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New treatment for deadly blood cancers expected to be approved soon – STLtoday.com

By Uncategorized

Cancer doctors in St. Louis are ready to use a new therapy using a patients own blood to fight their disease.

The therapy, called CAR-T, for chimeric antigen receptor T-cell, involves removing immune cells from the blood, reprogramming them genetically to find and destroy cancer cells and then returning the immune cells to the patient. So far, the therapy has been tested on patients with hard-to-treat advanced blood cancers such as leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma that kill more than 58,000 Americans a year.

In one small study sponsored by Novartis Pharmaceuticals, 52 of 63 pediatric and young adult patients with relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukemia went into remission after undergoing CAR-T therapy. The 11 other patients died, seven from the cancer and four from side effects of the treatment.

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common childhood cancer, can be effectively treated with chemotherapy, but survival rates drop below 30 percent if the patient relapses. Candidates for CAR-T therapy include an estimated 600 children each year who relapse or do not respond to traditional chemotherapy.

At least 16 of the 20 people who have received CAR-T therapy for leukemia or lymphoma through clinical trials at Washington Universitys Siteman Cancer Center have seen their cancers disappear after treatment.

Ive never seen anything in cancer history with that kind of response, said Dr. Armin Ghobadi, an assistant professor in oncology at Washington University. These are the basically bad, incurable, deadly, unstoppable cancers and patients usually die quickly when we dont give them this treatment.

If approved as expected by the Food and Drug Administration, CAR-T therapy could be available locally within a year. Currently no patients at St. Louis Childrens Hospital qualify for the therapy, but patients are expected to come from neighboring states, said Dr. Robert Hayashi, director of hematology/oncology at the hospital.

This advancement is significant and has already demonstrated that it can be an effective form of therapy, Hayashi said. The ability of being able to show a clear success opens the door in terms of what other cancers can benefit from this exact same strategy.

So far the therapy has shown the most effectiveness in cancers of the blood. Another small trial in China involved 33 out of 35 patients experiencing remission from relapsing multiple myeloma, a plasma cancer, after receiving CAR-T therapy.

For decades, scientists have tried to corral the bodys immune system to fight cancer the way it attacks harmful bacteria or viruses. The immune system has a harder time recognizing cancer cells, allowing them to grow. Re-engineering immune cells to fight cancer cells is like turning on the cars headlights at night, Ghobadi said.

A main challenge with CAR-T therapy is the length of time it can take to reprogram the patients blood cells up to three weeks. Researchers are studying ways to reduce the time frame, including engineering universal CAR-T cells derived from donor blood or umbilical cord blood.

CAR-T therapy is expected to cost up to $500,000 for a one-time treatment. Scientists at Washington University are working to engineer the cells in-house, which could lower the price.

The side effects of the treatment can be severe as the immune system is amplified to fight cancer. A complication called cytokine release syndrome can cause life-threatening reactions including brain swelling. In early studies, one-third to one-half of patients treated with CAR-T therapy developed the syndrome. Because patients will need to be closely monitored, drug companies will limit the treatments availability to a few dozen cancer centers nationwide, including Siteman.

Marie Miceli, 64, was one of the first to be treated with CAR-T cell therapy in a trial at Siteman after several rounds of chemotherapy and a stem cell replacement failed to knock out non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

A year later, Miceli is in remission and just celebrated the birth of her fourth grandchild. Miceli, a real estate agent and branch manager at Berkshire Hathaway in St. Louis, said she was blessed to receive the experimental treatment.

You have to trust those doctors and have faith, she said.

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Letter: Response to ‘Disappointed by Republicans’ – The Herald-News

By Embryonic Stem Cells

To the Editor:

This is in response to Renee Klugmans Aug. 9 letter Disappointed by Republicans. I think Democrats, not Republicans, lost their soul.

Democrats are now the party of baby butchers, socialists, anti-freedom of speech, illegal immigration, anti-traditional family, and pro-sexual perversion.

Republican free-market policies raise everyones standard of living while Democrats socialism leads to more poverty and loss of freedom. Everyone agrees with having a safety net for those overtaken by adversity. But welfare as a way of life is inappropriate and harmful, perpetuating poverty and dependency.

