical College of Georgia (MCG). This makes CBR the only family stem cell bank pairing researchers with prospective patients for these studies. 

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"Partnering with a series of specialists who want to research the use of a child's own newborn blood stem cells on a variety of disease states allows CBR to help advance medical research for regenerative therapies by connecting the child whose family banked with CBR to appropriate researchers," said Heather Brown, MS, CGC, Vice President of Scientific & Medical Affairs at Cord Blood Registry.  "The pediatric specialists from UTHealth, Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital, and Georgia Health Sciences University are at the forefront of stem cell research as they evaluate cord blood stem cells' ability to help facilitate the healing process after damage to nerves and tissue."

Hearing Loss and Traumatic Brain Injury Clinical Trials Break New Ground

Sensorineural hearing loss affects approximately 6 per 1,000 children by 18 years of age, with 9 percent resulting from acquired causes such as viral infection and head injury.(1,2,3)  The Principal Investigator of the hearing loss study is Samer Fakhri, M.D., surgeon at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center and associate professor and program director in the Department of Otorhinolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery at UTHealth.  He is joined by James Baumgartner, M.D., sponsor of the study and guest research collaborator for this first-of-its-kind FDA-regulated, Phase 1 safety study of the use of cord blood stem cells to treat children with acquired hearing loss. The trial follows evidence from published studies in animals that cord blood treatment can repair damaged organs in the inner ear. Clients of CBR who have sustained a post-birth hearing loss and are 6 weeks to 2 years old may be eligible for the year-long study. "The window of opportunity to foster normal language development is limited," said James Baumgartner, M.D.  "This is the first study of its kind with the potential to actually restore hearing in children and allow for more normal speech and language development."

Although the neurologic outcome for nearly all types of brain injury (with the exception of abuse) is better for children than adults,(4,5) trauma is the leading cause of death in children,(6) and the majority of the deaths are attributed to head injury.(7) Distinguished professor of pediatric surgery and pediatrics at UTHealth, Charles S. Cox, M.D. launched an innovative study building on a growing portfolio of research using stem cell-based therapies for neurological damage. The study will enroll 10 children ages 18 months to 17 years who have umbilical cord blood banked with CBR and have suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and are enrolled in the study within 6-18 months of sustaining the injury. Read more about the trial here.

"The reason we have become interested in cord blood cells is because of the possibility of autologous therapy, meaning using your own cells. And the preclinical models have demonstrated some really fascinating neurological preservation effects to really support these Phase 1 trials," says Charles S. Cox, M.D., principle investigator of the trial. "There's anecdotal experience in other types of neurological injuries that reassures us in terms of the safety of the approach and there are some anecdotal hints at it being beneficial in certain types of brain injury."

Georgia Health Sciences University (GHSU) Focuses on Cerebral Palsy

At the GHSU in Augusta, Dr. James Carroll, professor and chief of pediatric neurology, embarked on the first FDA-regulated clinical trial to determine whether an infusion of stem cells from a child's own umbilical cord blood can improve the quality of life for children with cerebral palsy. The study will include 40 children whose parents have stored their cord blood at CBR and meet inclusion criteria. 

"Using a child's own stem cells as a possible treatment is the safest form of stem cell transplantation because it carries virtually no threat of immune system rejection," said Dr. Carroll. "Our focus on cerebral palsy breaks new ground in advancing therapies to change the course of these kinds of brain injury—a condition for which there is currently no cure."

Cerebral palsy, caused by a brain injury or lack of oxygen in the brain before birth or during the first few years of life, can impair movement, learning, hearing, vision and cognitive skills. Two to three children in 1,000 are affected by it, according to the Centers for Disease Control.(8)

Cord Blood Stem Cell Infusions Move From the Lab to the Clinic

These multi-year studies are a first step to move promising pre-clinical or animal research of cord blood stem cells into clinical trials in patients. Through the CBR Center for Regenerative Medicine, CBR will continue to partner with physicians who are interested in advancing cellular therapies in regenerative applications.

"The benefits of cord blood stem cells being very young, easy to obtain, unspecialized cells which have had limited exposure to environmental toxins or infectious diseases and easy to store for long terms without any loss of function, make them an attractive source for cellular therapy researchers today," adds Brown. "We are encouraged to see interest from such diverse researchers from neurosurgeons to endocrinologists and cardiac specialists."

