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Signs that Chemo Is Working: How Effectiveness Is Measured and Defined – Healthline

By Stem Cell Medical Center

Chemotherapy (chemo) works by destroying cancer cells in your body. Depending on the type and stage of cancer, chemotherapy treatment may target primary tumors or cells that have spread to other parts of your body.

Chemo may also help treat cancer-related pain. A doctor will make specific chemo recommendations based on:

Depending on these factors, chemotherapy may be administered in multiple rounds that are spaced several weeks (or months) apart.

If you or a loved one is in the midst of a chemotherapy treatment plan, you may wonder how you can tell if chemotherapy is working.

The only way to effectively know for sure is through follow-up tests with your doctor. These are given in regular intervals around each round of chemo.

Keep reading to learn how doctors measure and define the effectiveness of chemotherapy.

To treat cancer cells with chemotherapy, your doctor will determine the best cellular phases in which to administer your treatment.

Since cancer cells multiply or divide quickly, chemo may be considered a first line of treatment for more aggressive forms of cancer.

Throughout your treatment plan, your doctor will need to check your progress to measure the effectiveness of chemotherapy. Depending on the type of cancer and its stage, your doctor may use multiple techniques, such as:

Its difficult to tell on your own whether chemo is working without taking the above diagnostic tests.

Depending on the type and stage of cancer you have, however, you may notice an improvement in cancer symptoms if the condition is being treated. Examples may include:

Chemotherapy is notorious for causing side effects, such as:

The side effects happen because chemotherapy kills both cancerous cells and healthy ones.

Some people may experience more severe side effects than others. However, side effects are not an effective way to tell that your chemotherapy is working.

Even severe side effects dont necessarily mean that your treatment is effectively killing cancer cells.

Before each chemotherapy session, your doctor will perform an assessment to make sure that the treatment is safe to administer. If your CBC counts are too low, for example, your doctor may recommend that you reschedule your treatment for another day.

To determine that chemo is working, your doctor will also need to conduct blood and imaging tests after treatment cycles. Keep in mind that a full treatment cycle includes the days you receive chemotherapy, as well as the weeks youre in recovery.

When determining the effectiveness of chemotherapy, your doctor will determine how your body is responding to this treatment method. They might declare that you have one of the following responses:

In addition to chemo, your doctor may consider other cancer treatments such as:

Chemotherapy is administered over the course of several weeks. For example, your doctor might recommend chemo daily for up to 1 week, and then 3 weeks off, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The goal is to target cancer cells when they may be most active while also allowing your body recovery time to build healthy ones.

Still, your exact treatment plan depends on the:

With all of these factors in mind, its difficult to predict an exact timeline for when chemotherapy will start working. This treatment may work immediately for some people, while it may take several rounds over the course of many months for others.

The best way to tell if chemotherapy is working for your cancer is through follow-up testing with your doctor. Throughout your treatment, an oncologist will conduct regular visits, and blood and imaging tests to detect cancer cells and whether theyve grown or shrunk.

Its important to know that you cant rely on symptoms alone when determining whether chemo is working. If you start feeling much worse after treatment, however, its important to talk with your doctor about your current plan and whether other drugs may help.

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Signs that Chemo Is Working: How Effectiveness Is Measured and Defined - Healthline

Some experts fear next-generation Covid vaccines may be worse – STAT

By Stem Cell Medical Center

With Covid-19 vaccines, the world hopes to beat back the virus that causes the disease. But some scientists are increasingly concerned that, because of a quirk of our own biology, future iterations of the vaccines might not always be quite as effective as they are today.

The concerns stem from a phenomenon that is known as imprinting, sometimes called original antigenic sin, which is believed to affect how we respond to some pathogens.

In short, when your body is introduced to a particular threat for the first time either through infection or a vaccine that encounter sets your immune systems definition of that virus and what immune weapons it needs to detect and protect against it in the future.

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That imprint can be helpful. In the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, elderly adults were protected by immune responses theyd generated more than half a century earlier, in childhood, through encounters with a related virus. But it can also interfere with your bodys ability to mount responses against strains that have evolved from the one you were first exposed to.

