Author Archives: admin


Stem Cell Clinic > Articles by: admin

Belgian researchers use groundbreaking surgery to repair bones

By Stem Cell Clinic

Belgian medical researchers have succeeded in repairing bones using stem cells from fatty tissue, with a new technique they believe could become a benchmark for treating a range of bone disorders.

The team at the Saint Luc university clinic hospital in Brussels have treated 11 patients, eight of them children, with fractures or bone defects that their bodies could not repair, and a spin-off is seeking investors to commercialize the discovery.

Doctors have for years harvested stem cells from bone marrow at the top of the pelvis and injected them back into the body to repair bone.

The ground-breaking technique of Saint Luc's centre for tissue and cellular therapy is to remove a sugar cube sized piece of fatty tissue from the patient, a less invasive process than pushing a needle into the pelvis and with a stem cell concentration they say is some 500 times higher.

The stem cells are then isolated and used to grow bone in the laboratory. Unlike some technologies, they are also not attached to a solid and separate 'scaffold'.

"Normally you transplant only cells and you cross your fingers that it functions," the centre's coordinator Denis Dufrane told Reuters television.

His work has been published in Biomaterials journal and was presented at an annual meeting of the International Federation for Adipose Therapeutics and Science (IFATS) in New York in November.

BONE FORMATION

"It is complete bone tissue that we recreate in the bottle and therefore when we do transplants in a bone defect or a bone hole...you have a higher chance of bone formation."

The new material in a lab dish resembles more plasticine than bone, but can be molded to fill a fracture, rather like a dentist's filling in a tooth, hardening in the body.

Go here to read the rest:
Belgian researchers use groundbreaking surgery to repair bones

Miami Stem Cell Treatment Center Upcoming Public Lectures

By Stem Cell Treatment

(PRWEB) January 16, 2014

The Miami Stem Cell Treatment Center, PC, located in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, and Boca Raton, Florida, announces a series of free public seminars on the use of stem cells for various degenerative and inflammatory conditions. They will be provided by Dr. Thomas A. Gionis, Surgeon-in-Chief, and, Dr. Nia Smyrniotis, Medical Director.

The seminars will be held on January 18th and 19th. On January 18th, the seminar will be held at the Boca Raton Marriot, at Boca Town Center, 5150 Town Center Circle, Boca Raton, Florida 33486, at 1 p.m.; and on January 19th at the Courtyard Marriot Aventura, 2825 NE 191st Street, Aventura, Florida 33180, at 1 p.m.

At the Miami Stem Cell Treatment Center, utilizing investigational protocols, adult adipose derived stem cells (ADSCs) can be deployed to improve patients quality of life with a number of degenerative conditions and diseases. ADSCs are taken from the patients own adipose (fat) tissue (also called stromal vascular fraction (SVF)). Adipose tissue is exceptionally abundant in ADSCs. The adipose tissue is obtained from the patient during a 15-minute mini-liposuction performed under local anesthesia in the doctors office. SVF is a protein-rich solution containing mononuclear cell lines (predominantly autologous mesenchymal stem cells), macrophage cells, endothelial cells, red blood cells, and important Growth Factors that facilitate the stem cell process and promote their activity.

ADSCs are the body's natural healing cells - they are recruited by chemical signals emitted by damaged tissues to repair and regenerate the bodys damaged cells. The Miami Stem Cell Treatment Center only uses autologous stem cells from a person's own fat no embryonic stem cells are used. Our current areas of study include: Heart Failure, Emphysema, COPD, Asthma, Parkinsons Disease, Stroke, Multiple Sclerosis, and orthopedic joint injections. For more information, or if someone thinks they may be a candidate for one of the stem cell protocols offered by Miami Stem Cell Treatment Center, they may contact Dr. Nia or Dr. Gionis directly at (561) 331-2999, or see a complete list of the Centers study areas at: http://www.MiamiStemCellsUSA.com.

