ISU stem-cell research could enable new treatment for those with blood diseases – Iowa Capital Dispatch

Findings from a group of Iowa State University researchers could lead to the ability to create new blood stem cells from a patients own blood, possibly doing away with the need for bone marrow transplants.

ISU assistant professor of genetics, development and cell biology Raquel Espin Palazon and her team discovered that a microbial sensor that aids in finding bacterial infections, known as Nod1, also plays a key role in the creation of blood stem cells.

Learning this information and finding where in the process it takes place will allow researchers to make strides in producing functional blood stem cells in vitro, which Espin Palazon said cannot currently be done.

We cannot produce blood stem cells that are going to be able to be transplanted and cure diseases, cure leukemia and anemia, Espin Palazon said. So were really trying to find which switches to touch in those protocols in vitro to make those blood stem cells, and this Nod1 is a very important and critical switch.

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Before an embryos heart even begins to beat, some of the endothelial cells that are forming its vascular system are instead becoming blood stem cells. A lifetimes worth of these will be created before birth. Espin Palazon said they found that the Nod1 microbial receptor needs to be activated before those endothelial cells transform into blood stem cells.

If Nod1 can be activated in immature stem cells taken from a patient, blood stem cells can then be created to treat them.

For some patients diagnosed with blood diseases and disorders, the only treatment available is a bone marrow or umbilical cord blood transplant. According to the Health Resources and Services Administration, about 18,000 people are diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses where these transplants are the only option.

Finding matching donors for these transplants can be very difficult, Espin Palazon said. Even if a match is found and the transplant is successful, the recipient has a more than 50% chance of developing graft-versus-host disease, where the bodys immune system identifies the new blood stem cells as foreign bodies, and attacks them, which can be deadly. Having the ability to create blood stem cells that wouldnt risk being attacked as foreign entities would greatly lower the risks those impacted have to undertake when receiving a transplant.

If we could generate patient-specific blood stem cells in the dish then we dont have to find donors and we wouldnt have the graft-versus-host disease, Espin Palazon said. So that would cure a lot of people.

With these findings, the researcher said theres a good chance that she will get to see new blood stem cells created from patients within her lifetime, maybe even in the next 20 years.

Espin Palazon said her journey to these findings was serendipitous, as it was her interest in the immune system, not blood cell development, that led her here. The professor was working on her doctorate in Spain, her home country, in the late 2000s and studying the immune system when she found that embryos wouldnt develop normally if inflammatory signals like Nod1 were removed.

Trying to find literature on the impact these factors have on embryonic development were unsuccessful, as scientists had largely not looked into the subject, and so she turned her research to this topic.

Its been basically my whole life as a researcher studying this field that was totally neglected before, Espin Palazon said. So being able to have this contribution to the scientific community and humanity with these important signals that are critical to make bloods themselves, its been just amazing.

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ISU stem-cell research could enable new treatment for those with blood diseases - Iowa Capital Dispatch

5 Medical Innovations from 2023 – Right as Rain by UW Medicine

Its never been a more exciting time for medical breakthroughs, from understanding mysterious conditions like post-COVID-19 to using everything from stem cell therapies to smartphones to advance health and well-being. Many of these innovations are happening right here in the Pacific Northwest by UW Medicine researchers.

We rounded up five of the most mouth-dropping medical developments that happened at UW Medicine in 2023.

Last December, Adriana Rodriguez, a 31-year-old from Bellingham, experienced a spontaneous tear in one of her coronary arteries two weeks after giving birth. While such tears can sometimes heal on their own, Rodriguezs heart was so damaged that it began to fail. She needed a transplant, but because of her recent pregnancy, her blood antibody levels were high, making it almost certain that her immune system would attack and reject a donor heart.

Dr. Shin Lin, a heart failure specialist, and Dr. Jay Pal, the heart transplant surgical director, made an unprecedented recommendation that she undergo a dual heart-liver transplantbased on a few reports of immunological protection in patients who had been transplanted with a liver and then a heart to replace two failing organs. Because the patients own liver was normal, the plan was to domino it into another patient who had end-stage liver disease.

On January 14, during a 17-hour procedure at UW Medical Center Montlake, Dr. Mark Sturdevant and Dr. Ramasamy Bakthavatsalam removed Rodriguezs healthy liver, transplanted her with the donor organ, and transplanted her liver into another patient who needed one. Next, Pal and Dr. John Dimarakis transplanted the donor heart. After 65 days, her antibody response to her new heart disappeared, ending the immediate threat of organ rejection.

We don't fully understand the science of transplant immunology, says Dr. Daniel Fishbein, a colleague at the Heart Institute. We need to understand the magic so we can hopefully, someday, repeat it with medications instead of an organ.

Researchers at the UW School of Medicine and UW School of Dentistry used stem cells to generate the proteins that create dental enamel, the stuff that protects teeth from getting damaged and prevents decay. They hope their findings could lead to a first-ever process to make new enamel for damaged teeth.

The body has no way to repair enamel: Specialized cells make the super hard tissue while teeth are growing, but those cells then die off when the teeth are fully formed. So a stem cell therapy to restore enamel while filling cavities, for example, would be a game-changer for repairing damaged teeth.

Hannele Ruohola-Baker, a professor of biochemistry and associate director of the UW Medicine Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, leads the lab that carried out this research in the Department of Biochemistry at the UW School of Medicine. She believes that one day, the findings could lead to living fillings, or fillings with stem cells that could reconstruct a broken or damaged tooth, or even a therapy that could grow a tooth back entirely.

It may take a while before we can regenerate them, but we can now see the steps we need to get there, Ruohola-Baker says.

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5 Medical Innovations from 2023 - Right as Rain by UW Medicine