Author Archives: admin


Stem Cell Clinic > Articles by: admin

Record competition for stem cell grants means tough choices for state officials

By Uncategorized

The competition for Maryland's stem cell research grants will be stiffer than ever as applications flood in next month, forcing officials to be more selective even as scientists worry that the state's fiscal problems and a new administration in Annapolis may mean smaller budgets in the future.

The Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission received a record 240 letters declaring intent to apply for $10.4 million in grants, officials said this month. While the majority came from researchers, more than a dozen came from startups and other companies and half a dozen for work testing therapies on humans proof that the 8-year-old program is boosting the state's biotechnology industry, officials said.

But that also means the state likely will reject more applications for the grants than in previous years. And with no funding promises from Gov.-elect Larry Hogan and state budget cuts looming, researchers worry there will be less to go around in 2016 and beyond.

The uncertainty comes just as advancements in stem cell science are making more research possible, threatening progress in Maryland even as other states surge forward, researchers said.

"In California, they have $3 billion. Here, we have $10 million a year. It is very hard," said Ricardo Feldman, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. "Not all of us who have exciting results are going to get it, and some of us who do not get funding will not be able to continue what we started, and that will be very sad."

At an annual symposium on state-funded stem cell research this month, state stem cell commission officials said they received letters of intent from a record 16 companies as well as seven proposals for clinical work and 144 proposals for "translational" work research that aims to turn basic science into viable therapies. Applications are due Jan. 15.

Historically, the awards have gone more for university research and projects that are still at least a few steps away from being used in hospitals, but the surge in commercial and clinical work is a product of the state's long-term commitment to the grants, said Dan Gincel, the stem cell research fund's executive director.

The grants help research projects advance to a stage where they can attract backers like drug companies or other for-profit investors, who are more discriminating in the projects they support since many end up going nowhere.

"A long-term commitment is extra important for something so high-risk," Gincel said. "You gain trust that this is going somewhere."

There aren't many investors for researchers to turn to early on, said Jennifer Elisseeff, a professor of biomedical engineering at the Johns Hopkins University who has been part of teams receiving $920,000 in state grants over the past two years. She and colleagues are exploring how to stimulate stem cells to regrow tissues, a project she called "kind of basic science-y but also very applied."

Read more:
Record competition for stem cell grants means tough choices for state officials

Freezing newborns own stem cells for possible future use

By Stem Cell Doctors

CORDLIFE is now the largest network of private cord blood banks in Asia Pacific with state-of-the-art cord-blood and tissue processing and cryopreservation facilities in the country.

Once considered a medical waste, the blood left in the umbilical cordthe part of the placenta that delivers nutrients to a fetusafter a baby is delivery is now known to be a rich source of blood-forming stem cells.

These cells have been found to be potentially useful in treating diseases that require stem cell transplants (also called bone marrow transplants) such as certain kinds of leukemia or lymphoma, aplastic anemia (a blood disorder in which the bodys bone marrow doesnt make enough new blood cells), severe sickle cell disease and severe combined immunodeficiency.

Unlike with bone marrow, which is obtained through a painful medical procedure, there is only one chance to collect this seemingly precious stuff: immediately after the babys birth.

This is why a number of expectant parents in the country are being offered a chance to save stem cells from their babys umbilical cord blood via what is known as cord-blood banking.

Safeguard

Cordlife Philippines medical director Arvin Faundo said: Its a type of safeguard because the genetically unique stem cells have current and potential uses in medical treatment. No parent wishes his/her child to experience the heartbreaking effects of any illness. What we at Cordlife offer them is the chance to prepare for potential eventualitiesto secure the future well-being and happiness of their family.

Cordlife Philippines is a subsidiary of Cordlife Group Ltd., a company listed on the Singapore Exchange. Launched in February 2010 as the Philippines first and only cord-blood processing and cryopreservation facility, its facility was ISO-certified and built in accordance to global gold standards such as the American Association of Blood Banks.

The 365-day facility, located within UP-Ayala Land TechnoHub in Quezon City, is equipped with the worlds most advanced fully automated cord-blood processing system, the Swiss-made Sepax.

CordLife uses the US FDA-approved cryogenic storage pouch.

Originally posted here:
Freezing newborns own stem cells for possible future use

Aggie grad happy to put off retiring to advance stem cell science

By Stem Cell Medical Center

David Eller could have retired a long time ago.

At the age of 76, he could spend his days on permanent vacation fly-fishing in Idaho, golfing in San Antonio or skiing on the Italian-Austrian border like he has done to get away from work for many years.

He isn't working because he is desperate for money and accolades. He's had those for many years.

