Stem cell treatment gives Honolulu dog better life

Dog receives stem cell therapy

In recent years, Kumba, a 13-year-old rottweiler mix, and beloved pet, had been living a life in pain. "Kumba had a lot of problems with his back legs; both his hips and his knees were affected by really severe arthritis and he was having a hard time getting up and down and his quality of life was really being affected," said Dr. Cristina Miliaresis, who is a veterinarian at Surf Paws Veterinary Hospital in Hawaii Kai. Reports show it's a painful problem affecting up to 40 percent of the 164 million cats and dogs in the United States. "When we heard about the therapy, it was an option for us and for Kumba to live a better quality of life," said Kumbas owner Rumi Hospedar. In June, veterinarians took fat tissue from Kumba's shoulder, separated the stem cells, then injected it back into his ailing joints. In the past, veterinarians had to send tissue to the mainland, but a company called MediVet provided the equipment to do it all in clinic. "He came back today so we could check up on him and see how he's doing," said Dr. Miliaresis. She said most of their pet patients are more than 10 years and no longer candidates for orthopedic procedures. So for the family, they couldn't be happier knowing Kumba has another chance at being the kind of dog, they know, he wants to be. "Kumbas doing much better he's spends a lot more time moving around. He's much more active and my biggest vision of Kumba is him galloping around like a horse because when he's happy he's galloping around the back yard with almost like a smile on his face," said Hospedar.

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Stem cell treatment gives Honolulu dog better life

Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute awarded $1.3 million to study cardiac stem cells

Public release date: 6-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Sally Stewart Sally.stewart@cshs.org 310-248-6566 Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

LOS ANGELES Sept. 6, 2012 A team of Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute stem cell researchers today was awarded a $1.3 million grant from the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine to continue study of an experimental stem cell therapy that treats heart attack patients with heart-derived cells. Earlier this year, data from the first clinical trial of the stem cell treatment showed the therapy helped damaged hearts regrow healthy muscle.

To date, this cell therapy, developed by Eduardo Marbn, MD, PhD, director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute and Mark S. Siegel Family Professor, is the only treatment shown to regenerate the injured human heart. In this therapy, human heart tissue is used to grow specialized heart stem cells, which then are injected back into the patient's heart. The new research will focus on understanding the cellular mechanisms that have produced favorable outcomes.

"We have seen encouraging results in patients with this treatment, and it has the potential to revolutionize how we treat heart attack patients," Marbn said. "This further study will allow us to better understand how it works, which we hope will lead us to even more stem-cell based treatments for the heart."

During a heart attack, clots form suddenly on top of cholesterol-laden plaques, which block the flow of blood to the heart muscle. This causes living heart tissue to die and be replaced by a scar. The larger the scar, the higher the chance of death or disability from the heart attack.

Conventional treatments aim to limit the initial injury by opening the clogged artery and prevent further harm with medications. Regenerative therapy aims to regrow healthy heart muscle and dissolve the heart tissue -- an approach that, according to a study by Marbn published in The Lancet, led to an average 50 percent reduction in scar size.

Early study by Cedars-Sinai researchers indicates that much of the benefit in the experimental therapy is due to an indirect effect of the transplanted cardiac-derived cells. These cells seem to stimulate proliferation of the surrounding undamaged heart cells -- a previously unrecognized means of cardiac regeneration in response to cell therapy.

"This is vital basic science work that we believe will ultimately open pathways to new treatments in the fight against heart disease, the leading cause of premature death and disability," Marbn said.

The process to grow the cardiac-derived stem cells involved in the study was developed by Marbn when he was on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University. The university has filed for a patent on that intellectual property, and has licensed it to a company in which Dr. Marbn has a financial interest.

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Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute awarded $1.3 million to study cardiac stem cells

Novel stem cell treatment helps paralyzed patients feel again

Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images

Embryologist Ric Ross holds a dish with human embryos at the La Jolla IVF Clinic February 28, 2007 in La Jolla, California.

Two clinical trial patients, paralyzed with chronic spinal cord injuries, have regained some sensation after undergoing stem cell treatments led by a California biotech company and researchers from the University of Zurich.

The clinical trials by Newark, California-based StemCells, Inc involved three patients, two of whom regained some feeling after scientists injected them with purified human neural stem cells.

The neural stem cells are essentially adult stem cells that can renew and replicate into cells of the nervous system. They were derived from donated fetal brain cells, which dont require the controversial destruction of embryos, a company spokesman said.

The news comes ten months after another California biotech company Menlo-Park-based Geron Corporation surprised and disappointed many in the field when it abandoned its stem cell division including its highly-touted research into an embryonic stem cell treatment for spinal cord injuries.