The history of racism belongs to Democrats. The goal of the KKK was overthrow of Republican state governments in the South. The emancipation proclamation was favored by Republicans and opposed by Democrats.The 1964 Civil Rights Act was approved by 80 percent of Republicans and only 60 percent of Democrats.

Voter IDs cost little or nothing and keep no one from voting. People opposed to voter integrity want voter fraud.

Evangelicals voted for Trump as the lesser of two evils. Trump is appointing conservative judges to uphold the Constitution protecting freedom of religion.

I have degrees in physics and nuclear engineering, and an MBA. I like college and science.

The problem is many colleges today indoctrinate the students in Marxist and anti-American ideology while suppressing conservative and Christian speech.

They promote a lot of bad science like evolution, man-made climate change, and use of embryonic stem cells while squelching opposing facts. True science should be open to questioning and alternative ideas.

Please note the Social Security Trust Fund has zero real money because of lying liberals in both parties.

I am disappointed in the Democrats and establishment Republican politicians like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. Trump was voted in to drain the swamp and the swamp creatures are fighting it.

Robert C. Lemke

Joliet

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Letter: Response to 'Disappointed by Republicans' - The Herald-News

Scientists give star treatment to lesser-known cells crucial for brain development – Seacoastonline.com

By Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

After decades of relative neglect, star-shaped brain cells called astrocytes are getting their due. To gather insight into a critical aspect of brain development, a team of scientists examined the maturation of astrocytes in 3-D structures grown in culture dishes to resemble human brain tissue. The study, which confirms the lab-grown cells develop at the same rate as those found in human brains, was published in Neuron and funded in part by the National Institutes of Healths National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

This work addresses a significant gap in human brain research by providing an invaluable technique to investigate the role of astrocytes in both normal development and disease, said NINDS program director Jill Morris, Ph.D.

In 2015, a team directed by Dr. Sergiu Pasca, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Stanford University in California, and Dr. Ben Barres, Ph.D., a Stanford professor of neurobiology, published a method for taking adult skin cells, converting them to induced pluripotent stem cells, and then growing them as 3-D clusters of brain cells called human cortical spheroids (hCSs). These hCSs, which closely resemble miniature versions of a particular brain region, can be grown for many months. The cells in the cluster eventually develop into neurons, astrocytes, and other cells found in the human brain.

One of the challenges of studying the human brain is the difficulty of examining it at different stages of development, Dr. Pasca said. This is a system that tries to simulate brain development step by step.

In the new study, Steven Sloan, a student in Stanfords M.D./Ph.D. program, led a series of experiments comparing astrocytes from hCSs to those found in tissue from the developing and adult human brain. The team grew the hCSs for 20 months, one of the longest-ever studies of lab-grown human brain cells.

The results verified that the lab-grown cells change over time in a similar manner to cells taken directly from brain tissue during very early life, a critical time for brain growth. This process is considered critical for normal brain development and deviations are thought to cause a variety of neurological and mental health disorders, such as schizophrenia and autism. Creating hCSs using cells from patients could allow scientists to uncover the underlying developmental biology at the core of these disorders.

The hCS system makes it possible to replay astrocyte development from any patient, Dr. Barres said. Thats huge. Theres no other way one could ever do that without this method.

The current study showed that hCS-grown astrocytes develop at the same rate as those found in human brains, in terms of their gene activity, their shapes, and their functions. For example, astrocytes taken from hCSs that were less than six months old multiplied rapidly and were highly engaged in eliminating unnecessary connections between neurons, just like astrocytes in babies growing in the womb. But astrocytes grown in hCSs for more than nine months could not reproduce and removed significantly fewer of those connections, mirroring astrocytes in infants 6 to 12 months old. On the other hand, just like astrocytes from developing and adult brains, the early- and late-stage astrocytes from hCSs were equally effective at encouraging new connections to form between neurons.

Astrocytes are not just bystanders in the brain, Dr. Pasca said. Theyre not just there to keep neurons warm; they actually participate actively in neurological function.

Since astrocytes make up a greater proportion of brain cells in humans than in other species, it may reflect a greater need for astrocytes in normal human brain function, with more significant consequences when they dont work correctly, added David Panchision, Ph.D., program director at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), which also helped fund the study.