In the case of Covid, some scientists are concerned that the immune systems reaction to the vaccines being deployed now could leave an indelible imprint, and that next-generation products, updated in response to emerging variants of the SARS-CoV-2, wont confer as much protection.

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Michael Worobey, who was been involved in groundbreaking research on imprinting with influenza, said he worries the responses to first-generation Covid-19 vaccines will prove to be a high-water mark for peoples immune responses to these inoculations.

I do think its something that we need to be thinking about, Worobey, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, told STAT. We might actually see lower efficacy five years from now, if people are still locked into recalling the response to the first [SARS-2] antigen that they saw.

Sarah Cobey, an associate professor of computational biology at the University of Chicago, shares his worry. As long as we have competition between old antibody responses and new antibody responses then it seems like exactly the right sort of environment to see these phenomena, Cobey said.

I cant think of a reason that should be restricted to influenza, she added.

Not everyone in the conversation is convinced there will be a problem, though.

Vineet Menachery is a coronavirus expert at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, one of the smallish community of researchers who were studying coronaviruses before the Covid-19 pandemic hit. He noted that the SARS-2 spike protein the protein that projects from the virus surface, giving it the appearance of wearing a crown doesnt have as much wiggle room to change as the hemagglutinin proteins that sit atop of flu viruses.

Both the spike and the hemagglutinin proteins are the means by which their respective viruses attach to the cells they are trying to infect; in the case of SARS-2 viruses, attachment occurs via a receptor known as ACE2. But influenza viruses mutate at a far faster rate than coronaviruses and they have much more leeway to change mutational space, Menachery called it without impeding its functionality.

The changes that we see in the [SARS-2] variants arent whole-hog changes, he said.

Imprinting is one of the reasons why flu vaccines arent as protective as wed like them to be. Flu is a notorious shape-shifter and its constant alterations allow influenza viruses to evade immune system protections generated by either vaccination or previous infections. People who first encountered H1N1 viruses, for instance, never get as much protection from the H3N2 component of a flu shot as they do from the H1N1 part.

Basically, I think of original antigenic sin as some sort of hierarchy in immune memory, meaning you preferentially boost what youve seen before, at the expense of developing responses to the new stuff, Cobey said. It could impact the effectiveness of [Covid] vaccine going forward.

Scott Hensley, a sometimes collaborator of Cobeys, has actually seen some evidence of coronavirus imprinting in his research. An associate professor of microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania, Hensley and colleagues were working to develop Covid-19 antibody tests in the early days of the pandemic. The work involved studying using blood samples from people who contracted Covid. They compared the post-infection samples to blood drawn from the same individuals prior to the pandemic.

In comparing the before and after blood samples, they saw in the post-infection sample a dramatic rise in antibodies to one of the humans coronaviruses that is among the causes of the common cold. It was a virus called OC43, which is in the same coronavirus family as SARS-2, as well as the viruses that cause SARS and MERS.

In other words, Covid infection actually boosted the immune systems protection against a different virus, one that the immune system already knew.

Still, Hensley isnt worried about imprinting or at least not among people who have been vaccinated with mRNA vaccines. The very strong immune response generated by the Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines should override any imprinting impacts as SARS-2 mutates, he said. Hensley worries, though, that people whose immunity to the virus comes from infection, not vaccination, might have more difficulty handling variant viruses because of imprinting effects.

David Topham, an immunologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center and director of the New York Influenza Center of Excellence, also envisages that possibility.

He noted that, in the earliest stages of SARS-2 infection, the immune system mounts a response to a portion of the spike protein called S2. Later, the immune system focuses its attention on other parts of the spike, notably the part of the protein that attaches the virus to cells it invades, known as the receptor binding domain.

Its not yet known if the early focus on S2 which doesnt change much from virus to virus will blind the immune system to the changes elsewhere in the spike protein, the changes updated vaccines would be trying to teach the immune system to respond to, Topham said.

Topham doesnt think this will be a problem in vaccinated people, because of the way the vaccines in use have been designed. The spike proteins they trigger production of appear to hide the S2 region, he said. The immune system cant fixate on something it doesnt see.