About CBR

CBR® (Cord Blood Registry®) is the world's largest and most experienced cord blood bank.  The company has consistently led the industry in technical innovations and supporting clinical trials. It safeguards more than 400,000 cord blood collections for individuals and their families. CBR was the first family bank accredited by AABB and the company's quality standards have been recognized through ISO 9001:2008 certification—the global business standard for quality. CBR has also released more client cord blood units for specific therapeutic use than any other family cord blood bank. Our research and development efforts are focused on helping the world's leading clinical researchers advance regenerative medical therapies. For more information, visit http://www.cordblood.com.

(1)  Bergstrom L, Hemenway WG, Downs MP. A high risk registry to find congenital deafness. Otolaryngol Clin North Am. 1977;4:369-399.
(2)  Billings KR, Kenna MA. Causes of pediatric sensorineural hearing loss: yesterday and today. Arch Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 1999 May;125(5):517-21.
(3)  Smith RJ, Bale JF Jr, White KR. Sensorineural hearing loss in children. Lancet. 2005;365(9462):879-890.
(4)  Faul M, Xu L, Wald MM, Coronado VG. Traumatic brain injury in the United States: emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and deaths. Atlanta (GA): Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control; 2010.
(5)  Schnitzer, Patricia, PH.D., "Prevention of Unintentional Childhood Injuries", American Academy of Family Physicians, 2006.
(6)  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "10 Leading Causes of Death, United States, 1997-2007", WISQARS, National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), National Vital Statistics System
(7)  Marquez de la Plata, Hart et al, National Institutes of Health, "Impact of Age on Long-term Recovery From Traumatic Brain Injury", Arch Phys Med Rehabilitation, May 2008.
(8)  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, http://www.cdc.gov/Features/dsCerebralPalsy, accessed February 6, 2012

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Groundbreaking Clinical Trials Study Cord Blood Stem Cells to Help Treat Brain Injury and Hearing Loss

COMMENTARY | I am willing to bet most people know someone with a damaged heart. I can name two people in my immediate family, but do not have enough fingers and toes to count up all the friends, coworkers and acquaintances who have suffered mild or major heart attacks over the years. The odds are you know several sufferers yourself. In fact, millions of people suffer from heart disease. It is the leading cause of death for Americans.

Re-grow damaged heart tissue

A heart attack causes a piece of the heart tissue to die from lack of blood flow. The scar tissue is all that remains and the person has to deal with the damage. Now, in a ground-breaking study, researchers from the Cedar-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles have discovered a way to re-grow damaged heart muscle.

Stem cell therapy Dr. Eduardo Marban and his team tested stem cell therapy with great results. Out of 17 patients, there was an average reduction of scar tissue by 50 percent. These patients also saw new growth in their heart muscle. Now that is not a total reversal, but for tissue that was presumed lost forever, this is big news.

Marban said, "One of the holy grails in medicine has been the use of medicine to achieve regeneration," Marban said.

Patients' own stem cells

It should be pointed out that the stem cells used did not come from the very controversial embryos, instead the cells used were developed from the patients' hearts. Again, this has huge implications in the treatment of heart disease, and other degenerative diseases for that matter.

"We've achieved what we have achieved using adult stem cells - in this case - actually specifically from a patient's own heart back into the same patient." Marten said, "There's no ethical issues with that - there's no destruction of embryos. There's no reason to worry about immune rejection."

How it works

The process takes several months. A catheter has to first be inserted in the "broken heart" to remove a small biopsy of muscle. The piece is them manipulated in the laboratory and then finally re-injected in the patient's heart. Once the cells take root, the heart will began to mend itself from the inside out.

Far-reaching implications

This revolutionary medical treatment could potentially be used to re-grow damaged kidneys, pancreas or other damaged organs. But, this is only the start of the research. There are still a lot of unknowns in the process. Surprisingly, the stem cells are not doing all the work. "The repair is from the heart itself and not from the cells we give them." said Marban.

Overall the potential for this treatment is great. It will take some more time and study before healing America's broken hearts but the hope is there. Dr. Marban believes the treatment will be available to the general public within four years.

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Broken Hearts Healed with Stem Cells

The damage caused by a heart attack was healed by using stem cells gathered from the patient’s own heart in a small trial written up in The Lancet journal, according to the BBC.

