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Veteran Actor Darius McCrary from Family Matters Receives Stem Cell Procedures with Dr. Raj in Beverly Hills

Beverly Hills, California (PRWEB) November 17, 2014

Veteran television and movie actor Darius McCrary has received a revolutionary stem cell procedure for his painful knee and ankle. The regenerative medicine procedure with stem cells was performed by Dr. Raj, a top orthopedic doctor in Beverly Hills and Los Angeles.

Darius McCrary is well known for his decade long stint on Family Matters as character Eddie Winslow. He won a Best Young Actor Award for this role along with movie roles in both Mississippi Burning and Big Shots. Currently, Darius appears along with Charlie Sheen in the show Anger Management.

While staying in tip top shape for his career, Darius has developed persistent pain in his right knee and ankle. Rather than seek a regular cortisone injection for pain relief or opt for surgery, he desired the ability to repair the joint damage and achieve pain relief. "I couldn't imagine being immobilized because of injury, so I opted for a stem cell procedure."

The procedures were performed by Dr. Raj, who is a prominent Beverly Hills orthopedic doctor with extensive experience in regenerative medicine. The procedure consisted of a combination of platelet rich plasma therapy along with amniotic derived stem cell therapy. Anecdotal studies are showing that the stem cell procedures for extremity joints allow patients to achieve pain relief and often avoid the need for potentially risky surgery.

Dr. Raj has performed over 100 stem cell procedures for patients who have degenerative arthritis or sports injuries. "Patients do extremely well with the procedures. Minimal risk and there's a huge potential upside!"

With an active acting career, Darius McCrary cannot afford to be distracted with chronic pain. "I'm looking forward to getting back in the gym and going hard without this pain," he stated excitedly. The procedure was filmed and can be seen on Dr. Raj's Facebook page.

To discuss stem cell procedures at Beverly Hills Orthopedic Institute and how they can benefit, call (310) 247-0466.

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Veteran Actor Darius McCrary from Family Matters Receives Stem Cell Procedures with Dr. Raj in Beverly Hills

UW professor using stem cell research to find treatment for eye conditions

Through stem cell research, two Madison men who suffer from a genetic condition that causes blindness and hearing loss are receiving experimental treatment.

Johnny and Mike Walsh, sons of University of Wisconsin Regent David Walsh who suffer from Usher disease are receiving experimental treatmentfrom David Gamm, a UW professor and expert in retinal and stem biology.

Johnny has had hearing problems from birth and is now legally blind. However, he maintains a positive attitude due to the experimental treatment he is receiving in Madison and does not let his disability get in the way of his career as an attorney at Axley Brynelson LLP.

It is interesting that here I am in Madison getting a diagnosis and then having such a great research institution there in my backyard and its convenient for them to have my family there because you got four kids, three who carry the genes, two who are affected and one who isnt. So you have a perfect control right there, I think thats kind of neat for Dr. [David] Gamm to have and he takes our blood whenever he needs it, Walsh said.

Mike started a project entitled Flight4Sight, where he travels the world to spread awareness and understanding about blindness. His project is on Facebook and a blog, where he takes his followers advice on where to travel next.

Mike said he benefits from the research Gamm, of the Waisman Center,does.

Gammis working closely with Cellular Dynamics International, a Madison-based company which has recently received a $1.2 million grant to continue their research on human stem cells.

CDI specializes in creating human cells, including various types of stem cells. With the National Eye Institutes funding, CDI will carry out this stem cell-based research in the first study of its kind to be performed in the United States.

Eye conditions that include dry age-related macular degeneration affect as many as 11 million Americans who have some form of macular degeneration, according to the CDI statementregarding the grant. The cells being used for this study are CDI developed and manufactured through induced pluripotent stem cells, which will potentially have application in discovering treatments for retinal and eye conditions.

The goal of the study will be to find out how to reprogram stem cells in order to make retina cells to prevent further damage in decaying eyes and eye conditions, Gamm said.