About Miami Stem Cell Treatment Center: The Miami Stem Cell Treatment Center is an affiliate of the Irvine Stem Cell Treatment Center (Irvine, California) and the Cell Surgical Network (CSN). We provide care for people suffering from diseases that may be alleviated by access to adult stem cell based regenerative treatment. We utilize a fat transfer surgical technology to isolate and implant the patients own stem cells from a small quantity of fat harvested by a mini-liposuction on the same day. The investigational protocols utilized by the Miami Stem Cell Treatment Center have been reviewed and approved by an IRB (Institutional Review Board) which is registered with the U.S. Department of Research Protections; and the study is registered with http://www.clinicaltrials.gov, a service of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). For more information, contact: Miami(at)MiamiStemCellsUSA(dot)com or visit our website: http://www.MiamiStemCellsUSA.com.

Continue reading here:
Miami Stem Cell Treatment Center Upcoming Public Lectures

Stem cell guru walks out on Spanish science

By Stem Cell Medicine

A world leader in stem cell research is leaving the cutting-edge center he helped create in Barcelona due to a lack of support from the authorities in both Catalonia and Spain.

Juan Carlos Izpisa, a Spanish biochemist who teaches at the Salk Institute in California and has earned numerous awards for his research into organ and tissue development, had helped found the Barcelona Regenerative Medicine Center (CMRB) in 2004, bringing Spain to the forefront of stem cell research.

But now Izpisa is resigning from his director's post due to a lack of financial and political support from his two major public sponsors, the government of Spain and the regional government of Catalonia.

Sources in the scientific community are blaming the move on "the cuts, political mediocrity and a lack of empathy from Madrid." They also note that Catalan premier Artur Mas met with Izpisa 18 months ago and assured him that he would put all available means at his disposal.

Sources in the scientific community are blaming the move on "the cuts, political mediocrity and a lack of empathy from Madrid"

According to sources familiar with the months-long negotiations, the decision to let Izpisa go originated in the Catalan government, although Madrid did nothing to stop it. The explanation supplied was that, as an undesirable effect of cutbacks, the government was no longer in a condition to keep funding the center "at the quality levels required" by its director.

While his departure will not bring about the immediate closure of the center, the CMRB will lose many of its lines of research, since 18 of the 21 scientific projects it is currently carrying out are the intellectual property of Izpisa, who will take them with him.

The move also underscores how the crisis has meant further cuts for scientific projects in Spain, which is seeing many researchers move abroad to find jobs and financial support.

Shortly after the crisis hit Spain in 2008, the then-Socialist government announced a shift away from construction as the basis of the countrys economic growth. But so far this has failed to translate into any significant investment in other fields.

Over the last decade, the CMRB has published more than 200 papers, including some seminal work in the emerging field of regenerative medicine. One of Izpisa's projects, the development of "micro-kidneys" from stem cells, was described by Science magazine as one of the great advances of 2013.

See the rest here:
Stem cell guru walks out on Spanish science

Ludwig Center for Cancer Stem Cell Research and Medicine …

By Stem Cell Medical Center

One of the primary missions of the Ludwig Center for Cancer Stem Cell Research and Medicine is to help translate laboratory findings into clinically useful cancer therapies.

Michael Clarke, MD (left), Deputy Director of the Ludwig Center and Karel H. and Avice N. Beekhuis Professor in Cancer Biology, and his team are applying their discoveries of cancer stem cells in human breast, colon, and head and neck tumors to improve patient diagnosis and treatment. His laboratory has discovered how cancer stem cells resist treatment by radiation or chemotherapy.

Ravindra Majeti, MD (center) has been spearheading preclinical studies of anti-CD47 antibodies, which seem to promote the ingestion of cancer cells by the body's macrophages.

Phil Beachy, PhD (right) and Michelle Monje, MD, PhD, have isolated the stem cell for a deadly childhood brain cancer, diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma. Understanding the behavior of this cancer stem cell may lead to insights about how to treat it. Beachy has long been studying how cancer is related to the repair mechanisms of normal cells. By tracing such repair pathways he has found that common compounds like an antifungal medication or arsenic have anti-cancer properties.

Researchers at the Ludwig Center for Cancer Stem Cell Research and Medicine are engaged in active collaborations with other Ludwig Centers in Seattle, Boston and New York.

Excerpt from:
Ludwig Center for Cancer Stem Cell Research and Medicine ...