The researchers caution that hCSs are only a model and lack many features of real brains. Moreover, certain genes that are active in fully mature astrocytes never switched on in the hCS-grown astrocytes, which they could conceivably do if the cells had more time to develop. To address this question, the researchers now hope to identify ways to produce mature brain cells more quickly. hCSs could also be used to scrutinize precisely what causes astrocytes to change over time and to screen drugs that might correct any differences that occur in brain disease.

These are questions that are going to be very exciting to explore, Dr. Barres said.

The study was funded by NINDS, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, the MQ Fellow Award, and Stanford University.

The NINDS is the nations leading funder of research on the brain and nervous system. The mission of NINDS is to seek fundamental knowledge about the brain and nervous system and to use that knowledge to reduce the burden of neurological disease.

The mission of the NIMH is to transform the understanding and treatment of mental illnesses through basic and clinical research, paving the way for prevention, recovery and cure. For information, visit the NIMH website.

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences supports basic research that increases understanding of biological processes and lays the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis, treatment and prevention. For information, visit the NIGMS website.

The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) was established to transform the translational process so that new treatments and cures for disease can be delivered to patients faster. For information, visit the NCATS website.

The National Institutes of Health, the nation's medical research agency, encompasses 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.

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Scientists give star treatment to lesser-known cells crucial for brain development - Seacoastonline.com

Breakthrough in Gene Editing Comes as Scientists Correct Disease-Causing Mutation in Human Embryo – TrendinTech

By Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

Its an exciting time for gene editing currently as scientists achieve the first ever safe repair of a single-gene mutation in a human embryo. Using the CRISPR-Cas9 system, medical professionals used the technique to correct the mutation for a heart condition. The procedure was carried out early enough in the embryonic development so that the defect wouldnt be passed down to further generations.

The study is an important breakthrough and could pave the way for improved in vitro fertilization (IVF) outcomes further down the line as well as finding cures for even a few of the thousands of diseases caused by single gene mutations. Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a professor in Salks Gene Expression Laboratory and corresponding author of the paper commented that, Gene editing is still in its infancy so even though this preliminary effort was found to be safe and effective, it is crucial that we continue to proceed with the utmost caution, paying the highest attention to ethical considerations. Although gene editing has become relatively easy to carry out for scientists these days, they do still proceed with much caution. This is partly to avoid introducing any mutations into the germ line.

*Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) affects around 1 in every 500 people and is the most common cause of sudden death in otherwise healthy, young athletes. A dominant mutation in the MYBPC3 gene is the cause of it and theres a 50 percent chance of a carrier passing it to their offspring. If the mutation in the embryo was corrected it would prevent the disease in children as well as their descendants. During the study, researchers produced induced pluripotent stem cells from a sample taken from a male with HCM. They also developed a CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing strategy that was able to target specifically the mutated copy of the MYBPC3 gene for repair. The MYBPC3 gene was cut by the Cas9 enzyme allowing the mutation to be fixed in the next round of cell division. Researchers then used IVF techniques to inject top gene-editing components into healthy donor eggs which had been newly fertilized. They were then able to monitor just how well the mutation was repaired.

This method proved to be both extremely safe and efficient, much to the surprise of the researchers. No strange mutations were induced and a high number of embryonic cells were repaired. They also developed a way in which they could ensure the repair happened consistently in all of the embryonic cells which is a bonus as spotty repairs have been known to cause mutations. Even though the success rate in patient cells cultured in a dish was low, we saw that the gene correction seems to be very robust in embryos of which one copy of the MYBPC3 gene is mutated, states Salk staff scientists and one of the papers first authors, Jun Wu. Our technology successfully repairs the disease-causing gene mutation by taking advantage of a DNA repair response unique to early embryos. However, it is still early days and both Izpisua Belmonte and Wu agree further research is required to ensure no unintended effects occur.

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Fertile offspring produced from sterile mice using iPS cells – Kyodo News Plus

By Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

Researchers at Kyoto University have succeeded in producing fertile offspring from sterile mice with chromosome abnormality by using iPS cells, the university said Friday.