The three patients in the University of Zurich trials had suffered complete injury to the thoracic - or chest-level spinal cord, which left each them with no function or feeling below the injury.

Four to nine months after their injuries, scientists at the University of Zurich transplanted 20 million stem cells into each patient's spinal column at the point of injury.

Six months after treatment, two of the patients can feel heat, electrical and touch stimuli below the location of the injury, according to results presented by researchers this week at the 51st annual International Spinal Cord Society meeting in London.

The reappearance of sensation was deemed rather unexpected by Dr. Armin Curt, principal investigator for the clinical trial at the Spinal Cord Injury Center at Balgrist University Hospital, University of Zurich.

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Novel stem cell treatment helps paralyzed patients feel again

Stem-cell research: $37 million

Two teams including UC Irvine scientists will receive $37 million to push stem-cell treatments toward human testing one for a condition that leads to blindness, another for Alzheimers disease.

The awards, made Wednesday by the states stem-cell funding agency, include $17.3 million for a team that will cultivate retinal progenitor stem-cells to treat a disease known as retinitis pigmentosa.

Human neural stem cell.

COURTESY STEMCELLS, INC.

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The team includes Henry Klassen, a UC Irvine associate opthalmology professor, as well as researchers from UC Santa Barbara and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. The UC Irvine share of that award is about $6 million.

The disease is often diagnosed when patients are in their teens or young adulthood, and progresses into middle age.

First theres night blindness, Klassen said. Then tunnel vision, and eventually, complete blindness.

The treatment hes developing relies on retinal stem cells that have matured enough to be specific to eye function. In previous testing, it has restored vision in rats.

The funding will allow more preliminary work in preparation for human testing. Food and Drug Administration approval, Klassen said, could come as soon as the end of next year.

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Stem-cell research: $37 million

Stem-cell patients said to recover body sensation

Two patients in one of the worlds first tests of a stem-cell treatment for spinal-cord injury have reported feeling sensation in parts of their bodies below the injury where they felt no sensation before.

The two patients, whose identity and gender were kept confidential, are part of a trial in Switzerland of a treatment developed by a team that included UC Irvine researchers.

UC Irvine husband-wife researchers Brian Cummings and Aileen Anderson pose with their daughter, Camryn, and their dogs.

FILE PHOTO: MARK RIGHTMIRE, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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A third patient reported no improvement in sensation, but, like the others, has suffered no ill effects from the treatment.

All three patients had suffered spinal-cord injuries at the chest level that left them with no feeling below the site of the injury.

Two of them, however, reported feeling touch and warmth down to their belly-button region after receiving injections of 20 million human neural stem cells at the injury site.

Scientists involved in the trial did not say how long it took for the patients to feel sensation after their injections, though they did say the patients improved over a six-month period.

The stem-cell treatment was developed by the UCI husband-wife research team, Brian Cummings and Aileen Anderson, using neural stem cells grown in the laboratory by StemCells Inc. of Newark, in the Bay Area.

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Stem-cell patients said to recover body sensation

Stem Cell Research and Your Dog

By Kim Ribbink, Studio One Networks

Stem cell research often conjures images of political firestorms and futuristic science, yet it's a field that's already offering hope for humans and dogs alike. While the ideal of fixing spinal injuries and curing disease may be a long way off, dogs treated with stem cells are enjoying a new lease on life.

Pepper, a 10-year-old standard poodle, is a case in point. Crippled with arthritis in both his hips, Pepper came to James Gaynor, DVM, M.S., medical director of Animal Anesthesia & Pain Management Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., with his owners, who fully expected to have to put their pet to sleep. Conventional treatments hadn't worked, or had made their dog even sicker. In fact, Pepper's owners were so certain nothing could be done that they bought another puppy. "At our 60 day recheck, the owner was hugging me and crying out of happiness because, in her words, we gave her back her dog," Dr. Gaynor says. "The only problem was she now had Pepper and a puppy."

Healthy Bones It wasn't long ago that dogs like Pepper with arthritis had few options beyond conventional anti-inflammatory treatments -- including a variety of non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as Metacam, Previcox, Rimadyl and phenylbutazone; steroid medications such as Prednisone; and disease-modifying osteoarthritis drugs (DMOADs) such as Adequan Canine -- that sometimes don't work. Now stem cells are providing an alternative. One California-based company, Vet-Stem, uses stem cells from dogs' own fat to treat animals in pain.

According to Julie Ryan Johnson, DVM, vice president of sales and marketing, studies have shown that fat is very rich with stem cells, making it an ideal source, and one that is nearly free from controversy, given that most of us don't mind having a bit of fat removed. "The way we do this is a veterinarian will send us a sample of the dog's fat," Dr. Ryan Johnson says. "We isolate the stem cells from that and then send the stem cells back to the veterinarian who injects them back into the dog -- for example, into an arthritic hip or elbow."