During the '80s, Eller oversaw revolutionary cattle cloning practices as CEO of Granada BioSciences, a company he founded. He served as chairman of the Texas A&M System Board of Regents from 1983 to 1989. The Oceanography & Meteorology Building on A&M's campus was named in his honor in 1988.In 2000, he was namedexecutive vice president and president of DuPont's European operations.He is president of Eller Holding Company, a privately-held family investment company.

Instead of settling down after a life of amassing great wealth and personal achievement, he co-founded Houston-based Celltex Therapeutics Corporation in 2011 and put himself at the forefront of the contentious issue of autologous stem cell therapy in the name of fighting for ill people to harness the healing properties of their own bodies.

These days it is Celltex that drives Eller's passion, enabling him to combine his humanitarian and entrepreneurial impulses and perhaps one day leave a lasting mark on health care. It is the culmination of the journey he began on the A&M campus in the late 1950s.

"When I started this company I really didn't need another job," Eller said. "I certainly didn't need one with so many rules and regulations we had to adhere to that gives us a lot of headaches. All in all, the biggest reward out of it is seeing people improve their quality of life."

Since 2011, the company has helped treat approximately 600 patients between the ages of 6 and 96 by injecting stem cells taken from their own bodies into a troubled area with no complications, according to Eller. He believes Celltex's reach could expand tenfold if the entire operation could be conducted out of the United States, where the practice was banned in 2012, but that could take years of fighting a two-front war.

The daily war is educating as many doctors and potential patients as possible on the benefits of being treated with a one's own stem cells. The second, long-term war is maneuvering through the FDA's web of red tape that currently bans the practice from being performed on U.S. soil.

Eller spent four years in the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets until his 1959 graduation, which he says plays a major role in his character.

Continue reading here:
Aggie grad happy to put off retiring to advance stem cell science

Did stem cells really help Gordie Howe?

By Stem Cell Treatment

Dr. Murray Howe and his hockey great father, Gordie Howe, on a fishing trip in Saskatchewan in 2013.

Hockey legend Gordie Howe is making a dramatic recovery from a serious stroke thanks to stem cell therapy developed by San Diego-based Stemedica, his family says. Some medical scientists aren't so sure, however.

Howe, 86, suffered the stroke in late October, leaving him unable to walk and disoriented. He began improving within hours after receiving the stem cells in early December, said Dr. Murray Howe, a radiologist and one of Howes sons. For example, Howe insisted on walking to the bathroom, which he previously could not do.

"If I did not witness my father's astonishing response, I would not have believed it myself," Murray Howe said by email Thursday. "Our father had one foot in the grave on December 1. He could not walk, and was barely able to talk or eat."

"Our father's progress continues," the email continued. "Today, Christmas, I spoke with him on FaceTime. I asked him what Santa brought him. He said 'A headache.' I told him I was flying down to see him in a week. He said, 'Thanks for the warning.'"

Howe is receiving speech and physical therapy at his home in Lubbock, Texas, and his therapists say he is much better than before receiving the stem cells.

Howe received the treatment from Novastem, a Mexican stem cell company that has licensed the use of Stemedica's cells for clinical trials approved by the Mexican government. Howe was given neural stem cells to help his brain repair damage, and stem cells derived from bone marrow to improve blood circulation in the brain. The procedure took place at Novastem's Clinica Santa Clarita in Tijuana.

Such use of unproven stem cell therapies outside the U.S. clinical trial system draws objections from some American health care professionals. They warn of the potential for abuse, say there's a lack of rigorous scientific standards, and call for tighter federal regulation of the proliferation of stem cell treatments.

Nevertheless, patients with ailments that don't response to approved treatments continue to seek such care. These patients and families say they have the right to make their own judgments. And they may not have time to wait for proof, so they're willing to take a chance.

Stemedica says it follows U.S. government law, and requires those licensing its stem cells in foreign countries to obey the laws of those countries.

See more here:
Did stem cells really help Gordie Howe?

Spectrum Pharma Submits NDA For CE-Melphalan

By Stem Cell Treatment

Spectrum Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (SPPI: Quote) said Friday that it has submitted a New Drug Application or NDA to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for approval of Captisol-Enabled Melphalan HCl for injection to be used as a high-dose conditioning treatment prior to stem cell transplantation in patients with multiple myeloma.

Henderson, Nevada-based Spectrum Pharma is also seeking approval for the palliative treatment of patients with multiple myeloma for whom oral therapy is not appropriate. The biotechnology company noted that the NDA submission represented an important step forward in bringing new treatment options to cancer patients.