The preliminary study was carried out at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and involved 25 patients who had suffered heart attacks recently, reported The Los Angeles Times.

Seventeen of the subjects in the study were given infusions of stem cells “cultured from a raisin-sized chunk of their own heart tissue,” while the other eight were given standard care, reported The LA Times.

The size of the scars on heart tissue damaged by a heart attack decreased in size from 24 percent of the heart to 12 percent of the heart, said Dr. Eduardo Márban, the lead researcher in the study. He wrote to The LA Times in an email that the most surprising aspect of the findings was the fact that the heart could regrow healthy tissue.

More on GlobalPost: Global malaria deaths twice as high as estimated, Lancet study says

The study used a procedure invented by Márban to isolate heart stem cells from healthy tissue from each patient’s heart, and then grow millions of new cells in a petri dish, according to CNN. The patients who received the stem cell treatment either had 12 million or 25 million such cells injected back into their hearts.

Deepak Shrivastava, the director of the Gladstone Institute of Cariovascular Disease based in San Francisco, told Bloomberg, “There’s a dire need for new therapies for people with heart failure, it’s still the No. 1 cause of death in men and women.”

Márban told CNN, “If we can regenerate the whole heart, then the patient would be completely normal. We haven’t fulfilled that yet, but we’ve gotten rid of half the injury, and that’s a good start."

More on GlobalPost: Study links high calorie intake with memory loss

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/health/120213/stem-cells-used-heal-heart-attack-damage

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Stem cells used to heal heart attack damage

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London, Feb 12 : British scientists have for the first time generated crucial types of human brain cells in the laboratory by reprogramming skin cells, which they say could speed up the hunt for new treatments for conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy and stroke.

Until now it has only been possible to generate tissue from the cerebral cortex, the area of the brain where most major neurological diseases occur, by using controversial embryonic stem cells, obtained by the destruction of an embryo.

This has meant the supply of brain tissue available for research has been limited due to the ethical concerns around embryonic stem cells and shortages in their availability.

However, scientists at the University of Cambridge now insist they have overcome this problem after showing for the first time that it is possible to re-programme adult human skin cells so that they develop into neurons found in the cerebral cortex, the Telegraph reported.

Initially brain cells grown in this way could be used to help researchers gain a better understanding of how the brain develops, what goes wrong when it is affected by disease and it could also be used for screening new drug treatments.

Eventually they hope the cells could also be used to provide healthy tissue that can be implanted into patients to treat neurodegenerative diseases and brain damage.

The cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that is responsible for most of the major high-level thought processes such as memory, language and consciousness.

"The cerebral cortex makes up 75 percent of the human brain, is where all the important processes that make us human take place. It is, however, also the major place where disease can occur," said Dr Rick Livesey, who led the research at the University of Cambridge's Gurdon [corr] Institute.

"We have been able to take reprogrammed skin cells so they develop into brain stem cells and then essentially replay brain development in the laboratory.

"We can study brain development and what goes wrong when it is affected by disease in a way we haven't been able to before. We see it as a major breakthrough in what will now be possible," he added.

Dr Livesey and his colleagues were able to create the two major types of neuron that form the cerebral cortex from reprogrammed skin cells and show that they were identical to those created from the more controversial embryonic stem cells.

He said this may eventually lead to new treatments for patients where damaged tissue could be replaced by brain cells grown in the laboratory from a sample of their skin.

"You don't need to rebuild damage to recover function as the brain is quite good at recovering itself ? it does this after stroke for example. However, it may be possible to give it some extra real estate that it can use to do this," Dr Livesey said.

"We can make large numbers of cerebral cortex neurons by taking a sample of skin from anybody, so in principal it should be possible to put these back into the patients," he added.

Dr Simon Ridley, head of research at Alzheimer's Research UK, which funded the study alongside the Wellcome Trust, said: "Turning stem cells into networks of fully functional nerve cells in the lab holds great promise for unravelling complex brain diseases such as Alzheimer's."

The findings were published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. (ANI)

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Brain cells created from human skin

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Academic Journal
Main Category: Parkinson's Disease
Also Included In: Neurology / Neuroscience
Article Date: 09 Feb 2012 - 0:00 PST

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By reverse engineering human skin cells to become induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and then coaxing them to become neural dopamine cells, scientists in the US have developed a way to study a genetic cause of Parkinson's disease in lab-made neurons. Their findings, which they write about in the 7 February issue of Nature Communications, reveal some potential new drug targets for Parkinson's and a new platform to screen treatments that might mimic the protective functions of parkin, the gene they investigated.