For people whose immunity comes from infection, Topham sees three possible scenarios. It can be a problem, because the immune cells specific for S2 outcompete immune cells against other components of the spike protein that you really need in order to get protection. It can be inconsequential in that eventually the responses to the other parts of the protein catch up and it doesnt matter. Or it could actually be a benefit because it gets the immune system revved up more quickly.

Topham is not alone in speculating that an original Covid vaccine with a booster targeting variant viruses could, in fact, lead to a stronger immune response.

You might actually end up with an immune response that is broader, said Florian Krammer, a professor of vaccinology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

Krammer used as an example research done by scientists at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare and University of Turku on vaccination against H5N1 bird flu. H5N1 vaccine that dont contain adjuvants boosting compounds appear to generate poor immune responses. But in a paper published in the journal Vaccine, the researchers reported that a priming and boosting regimen that used two different H5N1 vaccines, made with different strains of the virus, induced a strong and long-lasting response.

We may find out whether this is going to be a problem sooner than youd think. Moderna is working with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases which helped it design its original Covid vaccine to test an updated version of its vaccine that targets the variant first spotted in South Africa, B.1.351. That variant appears to be able to evade immune responses triggered by earlier versions of the virus.

The Phase 1 studies conducted by Moderna and NIAID will produce immunogenicity data that will address this question, John Mascola, director of NIAIDs Vaccine Research Center, told STAT in an email. So data directly bearing on the question will be forthcoming over the next weeks and months.

Senior Writer, Infectious Disease

Helen covers issues broadly related to infectious diseases, including outbreaks, preparedness, research, and vaccine development.

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Some experts fear next-generation Covid vaccines may be worse - STAT

How Long is Chemotherapy? What to Expect – Healthline

By Stem Cell Medical Center

Chemotherapy, or chemo, is a type of drug thats used to treat cancer. It works by stopping the division and growth of cancer cells.

Chemo is given in specific intervals, also known as cycles or schedules. The duration of one cycle depends on several factors, including the:

These factors also determine the number of cycles and the entire duration of the treatment.

The total duration depends on other factors as well, including:

To learn how long chemotherapy takes, read on. This article will cover the estimated duration of chemo, along with how to prepare for the actual treatment.

One course of chemo treatment may last between 3 to 6 months. Typically, one course consists of several on-and-off cycles. One cycle usually lasts 2 to 6 weeks.

Within each cycle, there are multiple treatment sessions. The sessions might take place once a day, week, or month. The duration of each session depends on its form.

Heres how long different types of intravenous (IV) chemo take:

Oral and topical chemotherapy are less time-consuming. Thats because they can be done at home on your own.

In oral chemo, you take the drug by mouth. The drug might be in the form of a:

Topical chemo is an ointment or gel that you rub on your skin.

Chemotherapy infusions can last several hours or days. Your healthcare provider can let you know how long each session will likely take.

Heres what you can do to feel more comfortable during each session:

In some cases, doctors may prescribe medication to ease symptoms before they start. Before beginning your chemotherapy treatment, ask your doctor about possibly pre-treating symptoms you may be concerned about, such as nausea.

Keep in mind that every treatment center is different. To prepare, ask your healthcare professional what amenities and services will be available.

As chemotherapy destroys cancer cells, it also harms healthy cells. This includes cells in your digestive system and hair, along with cells that produce blood.

In turn, chemo can cause various side effects. Some side effects go away quickly, while other side effects can last longer than the actual treatment. These effects can last months or years.

This means that chemotherapy can technically take much longer beyond the treatment itself. Heres what you can do to prepare for these side effects in the long term:

If you need financial assistance with these forms of care, organizations like Cancer Financial Assistance Coalition and CancerCare may help.

In general, chemotherapy can take about 3 to 6 months to complete. It may take more or less time, depending on the type of chemo and the stage of your condition. Its also broken down into cycles, which last 2 to 6 weeks each.

These cycles are repeated in an on-and-off fashion to let your body rest between treatments. Each cycle consists of multiple sessions. One session can take a few minutes to several hours, depending on the form of chemo.

If you have questions about your treatment, talk with your healthcare professional. This will help you prepare and seek out the support you need.

