Foetal stem cell treatment sees success in fighting brittle bone disease

SINGAPORE: A team of experts from Singapore's National University Hospital (NUH) has made a clinical breakthrough in their work on foetal stem cell treatment.

The team is part of an international collaboration comprising researches from Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, and Taiwan.

The treatment involves the injection of stem cells into a foetus while still in the mother's womb to treat various abnormalities and genetic disorders.

The experts announced this after successfully treating two girls with brittle bone disease. One of them is a four year-old who was treated in Singapore.

The team plans to carry out further research on the use of stem cell treatment for other prenatal abnormalities.

Dr Citra Mattar, associate consultant from the Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at NUH, said: "Treating a foetus that's only 12 grams or 20 grams in the early part of pregnancy is likely to be much more effective when we give a certain dose of stem cell or gene therapy product; compared to treating a baby -- when it's born it's 2.5 kg, it's much bigger than the foetus. So we can use a smaller amount of product to achieve a greater result."

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Foetal stem cell treatment sees success in fighting brittle bone disease

Arizona Pain Stem Cell Institute Now Offering Stem Cell Therapy for Plantar Fasciitis

Phoenix, Arizona (PRWEB) December 16, 2013

The top Phoenix stem cell treatment clinic, Arizona Pain Stem Cell Institute, is now offering stem cell therapy for plantar fasciitis. The treatments are offered by Board Certified pain management doctors in Arizona, and often help patients avoid surgery. For more information and scheduling, call (602) 507-6550.

Plantar fasciitis affects millions of Americans, causing heel pain that may make it difficult to participate in recreational activities and walking in general. Conventional treatments such as steroid injections, NSAIDS, bracing and physical therapy at times do not relieve the pain properly. Surgery for plantar fasciitis unfortunately does not always provide the desired relief.

Regenerative medicine at the Arizona Pain Stem Cell Institute offers a nonoperative option for plantar fasciitis. This may include stem cell injections with bone marrow, fat derived or amniotic derived material. The procedure is outpatient and low risk.

In addition to treatments for plantar fasciitis, the Institute offers stem cell treatments for degenerative arthritis, tennis elbow, rotator cuff symptoms, achilles tendonitis and more. The procedures are performed by Board Certified pain doctors, with four research projects ongoing.

The Institute is a division of Arizona Pain Specialists, the leading pain center in Arizona. Five locations accept over 50 insurance plans including Workers Compensation, Personal Injury, PPO's, some HMO's and self pay. The regenerative medicine treatments are offered as fee for service.

For more information and scheduling to discuss plantar fasciitis options, call (602) 507-6550.

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Arizona Pain Stem Cell Institute Now Offering Stem Cell Therapy for Plantar Fasciitis

Brittle-bone babies helped by fetal stem cell grafts

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

16-Dec-2013

Contact: Press Office pressinfo@ki.se 46-852-486-077 Karolinska Institutet

Osteogeneis imperfecta (OI) is a congenital bone disease that causes stunted growth and repeated, painful fracturing. Ultrasound scans can reveal fractures already in the fetus, and now an international team of researchers from Sweden, Singapore and Taiwan have treated two babies in utero by injecting bone-forming stem cells. The longitudinal results of the treatment are published in the journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine.

The babies were treated with mesenchymal stem cells, connective tissue cells that can form and improve bone tissue. The stem cells were extracted from the livers of donors and although they were completely unmatched genetically, there was no rejection and the transplanted cells were accepted as self.

Back in 2005, a paper was published from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden describing how stem cells were given to a female fetus. The present study describes how the girl suffered a large number of fractures and developed scoliosis up to the age of eight, whereupon the researchers decided to give her a fresh stem cell graft from the same donor. For the next two years the girl suffered no new fractures and improved her growth rate. Today she takes dance lessons and participates more in PE at school.

Another unborn baby with OI, a girl from Taiwan, was also given stem cell transplantation by the Karolinska Institutet team and their colleagues from Singapore. The girl subsequently followed a normal and fracture-free growth trajectory until the age of one, when it levelled off. She was given a fresh stem cell treatment and her growth resumed. The girl started to walk and has since not suffered any new fractures. Today she is four years old.

"We believe that the stem cells have helped to relieve the disease since none of the children broke bones for a period following the grafts, and both increased their growth rate," says study leader Dr Cecilia Gtherstrm, researcher at Karolinska Institutet's Department of Clinical Sciences, Intervention and Technology. "Today, the children are doing much better than if the transplantations had not been given. OI is a very rare disease and lacks effective treatment, and a combined international effort is needed to examine whether stem cell grafts can alleviate the disease."

The researchers have also identified a patient, a boy from Canada, who was born with OI caused by exactly the same mutation as the Swedish girl had. The boy was not given stem cell therapy and was born with severe and widespread bone damage, including numerous fractures and kyphosis of the thoracic vertebrae, which causes such over-curvature of the spine that it impairs breathing. The boy died of pneumonia within his first 5 months.

Participating institutions in Singapore have been the National University Hospotal, and the KK Women's and Children's Hospital. Collaborating partner of Taiwan was the Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Linkou. Researchers of several universities and hospitals in Sweden, Canada and the USA also took part in the work. The study was financed with a grant from the Swedish Society for Medical Research, and two of the participating researchers received a salary from the Singaporean Ministry of Health.

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Brittle-bone babies helped by fetal stem cell grafts

Kidney Grown From Stem Cells For The First Time, Australian Scientists Call Breakthrough ‘An Amazing Process’

The breakthrough marks a major advance in treating kidney disease and more avenues in bioengineering human organs. Researchers published their findings in the journal Nature Cell Biology, following their success in making human skin cells form a functioning "mini-kidney" with a width of only a few millimeters.

During self-organization, different types of cells arrange themselves with respect to each other to create the complex structures that exist within an organ, in this case, the kidney, Professor Melissa Little of University of Queenslands Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), who led the study, said in a statement. The fact that such stem cell populations can undergo self-organization in the laboratory bodes well for the future of tissue bioengineering to replace damaged and diseased organs and tissues.

While it may be a while until the process can be used in human trials, Little says it could be a major development in treating chronic kidney disease.

One in three Australians is at risk of developing chronic kidney disease, and the only therapies currently available are kidney transplant and dialysis, Little said. Only one in four patients will receive a donated organ, and dialysis is an ongoing and restrictive treatment regime.

The engineered kidney is a first for science.

"This is the first time anybody has managed to direct stem cells into the functional units of a kidney," Professor Brandon Wainwright, from the University of Queensland, told The Telegraph. "It is an amazing process it is like a Lego building that puts itself together."

Scientists were able to make the kidney by identifying genes that remained active and inactive during kidney development. They were then able to alter the genes into embryonic cells that allowed them to self-organize into the human organ.

"The [researchers] spent years looking at what happens if you turn this gene off and this one on," Wainwright said. "You can eventually coax these stem cells through a journey they [the cells] go through various stages and then think about being a kidney cell and eventually pop together to form a little piece of kidney."

Little predicts the stem cell kidneys could one day be used to make human kidney transplants, or a cluster of mini kidneys used to boost renal function in patients.

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Kidney Grown From Stem Cells For The First Time, Australian Scientists Call Breakthrough ‘An Amazing Process’