Once in the dog, the stem cells communicate with other cells in their environment. While it's not known exactly how they work, they do decrease the dog's pain level. "It's provided the veterinarian with another solution for helping these animals that have pain or difficulty moving," Dr. Ryan Johnson says. "Most importantly, for the dog and the dog owner, it offers quality of life."

The Possibilities Richard Vulliet, Ph.D., DVM, professor and director of the Laboratory of Veterinary Cytotherapeutics at UC Davis, says stem cells haven't cured any diseases yet, but researchers are working hard to change that. "I think that stem cells in general will rewrite the medical textbooks in the next 10 to 20 years," Dr. Vulliet says. "They will have an impact on human, canine, feline and equine health and will allow us to treat diseases that we can only dream about at this time."

Tony Kremer, DVM, an Illinois-based veterinary surgeon, says that as research progresses into the origin of diseases, there is hope that stem cell therapy might one day be used to treat diabetes and muscular dystrophy in dogs. "It is hoped that this research can repair or replace diseased organs, severed spinal cords, or brain cells destroyed by Alzheimer's disease in humans and dogs," he says.

Dr. Vulliet works with adult bone marrow stem cells to investigate potential cures for diseases that cause misery for many dogs. Your dog may soon be able to get breakthrough treatment in the following areas:

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Stem Cell Research and Your Dog

UCI researchers' work could help paralyzed patients

Two UC Irvine associate professors have laid the foundation for a treatment that could help people who are paralyzed by spinal cord injuries.

Aileen Anderson and Brian Cummings developed a stem cell treatment in collaboration with Northern California-based StemCells Inc. that is being used in clinical trials in Switzerland.

The treatment has resulted in the world's first case of patients regaining some feeling, according to UCI.

"We think this really bodes well for the next stage of the trial," Anderson said.

The initial clinical trial at the Balgrist University Hospital in Zurich injected adult human neural stem cells into the spinal cords of three paralyzed patients.

Two have regained some feeling of touch and heat, according to StemCells Inc., which developed the cell.

The treatment has the potential to not only restore feeling, but also help restore control over bowel movements, said UCI spokesman Tom Vasich.

The trial shows strong evidence that the cell is doing what it was created to do, but the results are not yet concrete, Anderson said. The trial only used three patients, an initial group to determine if the approach is safe, and it didn't have a control group.

"Despite all of these caveats, it's much more than we hoped for," she said. "We're all ecstatic."

The clinical trials are the newest phase of a nearly 10-year research project.

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Stem-cell-protecting drug could prevent the harmful side effects of radiation therapy

Public release date: 6-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Elisabeth Lyons elyons@cell.com 617-386-2121 Cell Press

Radiation therapy is one of the most widely used cancer treatments, but it often damages normal tissue and can lead to debilitating conditions. A class of drugs known as mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitors can prevent radiation-induced tissue damage in mice by protecting normal stem cells that are crucial for tissue repair, according to a preclinical study published by Cell Press in the September issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell.

"We can exploit the emerging findings for the development of new preventive strategies and more effective treatment options for patients suffering this devastating disease," says senior study author J. Silvio Gutkind of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research.

In response to radiation therapy, cancer patients often develop a painful condition called mucositistissue swelling in the mouth that can leave these patients unable to eat or drink and force them to rely on opioid-strength pain killers. Radiation therapy may cause this debilitating condition by depleting normal stem cells capable of repairing damaged tissue.

In the new study, Gutkind and his team found that the mTOR inhibitor rapamycin protects stem cells taken from the mouths of healthy individuals (but not cancer cells) from radiation-induced death and DNA damage, dramatically extending the lifespan of these normal stem cells and allowing them to grow. Rapamycin exerted these protective effects by preventing the accumulation of harmful molecules called reactive oxygen species. Moreover, mice that received rapamycin during radiation treatment did not develop mucositis.

Because rapamycin is approved by the Food and Drug Administration and is currently being tested in clinical trials for the prevention and treatment of various types of cancer, the new findings could have immediate and important implications for a large proportion of cancer patients. "Mucositis prevention would have a remarkable impact on the quality of life and recovery of cancer patients and at the same time would reduce the cost of treatment," Gutkind says. "Our study provides the basis for further testing in humans, and we hope that these findings can be translated rapidly into the clinic."

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Iglesias-Bartolome et al.: "mTOR inhibition prevents epithelial stem cell senescence and protects from radiation-induced mucositis."

Finkel et al.: "Relief with Rapamycin: mTOR Inhibition Protects against Radiation-Induced Mucositis"(In Translation Article)

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Stem-cell-protecting drug could prevent the harmful side effects of radiation therapy