The research outcome by the international team was published online by the U.S. magazine Science with the headline "Fertile offspring from sterile sex chromosome trisomic mice."

The team intentionally produced sterile trisomic mice and showed that fibroblasts from the abnormal mice lose the extra sex chromosome during reprogramming to induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells.

The team termed the phenomenon trisomy-biased chromosome loss.

It is vital to have the correct number of chromosomes for normal development and health.

The researchers have successfully produced fertile offspring with a usual pair of sex chromosome by injecting functional sperm originated from the euploid iPS cells into eggs.

"(The finding) could lead to the development of treatment for infertility caused by chromosome or other genetic abnormalities," said Michinori Saito, a professor of the Graduate School of Medicine at Kyoto University and a research team member.

The team also involves James Turner of the Francis Crick Institute in Britain.

Sex chromosome trisomy, associated with infertility, affects 0.1 percent of the human population, according to the research team.

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Fertile offspring produced from sterile mice using iPS cells - Kyodo News Plus

Brain Spheroids Hatch Mature Astrocytes | ALZFORUM – Alzforum

By Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

18 Aug 2017

Astrocytes are more than bystanders in neurotransmissionthey take an active role in synaptic activity. However, their functions are hard to study because the cells are difficult to grow in vitro and its hard to coax them to mature from progenitors. Now, researchers from the labs of Sergiu Paca and Ben Barres, both at Stanford University School of Medicine, California, report that astrocytes come of age in spherical balls of human brain cells cultured in a dish for almost two years. As reported in the August 16 Neuron, these astrocytes develop much like those from real brains, undergoing similar transcriptomic, morphologic, and functional changes. Studying the processes involved in this astrocyte maturation will help researchers understand neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, researchers say, and might even shed light on problems in adultbrains.

That these 3D cultures can be maintained for such a long time allows us to capture an interesting transition in astrocytes, said Paca. We are starting to appreciate aspects of human brain development to which we would not otherwise haveaccess.

The breakthrough is that they can develop human astrocytes very close to maturity in their 3D culture models, said Doo Yeon Kim, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, who uses 3D culture models to study pathological process that occur in Alzheimers disease. Some researchers are using 3D cultures to model other neurodegenerative disorders, such as ALS, and still others are planning to use cultured astrocytes for cell therapy. If astrocytes are not mature enough in culture, patterns [we see] may not be the same as in the diseased brain, saidKim.

This developing human astrocyte (red), which comes from a 350-day-old cortical spheroid, is taking shape as a mature cell. [Image courtesy of Sloan et al.Neuron]

A few years back, Pacas group developed a method for differentiating human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) into a 3D culture of brain cells. They used special dishes that the cells could not easily attach to, coaxing them to stick to each other instead. Under these conditions the iPSCs balled up into neural spheroids that grew to about 4 mm in diameter. A cocktail of growth factors early on encouraged them to form excitatory pyramidal cells like those in the cortex, and the cells spontaneously organized into layers. These cortical spheroids survived a year or more and spontaneously grew astrocytes in addition to neurons (Paca et al., 2015). Not long after, the Barres lab reported that astrocytes in the adult human brain look different from those isolated from fetuses. They called the latter astrocyte progenitor cells (APCs). Each had their own transcriptional patterns and functions (Jan 2016 news). Together, Barres and Paca wondered if it was possible to see the APCs morph into mature astrocytes in these long-lived corticalspheroids.

To find out, first author Steven Sloan and colleagues examined spheroids generated from iPSCs derived from healthy human fibroblasts. Sloan grew the spheroids for about 20 months. Along the way, he took samples, isolated the astrocytes, and compared them to those isolated from fetal and postnatal humanbrain.

At about 100 days in culture, astrocytes began to sprout spontaneously from within the mostly neuronal milieu of the cortical spheroids. At first, these cells were simple, adorned by few branches and expressing genes akin to those active in APCs. But as the spheroids reached about 250 days, the astrocytes therein looked more mature, having numerous processes. After this point, APC gene expression tapered off and the astrocytes started producing proteins typical of matureastrocytes.