Parkinson's disease is a progressive neurological disorder that results from the death of dopamine-secreting neurons in a region of the brain that controls movement. In the US there are 500,000 people with Parkinson's disease, and 50,000 new cases every year. There is no cure.

Most cases have no specific cause, but around 1 in 10 can be attributed to known genetic factors. One of these is mutations in the parkin gene.

To study the effect of the parkin gene in brain cells, you have to study live human neurons. But they are hard to study because they live in complex networks in the brain, ruling out the possibility of extracting them.

And you can't use animals, because when they lack the parkin gene, they don't develop Parkinson's disease: human neurons are thought to have "unique vulnerabilities" in this respect.

(The suggestion is that the larger human brain uses more dopamine to support the neural computation that is needed to enable us to walk on two legs, compared to the four-legged movement of almost all other animals.)

But in 2007, scientists in Japan described how they made human stem cells (iPSCs) without using embryos, and since then, lead author of the Nature Communications study, Dr Jian Feng from the University at Buffalo (UB) in New York, and colleagues, have been looking for a way to use the technology to study neurons with mutations in the parkin gene.

Feng, a professor of physiology and biophysics in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, said in a press statement that the advent of iPSCs was a "game-changer" for their field of work:

"Before this, we didn't even think about being able to study the disease in human neurons."

"The brain is so fully integrated. It's impossible to obtain live human neurons to study," he added.

For their study, Feng and colleagues reverse engineered human skin cells to make iPSCs. The skin cells came from four people: two with a rare type of Parkinson's disease where parkin causes the disease, and two healthy people who served as controls.

"Once parkin is mutated, it can no longer precisely control the action of dopamine, which supports the neural computation required for our movement," said Feng.

Feng and colleagues also found that mutations in parkin stop it being able to tightly control the production of monoamine oxidase (MAO), which catalyzes dopamine oxidation.

"Normally, parkin makes sure that MAO, which can be toxic, is expressed at a very low level so that dopamine oxidation is under control," said Feng.

But they found that when it is mutated, parkin loses the ability to regulate MAO, so the level goes up.

"The nerve cells from our Parkinson's patients had much higher levels of MAO expression than those from our controls. We suggest in our study that it might be possible to design a new class of drugs that would dial down the expression level of MAO," explained Feng, who noted that one of the drugs currently used to treat Parkinson's disease slows the activity of MAO and in trials has been shown to slow disease progression.

Fend said they discovered that a key reason for the death of dopamine neurons was oxidative stress due to there being too much MAO around. But before the neurons die, the precise action of dopamine in helping the neural computations that support movement, is disrupted by mutations in parkin.

"This paper provides the first clues about what the parkin gene is doing in healthy controls and what it fails to achieve in Parkinson's patients," said Feng.

When the researchers delivered normal parkin into the neurons with the mutations, the defects were reversed. This is what makes them think such neurons could be used as a platform for screening new drug candidates that could mimic the protective effect of normal parkin.

The University of Buffalo has applied for patent protection on the screening platform.

Although parkin mutations are responsible for a small proportion of Parkinson's cases, the researchers believe that understanding how the gene works could be relevant to all cases of the disease.

Written by Catharine Paddock PhD
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

Visit our parkinson's disease section for the latest news on this subject. "Parkin controls dopamine utilization in human midbrain dopaminergic neurons derived from induced pluripotent stem cells"; Houbo Jiang, Yong Ren, Eunice Y. Yuen, Ping Zhong, Mahboobe Ghaedi, Zhixing Hu, Gissou Azabdaftari, Kazuhiro Nakaso, Zhen Yan & Jian Feng; Nature Communications 3:668; Published online 07 Feb 2012; DOI:10.1038/ncomms1669; Link to Abstract.
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Lab-Made Neurons Allow Scientists To Study A Genetic Cause Of Parkinson's

For the first time, scientists in the U.S. have grown brain nerve cells from skin to study Parkinson's disease.

This experiment using stem cells can help researchers to find out how the debilitating condition progresses in humans and how it corrupts, through mutations, healthy brain cells of a person.

The study was led by Dr Jian Feng of the State University of New York, Buffalo, and was published in the journal, Nature Communications.