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How Long is Chemotherapy? What to Expect - Healthline

Researchers investigate whether stem cell therapy is safe and effective for treatment-resistant bipolar disease – Newswise

By Stem Cell Medicine

Newswise A clinical trial to assess the safety and efficacy of stem cell therapy for treatment-resistant bipolar depression launched recently at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

"Since mesenchymal stem cells are known to counteract inflammation and promote neurogenesis, we are hopeful that they provide an innovative therapy for patients with treatment-resistant biopolar depression," said Jair Soares, MD, PhD, chair of Louis A. Faillace, MD, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in McGovern Medical School at UTHealth. "Depending on the results, these stem cells could reduce morbidity and mortality associated with the disease."

Bipolar disorder is characterized by dramatic shifts in mood, energy, and activity levels that can affect a person's ability to carryout daily tasks, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. People with the disorder can swing from depression to mania. An estimated 2.8% of U.S. adults had bipolar disorder in 2016, and a large portion of them do not have a satisfactory response to available treatments.

This double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial will use allogenic mesenchymal stem cells, which are multipotent stem cells taken from a bone marrow donor. The mesenchymal stem cells are manufactured in the Judith R. Hoffberger Cellular Theraputics Labratory at UTHealth, a state-of-the-art Food and DRug Administration-registered facility designed to comply with current Good Manufacturing Practice.

In a 2010 study published in Translational Research, scientists reported that stem cells showed efficacy in neurodegenerative illnesses that share several biological underpinnings of bipolar disorder, such as Parkinson's disease, with no adverse effects.

In previously published studies by researchers at UTHealth, stem cells have shown a dampening effect on inflammation, which has been linked to bipolar disease. Inflammatory markers have also been associated with a decreased likelihood of response to treatment in people with bipolar disease.

The trial will enroll 30 patients, who will recieve a single injection of either the stem cell product or placebo and continue to receive their usual care for bipolar depression for the eight weeks of the study.

UTHealth has been studying stem cells for traumatic brain injury and stroke for more than two decades.

Soares sees patients at UT Physicians, the clinical practice of McGovern Medical School.

McGovern Medical School co-investigators are Charles S. Cox Jr., MD; Fabio Triolo, PhD; Marsal Sanches, MD, PhD;Joo de Quevedo, MD, PhD; Sudhakar Selvaraj, MD, PhD; Antonio Teixeira Jr., MD, PhD; and Benson M. Irungu, PhD. Cox is a professor and George and Cynthia Mitchell Distinguished Chair in Neurosciences in the Department of Pediatric Surgery. Triolo is an associate professor and the Clare A. Glassell Distingued Chair in the Department of Pediatric Surgery. De Quevedo and Teixeira are professors; Sanches and Selvaraj are associate professors; and Irungu is an assistant professor in the Faillace Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

Soares, Cox, Triolo, and de Quevedo are also members of The University of Texas MD Anderson UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences

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Researchers investigate whether stem cell therapy is safe and effective for treatment-resistant bipolar disease - Newswise

Stem Cell and Regenerative Therapy Market: Cell Therapy Segment to Dominate Global Market – BioSpace

By Stem Cell Medicine

Stem Cell and Regenerative Therapy Market: Effective Treatment Method for Damaged Cells in Number of Diseases

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Key Drivers and Restraints of Global Stem Cell and Regenerative Therapy Market

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Unclear Regulatory Guidelines Hampers Global Market

Cell Therapy Segment to Dominate Global Market

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Oncology to be Highly Promising Segment

Hospitals to be Major End-user Segment

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North America to Lead Global Stem Cell and Regenerative Therapy Market

Key Manufacturers Operating in Global Stem Cell and Regenerative Therapy Market

Key manufacturers operating in the global market are:

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Stem Cell and Regenerative Therapy Market: Cell Therapy Segment to Dominate Global Market - BioSpace

First in the nation, FDA-approved Phase II mesenchymal stem cell therapy for Parkinson’s disease begins – Newswise

By Stem Cell Medicine

Newswise A Phase II clinical trial to assess mesenchymal adult stem cells as a disease-modifying therapy for Parkinson's disease has been launched at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

"Studies have shown mesenchymal stem cells can migrate to the sites of injury and respond to the environment by secreting several anti-inflammatory and growth factor molecules that can restore tissue equilibrium and disrupt neuronal death," said Mya C. Schiess, MD, professor in the Department of Neurology and director and founder of the movement disorder subspeciality clinic and fellowship program at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth. "The stem cells interact directly with the immune cells, leading to an anti-inlammatory state that allows a restorative process to take place."