Astrocytes also underwent functional changes as they matured. Early versions divided in fast and furious fashion, much like their counterparts from the fetal tissue. That division slowed as the spheroids aged. Dividing APCs dropped from 35 percent of all astrocytes at day 167 to 3 percent at day 590. Taken from the spheroids at day 150 and cultured in a 2D layer, immature astrocytes also harbored a voracious appetite for added synaptosomes, much like immature astrocytes recently characterized in mice (see image below; Dec 2013 conference news on Chung et al., 2013). However, that hunger waned as astrocytes approached the 590-daymark.

At the older end of the spectrum, mature astrocytes seemed to take on a supportive role, strengthening calcium signaling in nearbyneurons.

Studying the neurons and astrocytes in these cortical spheroids could be useful for addressing certain unanswered questions about human biology, said other researchers. This could be a very strong opportunity to understand what goes wrong in human genetic disorders that affect astrocyte function, said M. Kerry OBanion, University of Rochester Medical Center, New York. Its also possible that such cultures could reveal as yet unknown facets of familial mutations that cause Alzheimers disease, he suggested. However, given that these cultures take a long time to grow and develop, they are unlikely to completely supplant other types of cultures or faster-maturing animal models, hesaid.

Kim agreed, saying, The results are very exciting, but not practical yet for disease modeling." However, Kim hopes that researchers will make progress on accelerating the maturationprocess.

The Barres and Paca labs are trying just that with the spheroid. They will also analyze what they secrete to support neuronal signaling. In addition, they are exploring how to make the astrocytes reactive, as they often are in neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimers. Doing so might reveal how such astrocytes interact withneurons.

An immature astrocyte taken from a 150-day-old spheroid gobbles up added synaptosomes (red). [Neuron, Sloan et al.2017]

To Pacas knowledge, these cortical spheroids are some of the longest human cell cultures ever reported. His group has continued to cultivate these clumps, with the oldest still going strong at day 850. Granted, these systems are missing many cell types: endothelial cells, oligodendrocytes, and microglia to name a few, he said. However, his lab has introduced new ways to add in other cells. Earlier this year, he reported 3D cultures of cortical glutamatergic neurons and GABAergic interneurons that fused together when they were placed side-by-side (Birey et al., 2017).

Clive Svendsen, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, saw clinical implications for this paper. It shows iPSC derived astrocytes can mature to an adult phenotype, he said. This further supports their use in clinical transplantation, as we are planning to do. His group has begun a Phase 1 clinical trial that implants human fetal astrocytes into the spinal cords of ALS patients.Gwyneth DickeyZakaib

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Brain Spheroids Hatch Mature Astrocytes | ALZFORUM - Alzforum

Fraud Alert! Unproven Stem Cell Use Prompts International Call to Action – American Council on Science and Health

By Stem Cell Clinic

An international team of medical experts recently published a global call to action in Science Translational Medicine in an effort to curb the unethical, unsubstantiated use of stem-cell based therapies driving medical tourism. Such ill-advised stem cell treatments have led to pediatric deaths in Germany, blindness in the United States, the closure of Italys Stamina Foundation to name a few as well as a variety of untoward effects given their lack of rigorous testing for safety and efficacy.

With high price tags, so-called stem-cell clinics are designing therapies without evidence that serve to do harm, be ineffective, prey on the most vulnerablepotentially curtailing their ultimate treatment choices, and threaten the legitimate work being done that holds great promise for devastating disease.

When greed trumps science, we all lose.

In The Worst 'Healthcare': 'Stem Cell' Clinics Wrought With Red Flags, Insincerity And Blindness, I detail the distressing accounts of three patients who endured irreparable damage to their vision after seeking treatment at the same unnamed stem cell clinic in Broward, Florida. Reported in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), the harrowing experiences of the women aged 72-88 years old resulted in blindness to near blindness from untested stem cell therapies being injected into their eyes while being fleeced $5000 for the procedures. Promised revolutionary therapy, they were left with catastrophic reminders of the unfortunate and unnecessary ordeal.

Theirs is a cautionary taleof the hazards of poor and irresponsible practice at a private stem cell clinic, unfixable medical interventions with no scientific evidence to back claims, sales over substance, marketing hype lacking in meaning and actions taken by seemingly complicit personnel who may have misrepresented their credentials that took advantage of those most in need. See here for a more detailed road map of how to read between the lines of such marketing hype and to understand the timeline of this particular bad outcome.