Spectrum Pharma expects the FDA review to take about 10 months, and plans to launch the drug with its existing hematology and oncology sales force next year pending approval. The company noted that its formulation is free of propylene glycol and does not use a custom solvent for its reconstitution.

Spectrum Pharma gained global development and commercialization rights to CE-Melphalan from Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc. (LGND: Quote) in March 2013.

The company assumed the responsibility for the pivotal clinical trial and was responsible for filing the NDA for CE-Melphalan. Under the license agreement, Ligand received a license fee and is eligible to receive milestone payments, as well as royalties following potential commercialization.

Rajesh Shrotriya, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Spectrum Pharmaceuticals said, "We believe the lack of propylene glycol in the preparation of CE-Melphalan eliminates the risk of the toxicities associated with that excipient. The improved solubility and stability of this novel melphalan formulation, CE-Melphalan, will make it an attractive treatment option for both transplant conditioning, and the palliative treatment of patients with multiple myeloma who cannot take oral melphalan."

Captisol-Enabled, propylene glycol-free Melphalan is an intravenous formulation of melphalan being investigated for the multiple myeloma transplant setting, for which it was earlier granted an Orphan Drug Designation by the FDA.

Spectrum Pharma noted that the Phase 2 pivotal trial evaluating CE-Melphalan was a multi-center trial evaluating safety and efficacy. The primary objective of the study was to determine the overall safety and toxicity profile in multiple myeloma patients receiving 200 mg/m2 of CE-Melphalan as myeloablative therapy prior to autologous stem cell transplantation or ASCT.

The secondary objectives evaluated the efficacy of CE-Melphalan in this patient population, as measured by Multiple Myeloma Response Rate, and the rates of myeloablation and engraftment.

The primary as well as secondary endpoints of this Phase 2 trial were met, and a comprehensive NDA was submitted to the FDA, Spectrum Pharma noted.

Read this article:
Spectrum Pharma Submits NDA For CE-Melphalan

High-fat diet, obesity during pregnancy harms stem cells in developing fetus

By Stem Cell Medicine

Findings may provide broad context for the rise in immune disease and allergic disposition in children

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Physician-scientists at OHSU Doernbecher Children's Hospital reveal a high-fat diet and obesity during pregnancy compromise the blood-forming, or hematopoietic, stem cell system in the fetal liver responsible for creating and sustaining lifelong blood and immune system function.

The life-long burden of a western-style diet on the heart and circulatory system have long been appreciated. However, prior to this study, no one had considered whether the developing blood stem cells might be similarly vulnerable to prenatal high-fat diet and/or maternal obesity. The findings are published in the journal Molecular Metabolism.

"Our results offer a model for testing whether the effects of a high-fat diet and obesity can be repaired through dietary intervention, a key question when extrapolating this data to human populations," said Daniel L. Marks, M.D., Ph.D., co-investigator and professor of pediatric endocrinology in the OHSU School of Medicine and Pap Family Pediatric Research Institute at OHSU Doernbecher Children's Hospital.

Several years ago, Marks and colleagues developed a mouse model that closely mimics the high-fat, high-simple-sugar diet currently consumed by many young women of childbearing age. Their subsequent research demonstrated that maternal overnutrition in mice significantly reduced the size of the fetal liver.

Armed with this information, Marks partnered with another stem cell expert, Peter Kurre, M.D., co-investigator on the current study and professor of pediatric oncology in the OHSU School of Medicine and the Pap Family Pediatric Research Institute at OHSU Doernbecher Children's Hospital.

Together, they discovered that the complex changes that occur as a result of maternal high-fat diet and obesity put significant constraints on the growth and expansion of blood stem cells in the fetal liver, which ultimately compromises the developing immune system.

"In light of the spreading western-style, high-fat diet and accompanying obesity epidemic, this study highlights the need to better understand the previous unrecognized susceptibility of the stem and progenitor cell system," Kurre said. "These findings may provide broad context for the rise in immune disease and allergic disposition in children."

###

The study, "Maternal high-fat diet and obesity compromise fetal hematopoiesis," was funded by Friends of Doernbecher and by the Oregon Clinical Translational Research Institute at OHSU. Research reported in this press release] was supported by National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under award number UL1TR000128

Read the rest here:
High-fat diet, obesity during pregnancy harms stem cells in developing fetus

Rudimentary egg and sperm cells made from stem cells

By Stem Cell Treatment

Southern Illinois University/Science photo Library

Some hope that sperm cells could one day be derived from the skin cells of a man who is otherwise sterile and that a similar process cold produce viable egg cells from a sterile woman's body.