Safety and tolerability results, assessed on a previous trial, were recently published in the journal Movement Disorders. The Phase I study showed that there were no serious adverse reactions related to the stem cell influsion and no immunological reactions to the cells, which come from the bone marrow of a healthy adult donor. The study enrolled 20 patients with mild to moderate disease, who were infused with one of four different dosages and monitored for a year. Additionally, researchers reported a reduction in preripheral inflammatory markers and a reduction in motor symptoms.

Parkinson's diease is the second most common neurodegenerative disease, affecting more than a million Americans. It is also the fastest-growning of the neurodegenerative diseases, with more than 60,000 new cases identified every year. It is predicted that by 2040, Parkinson's disease will affect 17.5 million people worldwide.

Research has shown that one of the forces playing a critical role in the diease's development and progression is a chronic neuroinflammatory process that damages the brain's microenvironment and alters its healthy equilibrium. Inflammatiion perpetuates the neurodegenration in the brain areas that control movement, causing the tremors, imbalance, loss of speech, slowness, and other motor impairments.

The randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase II trial will investigate the safest and most effective number of repeat doses of stem cells to slow the progression of Parkinson's disease. The study will enroll 45 patients, ages 50 to 79, who will receive three infusions of either placebo or stem cell therapy at three-month intervals and will be followed for a year after the last infusion.

"Currently, there is no approved therapy that can delay the degenerative process in Parkinson's disease," Schiess said. "By investigating a treatment that can slow or stop the progression, we hope to improve the quality of life of those suffering from the disease. The ultimate goal is to use this treatment in individuals with a prodromal condition, meaning they are showing early signs of Parkinson's disease but are not yet clinically symptomatic. We hope to be able to potentially stop the diease's conversion or clinical manifestation in patients who are high-risk."

The Phase II trial, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is supported with funding from the Michael J. Fox Foundation, John S. Dunn Foundation, and John and Kyle Kirksey.

Other McGovern Medical School faculty co-authors on the paper included Jessika Suescun, MD, Christopher Adams, MD, and Sean Savitz, MD, in the Department of Neurology. Marie-Francoise Doursout, PhD, Department of Anesthesiology; Charles Green, PhD, Department of Pediatrics; and Jerome G. Saltarrelli, PhD, Department of Surgery. Timothy M. Ellmore, PhD, Department of Psychology at the City College of New York, N.Y., was senior author.

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First in the nation, FDA-approved Phase II mesenchymal stem cell therapy for Parkinson's disease begins - Newswise

Cellino Biotech developing tech to help scale stem cell therapies – MedCity News

By Stem Cell Medicine

In response to emailed questions, Cellino Biotech CEO and Co-founder Dr. Nabiha Saklayen, talked about the formation of the company and its goal to make stem cell therapies more accessible for patients.

Why did you start this company?

I see a huge need to develop a technology platform to enable the manufacture of cell therapies at scale. We recently closed a $16 million seed financing round led by Khosla Ventures and The Engine at MIT, with participation from Humboldt Fund. Cellino is on a mission to make personalized, autologous cell therapies accessible for patients. Stem cell-derived regenerative medicines are poised to cure some of the most challenging diseases within this decade, including Parkinsons, diabetes, and heart disease. Patient-specific cells provide the safest, most effective cures for these indications. However, current autologous processes are not scalable due to extensive manual handling, high variability, and expensive facility overhead. Cellinos vision is to make personalized regenerative medicines viable at large scale for the first time.

How did you meet your co-founders?

Nabiha Saklayen.

I met my co-founder Marinna Madrid in my Ph.D. research group. We had worked together for many years and had a fantastic working relationship. I then met our third co-founder Matthias Wagner through a friend. Matthias had built and run three optical technology companies in the Boston area and was looking to work with a new team. I was thrilled when we decided to launch the startup together at our second meeting. Matthias built the first Cellino hardware systems in what I like to call Matthias garage. In parallel, I was doing hundreds of expert interviews with biologists in academia and industry, and it started to narrow down our potential applications very quickly. Marinna was doing our first experiments with iPSCs. We iterated rapidly on building new versions of the hardware based on the features that were important to industry experts, such as single-cell precision and automation. Its incredible to witness our swift progress as a team.