The degenerative condition results from the death of dopamine-generating cells in the brain. This results in movement-related symptoms like shaking, rigidity, slowness of movement and difficulty with walking and gait.

Apart from this, cognitive and behavioural problems may also arise, with dementia commonly occurring in the advanced stages of the disease.

Earlier, such brain nerve cells called neurons were inaccessible as they lie deep in the brain, but the stem cell technology has solved the problem.

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"This is the first time that human dopamine neurons have ever been generated from Parkinson's disease patients with parkin mutations. Before this, we didn't even think about being able to study the disease in human neurons. The brain is so fully integrated - it's impossible to obtain live human neurons to study," Dr Feng said.

The parkin gene, which was subjected to study, plays a key role in controlling the brain-signalling dopamine levels with the help of an enzyme called MAO (monoamine oxidase).

However, when mutations of this gene occur, the MAO levels change abruptly. This causes the conditions to become toxic for the dopamine producing brain cells as a result of which signalling across the brain goes haywire, leading to most of the symptoms of Parkinson's.

According to Allvoices, as the parkin gene does not develop into Parkinson's in animals, the study of it in humans is very important and as noted above, obtaining live samples is of course improbable. So this breakthrough has opened up a previously untapped resource in the study of Parkinson's.

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Parkinson’s Research: Scientists Grow Artificial Stem Cells

"We want to come up with technology to replace defective tissue with beating heart tissue made from stem cells sloughed off by the infant into the amniotic fluid," said Rice bioengineer Jeffrey Jacot, who led the study. "Our findings serve as proof of principle that stem cells from amniotic fluid have the potential to be used for such purposes."

The results were published online by the journal Tissue Engineering Part A. The research was conducted at Texas Children's Hospital.

According to the American Heart Association, about 32,000 infants a year in the United States are born with congenital heart defects, 10,000 of which either result in death or require some sort of surgical intervention before they're a year old.

Jacot, an assistant professor of bioengineering based at Rice's BioScience Research Collaborative and director of the Pediatric Cardiac Bioengineering Laboratory at the Congenital Heart Surgery Service at Texas Children's Hospital, hopes to grow heart patches from the amniotic stem cells of a fetus diagnosed in the womb with a congenital heart defect. Because the cells would be a genetic match, there would be no risk of rejection, he said.

"Between 60 and 80 percent of severe heart defects are caught by ultrasound," he said. "Ultimately, when a heart defect is diagnosed in utero, we will extract amniotic cells. By birth, we will have made tissue for the repair out of the infant's own cells. The timing is critical because the surgery needs to be done within weeks of the infant's birth."

Enlarge

Cells derived from amniotic fluid display a shape and typical cell-cell connections indicative of endothelial cells, which form blood vessels, after treatment with specific growth factors. Researchers at Rice University are working with amniotic stem cells with the goal of growing living tissue that matches infants born with congenital heart defects. Credit: Jacot Lab/Rice University/Texas Children's Hospital

Surgeons currently use such nonbiological materials as Dacron or Teflon, which do not contract or grow with the patient, or native pericardium, the membrane that surrounds the heart. Pericardium generally forms scar tissue and can only be used in the first operation. Both solutions require further operations and raise the risk of cardiac arrest, Jacot said.

Stem cells, the focus of both great hope and great controversy, are the cells in every organism that differentiate into specialized cells in the body. Stem cells drawn from human embryos are known to have great potential for treatment of defects and disease, but research into their use has been limited by political and other concerns, Jacot said.

That isn't the case with cells found in amniotic fluid, he said. Amniotic fluid is the liquid that protects and nourishes a fetus in the womb. Fluid is sometimes taken from pregnant women through amniocentesis, but cells for the Jacot lab's studies were drawn from women undergoing treatment for twin-twin transfusion syndrome. "This is where two identical twins share a placenta and one is getting more blood than the other. It's not common," he said, noting that Texas Children's is one of the few hospitals that treat the syndrome. "Part of the general treatment is to remove fluid with the goal of saving both lives, and that fluid is usually discarded."

Jacot said other labs have tested amniotic fluid as a source of stem cells with promising results. "Our work is based on five years of work from other labs in which they've discovered a very small population of amniotic stem cells – maybe one in every 10,000 – that naturally express markers characteristic of embryonic and mesenchymal stem cells."