Israeli and UK researchers have created human sperm and egg precursor cells in a dish, starting from a person's skin cells. The achievement is a small step towards a treatment for infertility, although one that could face significant controversy and regulatory hurdles.

The experiment, reported online in Cell on 24 December1, recreates in humans parts of a procedure first developed in mice, in which cells called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells reprogrammed cells that can differentiate into almost any cell type are used to create sperm or eggs that are subsequently manipulated to produce live births by in vitro fertilization.

In 2012, stem-cell biologist Mitinori Saitou of Kyoto University in Japan and his collaborators created the first artificial primordial germ cells (PGCs)2. These are specialized cells that emerge during embryonic development and later give rise to sperm or eggs. Saitou made them in a dish, starting with skin cells reprogrammed to an embryonic-like state through iPS-cell technology (see 'Stem cells: Egg engineers'). They also were able to achieve the same result starting with embryonic stem cells.

Although his cells could not develop beyond this precursor stage in the dish, Saito found that if he placed them in mouse testes, they would mature into sperm, and if he placed them in ovaries, they would mature into functional eggs. Both sperm and eggs could be used for in vitro fertilization.

Efforts to engineer similarly functional gametes in humans have produced PGC-like cells, but with such a low efficiency success rate of turning stem cells into gametes that it was difficult for others to expand on the work.. Previous efforts also required the introduction of genes that would render the cells unusable in the clinic.

Ewen Callaway reports on the ethical challenges of using lab-made sperm and egg cells in fertility treatments.

You may need a more recent browser or to install the latest version of the Adobe Flash Plugin.

Now a team led by Azim Surani of the University of Cambridge, UK, and Jacob Hanna of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, has replicated the in vitro portion the first half, says Hanna of Saitous efforts in humans.

Continue reading here:
Rudimentary egg and sperm cells made from stem cells

Stem Cell Cure: New Therapy For Joint Pain

By Stem Cell Doctors

DALLAS We all get those aches and pains every once in a while. But for some folks, those nagging aches are a pain in the well, you know.

My pain is a variety of different type of pain, David Flory said. In certain parts of the knee, certain types of activities bother it. some dont. Some do.

He has had knee problems since high school and has had five knee surgeries throughout his life.

Now his doctors have told him he needs a total knee replacement, but like a lot of people, Flory didnt want to go through the long recovery time that comes with going under the knife.

So in order to do that, Flory found a doctors office that offers stem cell replacement therapy.

Stem Cells are the type of cells that replicate and become other cells that are used in most healing, said Dr. Bill Johnson with Innovations Medical.

Basically what the doc does is take the stem cells from fat stored on your body, then inject that into the joint. This type of stem cell therapy is still being researched. Dr. Johnson says so far, 85% of knee patients have seen improvement.

Thats improvement to the point where they dont require joint replacement, Dr. Johnson said.

Since the procedure is still in the investigational stage, it isnt covered by insurance and can get a little pricey up to $6,000.

With the investment Im making out-of-pocket, Im hopeful what were doing today will pay off, said Flory.

See the original post:
Stem Cell Cure: New Therapy For Joint Pain

Lansdowne author raises awareness about sickle cell disease

By Uncategorized

Dominique Friend doesn't look like she's sick. But the Lansdowne resident often deals with bouts of pain so severe she ends up in the hospital for weeks.

Friend, 44, was born with sickle cell disease, an inherited blood disorder that affects an estimated 90,000 to 100,000 in the U.S., according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention information.

Her autobiography "Sickle" was released by Tate Publishing on Dec. 9 in a second edition, after she self-published the book in 2009.

In the book, she tells of her struggle with the debilitating disease. Friend said she shared her personal account to raise awareness about the disease, which predominantly affects African-Americans. It is also found in those of Hispanic and Mediterranean descent, according to CDC information.

Friend said for as long as she can recall, she has dealt with painful episodes that are characteristic of sickle cell disease.

Pain develops when sickle-shaped red blood cells, that should be round like a doughnut, block the blood flow to the chest, joints and other parts of the body, Friend explained. It can last for a few hours to a few weeks and such episodes are called "crises," she said.

"I would take the pain of childbirth over a sickle cell crisis any day," said Friend, who has three children, two stepdaughters and two granddaughters.

She has been married to Michael Friend for 18 years.

The painful disease can disrupt learning for children and make it difficult for adults to work, said Dr. Sophie Lanzkron, an assistant professor of medicine and oncology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

A bone marrow transplant or stem cell transplant is the only cure, according to the CDC website.

See the original post:
Lansdowne author raises awareness about sickle cell disease

→←