Heres the deal with stem cells

Stem cells are currently in use for a rather limited scope of disorders. Ones where the data is well-established and been subject to proper design, rigorous testing and clinical trials. They are also being actively studied, in general. The notion that they can cure every type of medical condition is not one based in our present reality or the near term future. The media tends to overstate where we are in stem cell-based therapeutics.

The safety and efficacy of stem cell use when derived from bone marrow or your peripheral blood is well-established, but stem cells are now being increasingly derived from alternate sources like adipose (aka fatty) tissue and put in use for orthopedic to neurological disorders.

Many in the medical community are enthused about their promise and rightfully so as some advancements are already underway. In my recent article Did Gene Therapy Cure Sickle Cell Disease?, I discuss the hopeful work in autologous stem cell transplantation obtained from bone marrow for this and other hemoglobinopathies. This is further explored in this television appearance:Dr. Jamie Wells On Al Jazeera TV Discussing Sickle Cell Anemia.

Facilities offering false hope often based on the most minimal of clinical evidence are popping up all over the country and world without well-controlled clinical trials or having met any regulatory standards. In the cases of autologous use especiallysince they are your own cells, advocates affirm they are safe. These private stem cell clinics are typically patient-funded at nonacademic centers, are not based on preclinical research or sound design and lack investigational new drug application with the FDAbecause, again, they are your own cells despite the fact what the facility mixes them with are unknown agents that have not been tested to confirm safety.(1)

In a perspective written by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the NEJM, the FDA maintains: Outside the setting of hematopoietic reconstitution and a few other well-established indications, the assertion that stem cells are intrinsically able to sense the environment into which they are introduced and addresswhatever functions require replacement or repairwhether injured knee cartilage or a neurologic deficitis not based on scientific evidence. The piece goes on to inform about misadventures of their use and the worrisome lack of evidence in particular in circumstances where therapies proved harmful or ineffective when properly studied.

Hence, why this recent global call to action by worldwide leaders in the field

Buoyed by efforts of the scientific community to impact changes in stem cell facilities in Germany and Italy among others, an international consortium of medical experts outline in their latest publication local to transnational considerations that could limit unchecked marketing claims and unfounded science. Appreciating the current climate of expediting lengthy approval processes, the politics of right to try legislation and direct-to-consumer advertising, the authors contend with respect to sham stem cell therapies under-regulation has led to substantial, reverberating harm.

Due to general regulatory resistance, the panel of fifteen urges a more coordinated approach nationally and internationallythat emphasizes engagement, harmonization and enforcement. Highlighting prior success, the group encourages mobilization of international scientific organizations to create global standards and the utilization of traditional and social media type engagement to expand reach to the public as well as positively influence national policies.

With the main goals of eliminating harmful therapies and preserving a patients ability to seek effective treatment, they identify further the risk of not doing anything will worsen the big problems of destabilizing health markets and delegitimizing biomedical efforts that could genuinely benefit society.

Among their requests for proactive efforts is for groups with broad constituencies like the World Health Organization (WHO) to dispense guidelines in conjunction with national authorities for the responsible use of human cells and tissues which they maintain they already dofor medical devices and medicines. They call for cross-border partnerships for compliance.

Of particular note, the article includes a wonderful chart clarifying where inroads can be made locally, regionally and internationally to prevent the all too frequent co-opting of scientific legitimacy. It can be very difficult for patients to suss out what is fact from fiction when powerful advertising runs amok. Words like revolutionary and clinical trials and expert are consistently thrown around to confuse and can be a challenge for many to unpack accurately.

The authors provide in this graphic tangible ways to cut through the nonsense. By outing deceptive tactics used throughout the commercialization of these products and spreading these protective messages, patients can become empowered and the culture of fleecing might shift. Here, they point out a number of ways scientific integrity gets diminished:the use of renting space in academic facilities as a way to appear legitimate by association, suggestby having a patent application this means the product is proven or tested as opposed to just a sign of an initiation of applying, citing preclinical and other findings to rationalize clinical use without efficacy testing etc. (3) I would argue this list is an excellent tool that could be applied well beyond the stem cell industry. Interventions starting withthis listcould certainly support more honesty.