Jacot and his team created a population of amniotic stem cells through a complex process that involved extracting cells via centrifugation and fluorescence-activated sorting. They sequestered cells with a surface receptor, c-kit, a marker associated with stem cells.

The cells were cultured in endothelial growth media to make them suitable for growing into a network of capillaries, Jacot said. When the cells were placed in a bio-scaffold, a framework used for tissue engineering, they did just that.

"Anything we make will need a blood supply," he said. "That's why the first cell type we looked for is one that can form blood vessels. We need to know we can get a capillary network throughout tissue that we can then connect to the infant's blood supply."

Jacot said the cells they tested grow very fast. "We've done calculations to show that, with what we get from amniocentesis, we could more than grow an entire heart by birth," he said. "That would be really tough, but it gives us confidence that we will be able to quickly grow patches of tissue outside of the body that can then be sewn inside."

He said construction of a functional patch is some years away, but his lab is making progress. While embryonic cells have the most potential for such a project, amniotic cells already show signs of an ability to turn into heart muscle, he said.

Co-authors are graduate students Omar Benavides and Jennifer Petsche, both of Rice; and Kenneth Moise Jr. and Anthony Johnson, now professors at the Texas Center for Maternal and Fetal Treatment at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston with appointments at Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital.

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and CAREER programs, the Houston-Rice Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Med into Grad Program and the Virginia and L.E. Simmons Family Foundation.

More information: http://online.lieb … EA.2011.0392

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Scientists make strides toward fixing infant hearts

Christina Blouvan-Cervantes had been battling aggressive leukemia when her blood count plummeted and she landed in the emergency room in Fresno. Her doctors told her a blood transfusion was her only hope. But her faith wouldn't allow her to receive one.

So she turned to one of the only doctors who could possibly keep her alive: a committed atheist who views her belief system as wholly irrational.

Dr. Michael Lill, head of the blood and marrow transplant program at Cedars-Sinai's Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute, is a last recourse for Jehovah's Witnesses with advanced leukemia.

PHOTOS: Doctor treats Jehovah's Witnesses

They arrive at Lill's door out of desperation and a desire to live. Many specialists decline to treat them because of their biblically centered refusal to accept blood transfusions, a mainstay of conventional care for the cancer.

Lill thinks their refusal is risky and illogical but nevertheless has devised a way to treat them that accommodates their religious convictions.

Despite his belief that God doesn't exist, he has become a hero to many devout believers.

"We don't care if he believes in God or not," said David Goldfarb, chairman of the Los Angeles-area Hospital Liaison Committee for the Jehovah's Witnesses. "What we really believe in is, 'Are you a skilled and great doctor … and can you respect our belief system?'"

Lill, a 52-year-old Australian native, said ideological differences between doctor and patient are beside the point.

"Just because someone makes a decision which I would view as the wrong decision … doesn't mean at that point in time I say, 'No, I am not going to look after you anymore,' " he said. "I try and treat people's religious beliefs with respect."

::

Leukemia, a disease of the blood and bone marrow, produces cancerous blood cells. Treatment involves chemotherapy to destroy the cancerous cells, sometimes followed by transplants of stem cells that develop into healthy blood cells.

Blood transfusions are usually required, because both the cancer and the treatment suppresses the body's production of blood cells. Without transfusions, the risk of death from anemia or bleeding is significantly higher.

Jehovah's Witnesses draw their beliefs about blood from a literal interpretation of the Bible, which repeatedly warns against its consumption. Among the passages often cited by adherents: "You must not eat the blood; pour it out on the ground like water."

It is a violation of God's command for a Jehovah's Witness to accept whole blood, red or white blood cells, platelets or plasma, Goldfarb said. It is left to patients to decide individually whether they are comfortable accepting stem cells.

Lill, who received his medical training in Australia, came to the United States in 1989 to work in the bone marrow transplant program at UCLA Medical Center. He accepted a position at Cedars-Sinai in 1997. He and his wife, a stem cell researcher, have two children.

He stumbled into the niche of treating Jehovah's Witnesses with leukemia after getting his first referral about 15 years ago. He saw both a professional challenge and an unmet need. Since then, about 50 Witnesses from around the world have come to his team for help, including 35 who have received stem cell transplants.

"People have the right to make their own decisions," he said. Before treating the patients, Lill has a candid discussion about religion and medicine, freely using words like "death" and "dying."