Belgian scientists repair bones with new stem cell technique

By Stem Cell Clinic

A piece of a three-dimensional bone structure obtained from the own adipose stem cells of a patient is seen at Brussels' Saint Luc Hospital January 14, 2014. Belgian medical researchers have succeeded in repairing bones using stem cells from fatty tissue, with a new technique they believe could become a benchmark for treating a range of bone disorders. REUTERS

BRUSSELS -- Belgian medical researchers have succeeded in repairing bones using stem cells from fatty tissue, with a new technique they believe could become a benchmark for treating a range of bone disorders.

The team at the Saint Luc university clinic hospital in Brussels have treated 11 patients, eight of them children, with fractures or bone defects that their bodies could not repair, and a spin-off is seeking investors to commercialize the discovery.

Doctors have for years harvested stem cells from bone marrow at the top of the pelvis and injected them back into the body to repair bone.

The ground-breaking technique of Saint Luc's centre for tissue and cellular therapy is to remove a sugar cube sized piece of fatty tissue from the patient, a less invasive process than pushing a needle into the pelvis and with a stem cell concentration they say is some 500 times higher.

The stem cells are then isolated and used to grow bone in the laboratory. Unlike some technologies, they are also not attached to a solid and separate 'scaffold'.

"Normally you transplant only cells and you cross your fingers that it functions," the centre's coordinator Denis Dufrane told Reuters television.

His work has been published in Biomaterials journal and was presented at an annual meeting of the International Federation for Adipose Therapeutics and Science (IFATS) in New York in November.

Belgian Professor Denis Defrane, coordinator of the centre of tissue and cellular therapy of Brussels' Saint Luc Hospital, shows how a hole in the tibia of a patient suffering from a disease was treated on an x-ray, in Belgium January 14, 2014.

Read the original:
Belgian scientists repair bones with new stem cell technique

Stem cells from fatty tissue show potential for bone repair

By Stem Cell Clinic

BRUSSELS - Belgian medical researchers have succeeded in repairing bones using stem cells from fatty tissue, with a new technique they believe could become a benchmark for treating a range of bone disorders.

The team at the Saint Luc university clinic hospital in Brussels have treated 11 patients, eight of them children, with fractures or bone defects that their bodies could not repair, and a spin-off is seeking investors to commercialise the discovery.

Doctors have for years harvested stem cells from bone marrow at the top of the pelvis and injected them back into the body to repair bone.

The ground-breaking technique of Saint Luc's centre for tissue and cellular therapy is to remove a sugar cube sized piece of fatty tissue from the patient, a less invasive process than pushing a needle into the pelvis and with a stem cell concentration they say is some 500 times higher.

The stem cells are then isolated and used to grow bone in the laboratory. Unlike some technologies, they are also not attached to a solid and separate 'scaffold'.

Continue reading here:
Stem cells from fatty tissue show potential for bone repair

Desperate parents make heart-breaking YouTube appeal to find stem cell donor for one-year-old daughter dying from …

By Stem Cell Doctors

Margot Martini's form of leukaemia is so rare, doctors have only seen three similar cases in the last decade

The parents of a one-year-old girl dying from an extremely rare form of leukaemia have made a desperate global appeal to find her a stem cell donor.

Margot Martini was rushed to Great Ormond Street Hospital aged just 14 months last October.

She needed an immediate blood transfusion and spent the next ten days on life support.

Her parents Vicki and Yasser have been told she has a form of leukaemia so rare her consultant has seen only three such cases in the last decade.

They have made a desperate appeal via YouTube in a bid to find a stem cell donor who could save her life.

Yasser told Sky News: "Margot needs to receive a stem cell donation from someone with a similar tissue type as hers. So we are on a worldwide search for a donor - and unfortunately, without much luck to date."

Because Margot's leukaemia is so rare, Margot's parents are organising national "donor drives" where volunteers can register in the hope that someone will be a perfect match.

Anyone who wants to can request a saliva swab kit which can be used at home or register at designated medical centres on three separate "donor days".

Read this article:
Desperate parents make heart-breaking YouTube appeal to find stem cell donor for one-year-old daughter dying from ...

Stem Cells Could Prove Effective in Treating Brittle Bone Disease

By Stem Cell Medicine

Durham, NC (PRWEB) January 14, 2014

A new study released in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine indicates that stem cells can be effective in treating a debilitating and sometimes lethal genetic disorder called brittle bone disease.