What specific need or pain point are you seeking to address in healthcare/life sciences?

In general, autologous therapies are safer for patients because they do not require immunosuppression. The next iteration of cell therapies would use patient-specific stem cells banked ahead of time. Anytime a patient needs new cells, such as blood cells, neurons, or skin cells, we would generate them from a stem cell bank.

Today, patient-specific stem cell generation is a manual and artisanal process. A highly skilled scientist sits at a bench, looks at cells by eye, and removes unwanted cells with a pipette tip. Many upcoming clinical trials are using manual processes to produce stem cells for about ten to twenty patients.

At Cellino, we are converging different disciplines to automate this complex process. We use an AI-based laser system comes to remove any unwanted cells. By making stem cells for every human in an automated, scalable way, we are working towards our mission at Cellino to democratize personalized regenerative medicine.

What does your technology do? How does it work?

Cellinos platform combines label-free imaging and high-speed laser editing with machine learning to automate cell reprogramming, expansion, and differentiation in a closed cassette format, enabling thousands of patient samples to be processed in parallel in a single facility.

In general, autologous, patient-specific stem cell-derived therapies do not require immunosuppression and are safer for patients. Today, patient-specific stem cells are made manually, by hand. To scale the stem cell generation process, Cellino converges different disciplines to automate this complex process. We train machine learning algorithms to characterize cells before our AI-based laser system removes any unwanted cells. By making stem cells for every human in an automated, scalable way, our mission at Cellino is to democratize personalized regenerative medicine. Thats why our vision statement is Every human. Every cell.

Whats your background in healthcare? How did you get to where you are today?

When I arrived at Harvard University for my Ph.D. in physics, I wanted to be closer to real-world applications. Biology is inherently complex and beautiful, and I was interested in developing new physics-based tools to engineer cells with precision. During my Ph.D., I invented new ways to edit cells with laser-based nanomaterials. I collaborated with many brilliant biology groups at Harvard, including the Rossi, Scadden, and Church labs. Working closely with them convinced me that lasers offer a superior solution to editing cells with high precision. That realization compelled me to launch Cellino.

Do you have clinical validation for your product?

Our immediate goal for the next year is to show that our platform can produce personalized, high-quality, R&D-grade stem cells for different patients, which has not been established in an automated manner in the regenerative medicine industry so far. There is significant patient-to-patient variability in manual cell processing, which we eliminate with our platform.

Photo: Urupong, Getty Images

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Cellino Biotech developing tech to help scale stem cell therapies - MedCity News

Stem cell treatment needed to fight the good fight – Victoria Lookout

By Stem Cell Medicine

LCol Laura Laycock on deployment.

LCol Laura Laycock

It was Oct. 7, 2019, and life was not just good, it was amazing.

My career in the Royal Canadian Air Force was going great. I loved my job and was getting promoted. Throughout my Canadian Armed Forces career of over 20years, I had represented Canada around the world with NORAD, NATO and the UN. I had married the most incredible man. We relocated to Ottawa, started to travel the world together, and were ready to start a family.

Then, on Oct. 8, 2019, everything changed.

I was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia(CML) after blood work for vertigo showed extremely elevated white blood cell counts. CML is a blood cancer where the bone marrow overproduces white blood cells, which eventually impairs the development of white and red blood cells and platelets. Its usually caused by a spontaneous mutation in DNA, which contains our genetic code.

LCol Laycock

Twenty years ago, researchers developed a new line of drugs that combat this overproduction of white blood cells. These targeted oral chemotherapy pills have been revolutionary in the fight against CML. Most people who take them do so for the rest of their lives and have good survival rates; however, a stem cell transplant remains the only actual cure. But its risky and not needed for most people.