About four years ago, Lill himself was treated for cancer of the appendix. The experience, he said, helped him better understand his patients' fears.

Read more here:
A meeting of hearts if not minds

To: HEALTH, MEDICAL AND NATIONAL EDITORS

CLEVELAND, Jan. 30, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Juventas Therapeutics is a privately-held, clinical-stage company developing novel regenerative therapies for treatment of cardiovascular disease. The Company's lead product, JVS-100, encodes Stromal cell-Derived Factor 1 (SDF-1) which has been shown to repair damaged tissue through recruitment of circulating stem cells to the site of injury, prevention of ongoing cell death and restoration of blood flow. Juventas recently presented the 12-month results from its Phase I heart failure trial at the 7th International Conference on Cell Therapy for Cardiovascular Disease.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120130/DC43104LOGO)

The 17-person, open-label, dose-escalation study targeted New York Heart Association (NYHA) class III heart failure patients, who represent approximately a quarter of the 6 million heart failure patients in the United States and account for half of all heart failure hospital admissions. The clinical trial met its primary safety endpoint with no serious adverse events deemed drug related. Fifteen of the 17 patients survived to a year. Importantly, patients receiving target therapeutic doses demonstrated clinically significant improvements at 12 months in 6 minute walk distance (6MWD) and the Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire (MLHFQ). Nearly half of the patients improved a full NYHA class, with multiple patients improving 2 full classes.

"The patient population we treated in this trial have a true unmet clinical need and tend to have rapidly deteriorating quality of life," states Marc Penn, M.D., Ph.D, Founder and Chief Medical Officer for Juventas and Director of Cardiovascular Research at the Summa Cardiovascular Institute at Summa Health System. "To see clinical symptomatic benefits of this magnitude maintained from 4 to 12 months after JVS-100 treatment suggests we are inducing fundamental changes in the heart of treated patients. We believe this is consistent with our understanding of the mechanisms associated with JVS-100 and warrants further investigation."

Based on these results, the company is preparing to enroll a placebo-controlled, randomized, double blinded Phase II heart failure clinical trial in the United States to further define the efficacy of JVS-100. Also, Juventas has received FDA clearance to enroll a Phase IIa trial evaluating safety and efficacy of JVS-100 in patients with critical limb ischemia. The CLI trial is enrolling patients in the United States and India. In addition to safety, the trial will assess time to amputation and other efficacy endpoints and will begin enrollment in the first quarter of 2012.

"We are thrilled by our Phase I data and excited to be transitioning into multiple mid-stage clinical trials," states Rahul Aras, Ph.D., President and CEO for Juventas. "We are excited about the platform potential for JVS-100 in a broad range of clinical indications."

About Juventas Therapeutics

Juventas Therapeutics, headquartered in Cleveland, OH, is a privately-held clinical-stage biotechnology company developing a pipeline of regenerative therapies to treat life-threatening diseases. Founded in 2007 with an exclusive license from the Cleveland Clinic, Juventas has transitioned its therapeutic platform from concept to initiation of mid-stage clinical trials. Investors include New Science Ventures, Takeda Ventures, Triathlon Medical Venture Partners, Early Stage Partners, Fletcher Spaght Ventures, Reservoir Venture Partners, North Coast Angel Fund, X Gen Ltd., JumpStart Inc., and Blue Chip Venture Co. The company has received non-dilutive grant support through the Ohio Third Frontier funded Cleveland Clinic Ohio BioValidation Fund, Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center and Center for Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine.

About JVS-100

The company's lead product, JVS-100 encodes Stromal-cell Derived Factor 1 (SDF-1). SDF-1 promotes tissue repair through recruitment of endogenous stem cells to the damaged organ, promotion of new blood vessel formation and prevention of ongoing cell death. The SDF-1 repair pathway is well-conserved in a broad range of end organ systems, including the heart, vasculature, dermis, kidney, and eye. JVS-100 is currently being clinically evaluated for treatment of heart failure and late stage peripheral vascular disease and has been shown to protect and repair tissue following organ-damage in a broad range of pre-clinical disease models.

SOURCE Juventas Therapeutics

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See more here:
Juventas Therapeutics Reports One Year Data From Phase I Heart Failure Clinical Trial

A team of researchers at UC Davis has pioneered a technique to
use stem cells to smother the genetic problem that causes
Huntington's disease.