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UW professor using stem cell research to find treatment for eye conditions

Stem Cells Treatment Not Useful In Stroke Patients Finds Indian Study

A large-scale trial conducted in India has shown that stem cell therapy does not work in stroke patientsREUTERS

A study conducted on 120 patients in India has shown that stem cell treatment is not effective in treating paralysis resulting from a stroke.

The research which is thefirst large-scale study conducted in Indiacompared outcomes in those treated with stem cells to others and found no difference, reports Down to Earth.

While 60 patients with some form of disability of limbs caused by a stroke were given conventional treatment, an equal number received bone marrow stem cells in addition. All had experienced a stroke 3-4 weeks before the trial.

"We found that at the end of the first month, patients with stem cells showed more improvement compared to the control group. But at the end of the third month and one year, there was no difference," said Kameshwar Prasad, head, Department of Neurology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), who led the study.

On an average 280 million bone marrow cells were injected, of which blood forming stem cells were around 2.9 million per patient.

The average age of patients in the study was around 50.

The study, published in the current issue of American journal Stroke, was conducted at AIIMS in New Delhi and four other hospitals covering four cities.

The study comes when many others have been suggesting that stem cells could help treat paralysis in stroke patients. The earlier study was done on a small number of patients as compared to the AIIMs study.

More research needs to be done, before stem cells are used in therapy as in India, many private clinics are openly offering stem cell treatment for various diseases.

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Stem Cells Treatment Not Useful In Stroke Patients Finds Indian Study

Reprogramming cells, long term

Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers, representing five Harvard departments and affiliated institutions as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), have demonstrated that adult cells, reprogrammed into another cell type in a living animal, can remain functional over a long period.

The work by Joe Zhou, an associate professor in Harvard's Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, and his collaborators is an important advance in the effort to develop cell-based therapies for tissue repair, and specifically in the effort to develop improved treatment for diabetes.

The researchers used a combination of genes to change pancreatic exocrine cells -- one of the main forms of cells in the pancreas -- in adult mice that have diabetes into insulin-producing beta cells that appeared to cure about a third of the mice of the metabolic disease, and improved insulin production in most of the other mice.

A report on the work was published today in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

The new findings are a major advance in work by HSCI co-director Doug Melton and Zhou, who in 2008 reported having converted exocrine cells into functional beta cells in mice. At that time, however, it was not known how long, and how well, the repurposed cells would function.

"The efficiency of reprogramming has always been an issue," Zhou said. "Until now, the new cells have either dropped dramatically in number or disappeared completely," he said, noting that since his work with Melton in 2008 there have been reports published in other programing systems that question whether the reprogrammed cells could be stable enough ultimately to be useful.

"What we have demonstrated is that yes, the reprogrammed cells can be useful, and for that to happen you have to create a niche environment in which the cells can survive," Zhou continued. "We have improved the reprogramming efficiency to a point where one can create a large enough number of the new cells that the new cells create their own niche environment."

Zhou said that the researchers studied the mice for up to about 13 months, approximately half their normal life span, and found that "the cells are still there, and fairly robust. These are diabetic animals, and we were able to, I wouldn't use the word 'cure' because that's a very freighted word for me to use, but they became highly glycemic animals -- though not every animal became normal. That may be because to completely control the glucose level of the animal, you not only need beta cells, you need about a quarter of a million functional beta cells. If you are short of this number, even if the beta cells are perfectly normal," they can't completely control blood sugar levels, Zhou said.

When discussing the implications of the study for the field of cellular reprogramming, Zhou cautioned that the pancreas has a particularly simple cellular organization and structure, and thus findings in the pancreas might not necessarily apply to other organs.

Diabetes is a metabolic disease that is seen in two basic forms.

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Reprogramming cells, long term

Pope Says Euthanasia Is 'Sin Against God;' Blasts Abortion, Stem-Cell Research

November 16, 2014|8:19 am

Pope Francis prays at the Austro-Hungarian cemetery of Fogliano in Redipuglia, Italy, September 13, 2014. Pope Francis marked the centenary of World War I at the Redipuglia Military Sacrarium with a mass.

Euthanasia does not reflect dignity but is, in fact, a sin against God and creation and a "false sense of compassion," Pope Francis said Saturday, denouncing the right-to-die movement. The pontiff also rejected abortion, in vitro fertilization and embryonic stem cell research.