Its now been about 17months since my diagnosis and my body has not tolerated this targeted chemotherapy. I fall into that small fraction of people who get debilitating or life-threatening side effects from this medication. My doctors are discussing other treatment options, one of which is a stem cell transplant, but my mixed ethnicity (European/Middle Eastern) has made it difficult to find a donor match.

My journey since my diagnosis has been to slow down and educate myself so that I can heal and advocate for my care; to appreciate every little moment of joy; and to do my best to overcome each challenge that arises. I have found strength in the extraordinary support Ive received from my family, my friends and my community, both old and new.

With the help of family and friends, I recently began a social media campaign to increase stem cell donor education and registration in Canada and around the world. Many people are unaware of the potentially lifesaving role they can play by registering to become stem cell donors. Stem cell transplants are vital treatment options for people with a range of medical conditions including spinal cord injuries, heart disease, diabetes, and some cancers.

The process to donate is simple. First, you register online with Canadian Blood Services or Hma-Qubec and do a mail-in cheek swab., and then you wait. It could be months or years before you are identified as a match. During this waiting period, you should update your contact information with the registry if it changes.

When you are matched, you will be contacted to continue with the donation process. This process is similar to giving blood, but it has its differences. The cells are usually collected intravenously from peripheral blood in a non-surgical procedure but, in rare cases, they are collected directly from the bone marrow in a surgical procedure. In either case, the risks associated with donating are minor.

In Canada, individuals aged17 to 35 can register to become stem cell donors (ages18 to 35 in Quebec). Both CBS and Hma-Qubec are part of an international network of donor registries from over 50countries. This network has a pool of over 38million donors but, unfortunately, matches are rare.

Your stem cells could potentially help others around the world, and throughout this process donor privacy is assured at all times.

LCol Laycock on her wedding day.

Stem cell matching relies on Human Leukocyte Antigen typing, which is highly influenced by ethnicity. This means that a patients best chance of finding a matching donor is from those who share similar ethnic backgrounds. Research conducted by Gragert et al.(2014) has shown that the likelihood of finding a match for certain ethnic groups can be as low as 16 percent and as high as 75 percent for others. This disparity highlights the need for more ethnically diverse stem cell donors in our registries.

Today, I am calling on my DND and CAF families to register as stem cell donors to help people, like me, who are fighting for our lives. If you arent able to register, please share this call with those who can. You, or someone you know, could be the match that saves a life a simple swab is all it takes to be a hero.

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Stem cell treatment needed to fight the good fight - Victoria Lookout

Being bionic: the future of regenerative medicine – Toronto Star

By Stem Cell Medicine

Six decades ago, two researchers at the Ontario Cancer Institute at Princess Margaret Hospital made a startling discovery. James Till and Ernest McCulloch had found transplantable stem cells, special building block cells that have the ability to grow into any kind of human tissue.

Till and McCulloch were studying the effects of radiation at the time, but their work set off an explosion of research aimed at harnessing stem cells to treat all kinds of diseases and conditions. Subsequent breakthroughs in stem cell therapy have been used to treat more than 42,000 patients for hemophilia, restore sight to blind mice and even help a 78-year-old man regrow the end of a sliced-off fingertip. And researchers are still unlocking what might be possible.

The potential of regenerative medicine is astounding, says Michael May, president of the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM), a Toronto non-profit that helps bring new stem cell therapies and other regenerative medicine technologies to market. Researchers are harnessing stem cells to repair, replace or regenerate human cells, tissues and organs with the aim of improving treatments for conditions ranging from diabetes to blindness to heart failure and cancer.

More recent advances most notably Shinya Yamanakas Nobel Prize-winning 2012 discovery that regular adult tissue cells can be reprogrammed to become stem cells again, therefore endowing them with the ability to become any type of cell in the body have also ushered in a new wave of regenerative medicine research and what May calls a global race to bring newly possible cell therapies to market.

As president of CCRM, Mays job is to help move some of that research from the laboratory into the real world. Over the last decade, his organization has helped 11 companies come to market with regenerative medicine technologies, such as Montreals ExCellThera, which provides new therapeutic options for patients who suffer from myeloid leukemia and lack a traditional bone marrow donor.