The findings, due in the journal Molecular and Cellular
Neuroscience, could pave the way for a treatment that stops the
disease's devastating progression.

Huntington's is an inherited disease in which the body produces
a mutant version of a protein, huntingtin, that destroys nerve
cells in the brain.

It causes uncontrolled movements and difficulty walking, plus
dementia that grows progressively worse until the disease
ultimately results in death. It strikes about one in every
10,000 people in this country, according to the Huntington's
Disease Society of America.

There is no known cure. Treatment aims to slow down the
worsening of symptoms and keep the patient comfortable.

Researchers at the UC Davis Institute for Regenerative Cures,
led by Jan A. Nolta, attacked abnormal huntingtin with a
technique called RNA interference.

This is how it works: RNA is a molecule similar to DNA that
occurs naturally in the body and which cells use to produce
proteins.

If a strand of RNA is producing a bad protein, like the mutant
huntingtin, researchers can create another strand that's
essentially an inverted version of the bad one. Inject that new
molecule into a cell, and it locks onto the bad RNA like an
opposite puzzle piece, blocking it from making any protein.

For the first time, Nolta and colleagues were able to generate
huntingtin-blocking RNA in stem cells and inject them straight
into nerve cells – a treatment that significantly reduced the
amount of the mutant protein produced.

The scientists used stem cells derived from the bone marrow of
healthy human donors.

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine and Team KJ
funded the research.

Nolta said the findings could lead to treatments for genetic
disorders such as ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) and Parkinson's,
as well.

Now, she said, "Our challenge with RNA interference technology
is to figure out how to deliver it into the human brain in a
sustained, safe and effective manner. We're exploring how to
use human stem cells to create RNAi production factories within
the brain."

Nolta's lab recently received funding from the California
Institute for Regenerative Medicine to develop an RNAi delivery
system for Huntington's disease.

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Call The Bee's Grace Rubenstein, (916) 321-1270.

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View original post here:
UCD stem cell research battles Huntington's disease

09-01-2012 14:24 The Internet is full of websites selling unproven stem cell treatments for incurable illnesses. Scott Pelley confronts one disgraced doctor offering false hope to a family with a disabled child.

Read more:
Stem Cell Fraud: A 60 Minutes investigation - Video

12-01-2012 00:43 Alexis pleads with Sonny to authorize the stem cells from his dead baby in order to save Kristina.

Original post:
11-09-04 GH - Sam McCall

Read the original post:
ANC Teditorial 11/23/2011 - Stem Cell Research and Cure - Video

UCL Lunch Hour Lecture: Prometheus and I: building new body parts from stem cells Professor Martin Birchall (UCL Ear Institute) Prometheus created life from clay, and within many biologists and surgeons there is a primal desire to do the same from the materials at hand, in an effort to stave off death and disease. Organ transplantation has been one Promethean solution, but a lack of donor organs, ethical and other issues limits the stretch of this technology.

Read the original here:
Prometheus and I: building new body parts from stem cells (15 Nov 2011) - Video

Embryonic Stem Cell Research BAAAAAD

Link:
Embyronic Stem Cell Research - Video

Body's Own Stem Cells To Fight Diabetes Type 1 Doctors believe they are getting closer to a cure that could dramatically change the lives of people with Type I Diabetes. In patients with Type I Diabetes the body thinks the pancreas is a foreign invader, so it starts to destroy the organ's islet cells. Those are the cells that produce insulin

See the original post:
Diabetes Type 1 Cure

Even after death, Star Trek founder Gene Roddenbary still has an impact on the future through his Roddenbary Foundation, donating $5 million to stem cell research.

See the original post here:
StemCellTV Daily Report-October 26, 2011 - Video

This is a short slide show of my daughter Alilia. Alilia was only 6 weeks old when she passed away on Dec. 23rd 2008 during a Stem Cell Transplant at Duke University

Originally posted here:
A Lilybugs Life - Video

Huntington's disease is an inherited neurodegenerative disorder that typically strikes in a person's thirties and leads to death about 10 to 15 years later. No effective therapy exists for the disease. Jan Nolta, director of the UC Davis Stem Cell Program and Institute for Regenerative Cures, has a CIRM Early Translational Award to develop stem cell-based therapies for Huntington's disease.

Read the original post:
Huntington's Disease: Progress and Promise in Stem Cell Research - Video