"We're are living in a time of experimentation with life. But a bad experiment (we're) playing with life," he said, addressing about 4,000 doctors from the Association of Italian Catholic Doctors in the Vatican, according to Catholic News Agency.

"Be careful, because this is a sin against the Creator: against God the Creator," the pope said, adding that the assisted suicide movement can be attributed to a "throw-away culture" that sees the sick and elderly as a burden on society.

It's like telling God, "'At the end of life I do it, like I want.' It's a sin against God. Think well about this."

Pope's remarks come about a fortnight after California woman Brittany Maynard, who had terminal brain cancer, decided to end her own life.

Francis blasted the notion that abortion is good for women or euthanasia is "an act of dignity," or "a scientific breakthrough to 'produce' a child (who is) considered a right instead of accepted as a gift." He also denounced "(the) use of human life as laboratory mice supposedly to save others."

The pope went on to say that medical science appears to have diminished "the ability to 'take care' of the person, especially when they are suffering, fragile and defenseless."

He encouraged medical professionals to take "courageous and against-the-grain" decisions in line with church teaching on the dignity of life. "Your mission as doctors puts you in daily contact with so many forms of suffering," he said.

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Pope Says Euthanasia Is 'Sin Against God;' Blasts Abortion, Stem-Cell Research

Authorized MFIII (MF3) – Cell Placenta Therapy For Anti-Aging

You no longer have to be Rich and famous to experience the Profound Healing effects and Intense Revitalizing and Anti-Aging benefits of MFIII (MF3) Live Cell Therapy - the best anti-aging product available in the world! Thanks to Swiss innovation and Technology, this amazing anti-aging product is now available for the first time in 70 years, and some refer to this scientific breakthrough in anti-aging and looking young as the Stem Cell in a Capsule.

Whether you are sick or experiencing chronic fatigue or just seeking the best Anti-aging and Skin Beauty supplement, everyone will benefit from the rejuvenation and regeneration of MFIII of Switzerland Live Cell Therapy. Best of all, it's acompletely Natural and Safe anti-aging solution, facilitatating and enhancing the body's ability to heal itself naturally, free from any side effects.

At last, you can feel younger, reduce cellular aging and feel full of vitality, energy, and dynamism in around 3-6 weeks with MFIII Switzerland hi-tech oral supplement formulation. MF III ( MF3) Sheep and Vegetal Placenta helps to awaken dormant cells inside the body, thereby enhancing the expression and function of existing cells, revitalizing and regenerating old and malfunctioning cells. This amazing anti-aging supplement offers what vitamins, minerals, hormones, chemicals and other typical treatments can't to worn out cells. It facilitates the processes and actual requirements for cellular functioning, mandatory for aged, hurt or sick organs and tissues to fix and regenerate, therefore providing amazing age-defying, health beauty benefits at the very same time.

Cell Treatment (or Live Cell Therapy) was first invented in an injectible form by Swiss surgeon Dr Paul Niehans in 1931. As you'll soon learn: Cell Therapy is essentially the forerunner of the better-known Human Stem Cell Therapy, which was invented in the 1960s based mostly on the principle of Cell Therapy.

Due to their intense health and beauty benefits but exceedingly high cost, Cell Therapy injections have for a while been a celebrity secret in protecting a young appearance and supporting critical health problems. Pope Pius XII was so happy with the treatment that he inducted Dr Paul Niehans, the deviser of Cell Therapy, into the Papal Academy of Science, making him the successor to the late Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin.

Many celebrities, presidents and members of the Swiss Soccer World Cup team have benefited from Cell Therapy. President Eisenhower, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and French General De Gaulle received it to maintain their powers of concentration and their physical endurance. Adenauer credited live cell therapy with giving him the energy to guide the Republic of Germany though he was more than ninety years old.

Charlie Chaplin claimed it enabled him to marry again and father kids after age seventy. Exclusive hospitals for the wealthy & famous in Switzerland have administered the Anti-Aging Cell Therapy to both western and oriental celebs, improving and lengthening their vigor and conserving their young appearance and capabilities.