In conclusion

Though rarely a lover of regulation, in general, given the likelihood of overdoing it, creating more problemsand the tendency for many policies to be one-size-fits-all and misguided, in this realm the price people are paying as well as society could be too great to allow the wild west ways of the stem cell industry to continue as is. The authors in this work provide some meaningful measures to compel a more honest arena.

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Fraud Alert! Unproven Stem Cell Use Prompts International Call to Action - American Council on Science and Health

Mayo, U develop ‘robocop’ stem cells to fight cancer – StarTribune.com – Minneapolis Star Tribune

By Stem Cell Medical Center

Glen Stubbe - Star Tribune The Mayo Clinic expects a surge of hundreds of cancer patients per year if CAR T is approved, because it will initially be provided by large medical centers that have experience with the therapy and its side effects.

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota say theyre on the brink of a new era in cancer care one in which doctors extract a patients white blood cells, have them genetically engineered in a lab, and put them back to become personalized cancer-fighting machines.

The so-called CAR T cellular therapies are expected to receive federal approval this fall for certain rare blood cancers B-cell forms of lymphoma and leukemia. But scientists at the Minnesota institutions hope thats just the first step that will lead to better treatment of solid tumor cancers as well.

This is really the first approval of a genetically modified product for cancer therapy, said Dr. Jeffrey Miller, deputy director of the Masonic Cancer Center at the University of Minnesota. If the proof of concept works, he said, we might be on the right track to get away from all of that toxic chemotherapy that people hate.

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Scientists Discover New Hair Growth Technique Using Stem Cells – TrendinTech

By Stem Cell Medical Center

Those suffering from hair loss problems could soon be worry free thanks to a bunch of researchers at UCLA. The team found that by activating the stem cells in the hair follicles they could make it grow. This type of research couldnt come soon enough for some. We may have finally found a cure for patients suffering from alopecia or baldness.

Hair loss is often caused by the hair follicle stem cells inability to activate and induce a new hair growth cycle. In doing the study, researchers Heather Christofk and William Lowry, of Eli Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA discovered that the metabolism of hair follicle stem cells is far different to any other cell found within the skin. They found that as hair follicle stem cells absorb the glucose from the bloodstream they use it to produce a metabolite called pyruvate. The pyruvate is then either sent to the cells mitochondria to be converted back into energy or is converted into another metabolite called lactate.

Christofk is an associate professor of biological chemistry and molecular and medical pharmacology and he says, Our observations about hair follicle stem cell metabolism prompted us to examine whether genetically diminishing the entry of pyruvate into the mitochondria would force hair follicle stem cells to make more lactate and if that would activate the cells and grow hair more quickly. First, the team demonstrated how blocking the lactate production in mice prevented the hair follicle stem cells from activating. Then, with the help of colleagues at the Rutter lab at the University of Utah, they increased the lactate production in the mice and as a result saw an accelerated hair follicle stem cell activation and therefore an increase in the hair cycle.

Once we saw how altering lactate production in the mice influenced hair growth, it led us to look for potential drugs that could be applied to the skin and have the same effect, confirms Lowry, a professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology. During the study, the team found two drugs in particular that influenced hair follicle stem cells to promote lactate production when applied to the skin of mice. The first is called RCGD423. This drug is responsible for allowing the transmission of information from outside the cell right to the heart of it in the nucleus by activating the cellular signaling pathway called JAK-Stat. The results from the study did, in fact, prove that JAK-Stat activation will lead to an increased production of lactate which will enhance hair growth. UK5099 was the second drug in question, and its role was to block the pyruvate from entering the mitochondria, forcing the production of lactate and accelerating hair growth as a result.

The study brings with it some very promising results. To be able to solve a problem that affects millions of people worldwide by using drugs to stimulate hair growth is brilliant. At the moment there is a provisional patent application thats been filed in respect of using RCGD423 in the promotion of hair growth and a separate provisional patent in place for the use of UK5099 for the same purpose. The drugs have not yet been tested in humans or approved by the Food and Drug Administration as fit for human consumption.

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