Brittle bone disease, or osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), is characterized by fragile bones causing some patients to suffer hundreds of fractures over the course of a lifetime. In addition, according to the OI Foundation, other symptoms include muscle weakness, hearing loss, fatigue, joint laxity, curved bones, scoliosis, brittle teeth and short stature. Restrictive pulmonary disease occurs in the more severe cases. Currently there is no cure.

OI can be detected prenatally by ultrasound. In the study reported on in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine, an international team of researchers treated two patients for the disease using mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) while the infants were still in the womb, followed by stem cell boosts after they were born.

We had previously reported on the prenatal transplantation for the patient with OI type III, which is the most severe form in children who survive the neonatal period, said Cecilia Gtherstrm, Ph.D., of the Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden. She and Jerry Chan, M.D., Ph.D., of the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and National University of Singapore, and KK Womens and Childrens Hospital, led the study that also included colleagues from the United States, Canada, Taiwan and Australia.

The first eight years after the prenatal transplant, our patient did well and grew at an acceptable rate. However, she then began to experience multiple complications, including fractures, scoliosis and reduction in growth, so the decision was made to give her another MSC infusion. In the two years since, she has not suffered any more fractures and improved her growth.

She was even able to start dance classes, increase her participation in gymnastics at school and play modified indoor hockey, Dr. Gtherstrm added.

The second child, which was experiencing a milder form of OI, received a stem cell transfusion 31 weeks into gestation and did not suffer any new fractures for the remainder of the pregnancy or during infancy. She followed her normal growth pattern just under the third percentile in height until 13 months of age, when she stopped growing. Six months later, the doctors gave her another infusion of stem cells and she resumed growing at her previous rate.

Our findings suggest that prenatal transplantation of autologous stem cells in OI appears safe and is of likely clinical benefit and that re-transplantation with same-donor cells is feasible. However, the limited experience to date means that it is not possible to be conclusive, for which further studies are required, Dr. Chan said.

Although the findings are preliminary, this report is encouraging in suggesting that prenatal transplantation may be a safe and effective treatment for this condition, said Anthony Atala, M.D., editor of STEM CELLS Translational Medicine and director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

See the original post here:
Stem Cells Could Prove Effective in Treating Brittle Bone Disease

New breast cancer stem cell findings explain how cancer spreads

By Stem Cell Medical Center

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

14-Jan-2014

Contact: Nicole Fawcett nfawcett@umich.edu 734-764-2220 University of Michigan Health System

ANN ARBOR, Mich. Breast cancer stem cells exist in two different states and each state plays a role in how cancer spreads, according to an international collaboration of researchers. Their finding sheds new light on the process that makes cancer a deadly disease.

"The lethal part of cancer is its metastasis so understanding how metastasis occurs is critical," says senior study author Max S. Wicha, M.D., Distinguished Professor of Oncology and director of the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. "We have evidence that cancer stem cells are responsible for metastasis they are the seeds that mediate cancer's spread. Now we've discovered how the stem cells do this."

First, on the outside of the tumor, a type of stem cell exists in a state called the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) state. These stem cells appear dormant but are very invasive and able to get into the bloodstream, where they travel to distant parts of the body.

Once there, the stem cells transition to a second state that displays the opposite characteristics, called the mesenchymal-epithelial transition state (MET). These cells are capable of growing and making copies of themselves, producing new tumors.

"You need both forms of cancer stem cells to metastasize and grow in distant organs. If the stem cell is locked in one or the other state, it can't form a metastasis," Wicha says.

The findings, which are published in the January issue of Stem Cell Reports, raise a number of questions about how to treat or prevent metastatic breast cancer. Researchers must now understand whether new therapies must attack both forms of the stem cell to be successful. Different pathways regulate each type of stem cell, which suggests that effective therapies must be able to target multiple pathways.

In addition, current tests that look at tumor cells circulating in the blood to help determine whether the cancer is spreading do not appear to capture the EMT stem cells, which are the cancer cells that travel through the blood. U-M researchers are working with colleagues from the U-M College of Engineering to develop new tools to isolate the EMT stem cells from the blood of cancer patients.

See the article here:
New breast cancer stem cell findings explain how cancer spreads

→←