Actress of "Law & Order"

"There is NO compromise for quality and effectivenes. I won't settle for anything else"

European Model

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Authorized MFIII (MF3) - Cell Placenta Therapy For Anti-Aging

UCSF Stem Cell Center |

Welcome to the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCSF, one of the largest and most comprehensive programs of its kind in the United States.

In some 125 labs, scientists are carrying out studies, in cell culture and animals, aimed at understanding and developing treatment strategies for such conditions as heart disease, diabetes, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, Parkinsons disease, Lou Gehrigs disease, spinal cord injury and cancer.

While the scientific foundation for the field is still being laid, UCSF scientists are beginning to move their work toward human clinical trials. A team of pediatric specialists and neurosurgeons is carrying out the second brain stem cell clinical trial ever conducted in the United States, focusing on a rare disease, inherited in boys, known as Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease.

Others are working to develop strategies for treating diabetes, brain tumors, liver disease and epilepsy. The approach for treating epilepsy potentially also could be used to treat Parkinsons disease, as well as the pain and spasticity that follow brain and spinal cord injury.

The center is structured along seven research pipelines aimed at driving discoveries from the lab bench to the patient. Each pipeline focuses on a different organ system, including the blood, pancreas, liver, heart, reproductive organs, nervous system, musculoskeletal tissues and skin. And each of these pipelines is overseen by two leaders of international standing one representing the basic sciences and one representing clinical research. This approach has proven successful in the private sector for driving the development of new therapies.

The center, like all of UCSF, fosters a highly collaborative culture, encouraging a cross-pollination of ideas among scientists of different disciplines and years of experience. Researchers studying pancreatic beta cells damaged in diabetes collaborate with those who study nervous system diseases because stem cells undergo similar molecular signaling on the way to becoming both cell types. The opportunity to work in this culture has drawn some of the countrys premier young scientists to the center.

While the focus of the science is the future, UCSFs history in the field dates back to 1981, when Gail Martin, PhD, co-discovered embryonic stem cells in mice and coined the term embryonic stem cell. Two decades later, UCSFs Roger Pedersen, PhD, developed two of the first human embryonic stem cell lines, following the groundbreaking discovery by University of Wisconsins James Thomson, PhD, of a way to derive the cells.

Today, the Universitys faculty includes Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD, of the UCSF-affiliated J. David Gladstone Institutes and Kyoto University. His discovery in 2006 of a way to reprogram ordinary skin cells back to an embryonic-like state has given hope that someday these cells might be used in regenerative medicine.

Yamanakas seminal finding highlights the unexpected and dramatic discoveries that can characterize scientific research. In labs throughout UCSF and beyond, the goal is to move such findings into patients.

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UCSF Stem Cell Center |

MAYO CLINIC RADIO

Posted by Dana Sparks (@danasparks) Fri, Nov 7 at 1:17pm EST

MAYO CLINIC RADIO

On the next Mayo Clinic Radio, Saturday, November 8 at 9 a.m. CT,well discuss the latest news from the Mayo Clinic Cardiology + Structural Heart Disease: Innovation Summit 2014. Replacing or repairing someone's heart valve through a blood vessel is a modern-day marvel. We'll find out how they do it. Plus, regenerating damaged heart tissue is a new frontier in cardiac care. Repair, replace and regenerate how the newest innovations can save your heart. ExpertsCharles Bruce, M.D., and Rakesh Suri, M.D.,will be with us ... hope you join us, too!

Myth or Fact: Stem cell therapy for heart disease is analternative to bypass surgery and/or stents.

Follow#MayoClinicRadioand tweet your questions.

To listen to the program on Saturday, clickhere.

Mayo Clinic Radio is available oniHeart Radio.

Listentothis weeks Medical News Headlines: News Segment November 8, 2014(right click MP3)

Mayo Clinic Radiois a weeklyone-hour radio program highlighting health and medical informationfrom Mayo Clinic.The showis tapedfor rebroadcast by some affiliates.

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MAYO CLINIC RADIO

Humans' big brains might be due in part to newly identified protein

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

12-Nov-2014

Contact: Scott Maier scott.maier@ucsf.edu 415-502-6397 University of California - San Francisco @ucsf

A protein that may partly explain why human brains are larger than those of other animals has been identified by scientists from two stem-cell labs at UC San Francisco, in research published in the November 13, 2014 issue of Nature.

Key experiments by the UCSF researchers revealed that the protein, called PDGFD, is made in growing brains of humans, but not in mice, and appears necessary for normal proliferation of human brain stem cells growing in a lab dish.

The scientists made their discovery as part of research in which they identified genes that are activated to make specific proteins in crucial stem cells in the brain known as radial glial cells. The discovery stems from a collaboration between the laboratories of leading radial glial cell scientist Arnold Kriegstein MD, PhD, director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCSF, and Michael Oldham, PhD, who recently made a rapid career leap from graduate student to principal investigator and Sandler Fellow at UCSF.

Radial glial cells make the neurons in the growing brain, including the neurons in the cerebral cortex, the seat of higher brain functions. The cerebral cortex varies in size 10,000-fold among mammals. Changes in the timing, location and degree of cell division and nerve cell generation by radial glial cells can dramatically alter the shape and function of the cortex.

The UCSF team discovered that PDGFD is secreted by human radial glial cells and acts on radial glial cells as well as other progenitor cells in the developing brain.

"To the best of our knowledge this is the first example of any signaling pathway affecting the proliferation of radial glial cells whose activity has changed during mammalian evolution," Oldham said. "We think that the expression of PDGFD in this signaling pathway is likely to be part of the reason the human brain is so much bigger that the mouse brain."

Although the UCSF research team found that the majority of genes that are active in radial glial cells are the same in humans and mice, they identified 18 genes that are active in human but not mouse radial glial cells during development of the cerebral cortex.

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Humans' big brains might be due in part to newly identified protein

How adult fly testes keep from changing into ovaries

8 hours ago

New research in flies shows how cells in adult reproductive organs maintain their sexual identity. The study, publishing online on November 13 in the Cell Press journal Developmental Cell, also identified a mutation that can switch the cells' sexual identity. The findings could lead to new insights on how to alter cells for therapeutic purposes.

Sperm and eggs are made from germ cells, but instructions from their neighboring support cellscalled somatic cellsare also essential for their development. By studying the formation of sperm in fruit flies, which is remarkably similar to the process that occurs in people, investigators serendipitously found a mutation that gave testes a very unusual appearance. "Rather than becoming sperm, germ cells were stuck at an early stage, and they were surrounded by support cells that looked suspiciously like those belonging in an ovary," says senior author Dr. Erika Matunis of The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Her research team found that the mutation blocked the function of a specific gene in the stem cells that becomes support cells in the testis, causing the fruit flies to change from a male to a female identity.

The research is the first to show that adult stem cells actively maintain their sexual identity. The mutation the investigators found causes the stem cells in males to switch their sexual identities and start making support cells that belong in the ovary. This ultimately derails the production of sperm. "The molecules that govern this process are highly conserved, which suggests that similar mechanisms could operate in human testes," says Matunis.

The changes seen in this study are an example of transdifferentiation, or the conversion from one cell type to another. The topic is of considerable interest because promoting transdifferentiation in a directed manner may be useful for regenerating damaged organs or tissues. Doing so will require a thorough understanding of how cell fate conversions are regulated. "We are excited to have a powerful genetic system for studying transdifferentiation of stem cells at the mechanistic level," says Matunis. The research might also provide insights into how cells transform from a normal state to a cancerous one.

Explore further: Surprise: Lost stem cells naturally replaced by non-stem cells, fly research suggests

More information: Developmental Cell, Ma et al.: "The Jak-STAT target Chinmo prevents sex transformation of adult stem cells in the Drosophila testis niche" http://www.cell.com/developmental-cel 1534-5807(14)00628-5

Journal reference: Developmental Cell

Provided by Cell Press

Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered an unexpected phenomenon in the organs that produce sperm in fruit flies: When a certain kind of stem cell is killed off experimentally, another group of non-stem cells can come out ...

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How adult fly testes keep from changing into ovaries