While the last decade was defined by research and technological breakthroughs, May says the next decade will be all about lowering manufacturing costs and tackling patient access bottlenecks. Last November, CCRM announced that it would partner with McMaster Innovation Park in Hamilton to create Canadas first commercial-scale factory for making cells, which will be able to produce billions of cells enough to treat thousands of patients per week.

Weve just scratched the surface of whats possible in regenerative medicine, May says. He envisions a time when well eventually use these techniques not just to cure and fix human bodies, but also make them better. Now we can make cells, we can design them by genetically engineering them to do things that they naturally do, but that can be more than nature designed, says May. He says the editing of human traits in this way could eventually augment human abilities to such an extent that theyre unrecognizable.

Biomaterials are another technology that could transform regenerative medicine. Before joining CCRM, May himself helped found a Toronto biomaterials startup called Rimon Therapeutics, which developed a smart dressing for chronic wounds that used special polymers to support the bodys natural healing process. Similar advanced biomaterials could eventually be used in combination with cell therapies to not just fight aging and degeneration, but to also prevent it entirely, and even improve upon the human bodys natural baseline health.

Fifty years from now if theres some sort of blindness, well have a lens on the eye that will automatically focus and react or change as the eye ages, he says.

Nick Zarzycki is a freelancer who writes about technology for MaRS. Torstar, the parent company of the Toronto Star, has partnered with MaRS to highlight innovation in Canadian companies.

Disclaimer This content was produced as part of a partnership and therefore it may not meet the standards of impartial or independent journalism.

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Treating chronic myeloid leukemia (CML): By phase and more – Medical News Today

By Stem Cell Medicine

Treatment options for chronic myeloid leukemia often include targeted therapies. Treatment plans and their effectiveness may depend on the phase of the condition.

Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is a slow-growing type of blood cancer that can affect white and red blood cells and platelets. It occurs in about 15% of adults who receive a leukemia diagnosis.

CML has three phases: chronic, accelerated, and blast.

The different phases can have an impact on a persons overall prognosis and how a doctor and the person approach the treatment plan.

This article discusses common treatments for CML and the differences between the phases of the condition.

The chronic phase is the earliest stage of CML.

In this phase, the cancer grows and spreads most slowly, and people typically experience few or no symptoms.

Moreover, during this stage of CML, people have less than 10% blast cells, which are cancerous immature white blood cells.

Most people receive a diagnosis of CML in the chronic phase.

During the chronic phase, the first line of treatment is tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs). A doctor may try one or more TKIs, such as:

If a specific TKI is ineffective, a doctor may change a persons dose or use a different medication. On rare occasions, a doctor may recommend a bone marrow transplant.

During treatment, a doctor will need to check the progress regularly. To do this, they will need to draw blood and check for levels of BCR-ABL, a cancer-causing gene, every 36 months. A persons doctor should review the results of the tests with the person.

A 2017 long-term study found that the 10-year survival rate of people who received a diagnosis of chronic phase CML was about 83% when they took imatinib.

The American Cancer Society states that about 70% of people have a complete response to TKI treatments within the first year.

If the first treatment does not prove effective, a doctor may consider the following:

Treatment following a stem cell transplant can vary based on the response a persons body has to the transplant.

If the persons body does not reject the transplant, a doctor may try to have the immune system attack the cancer cells by either reducing the amount of immunosuppressors or introducing donor cells.

The second phase of CML is the accelerated phase, during which blast counts are higher, and symptoms are likely to develop.

In addition, during this stage, a person has increased cancer activity.

According to the American Cancer Society, a doctor will often diagnose the accelerated phase if one or more of the following occur:

A person with accelerated phase CML is also more likely to experience symptoms such as:

The American Cancer Society states treatment for the accelerated phase will be similar to that for the chronic phase. The main difference is that in the second phase of CML, long-term success with treatment is less likely.

Treatment options, which will depend on what doctors have already used, may include:

It is difficult to determine the life expectancy of a person who receives a diagnosis of CML in the accelerated phase.

The American Cancer Society indicates a person is less likely to have a long-term response to the treatment.

However, researchers are studying new therapies, which may help prolong the life expectancy of people with a diagnosis of accelerated CML.

The blast phase is the most advanced stage of CML.

People with a blast phase CML diagnosis have at least 20% blast cells in their blood. At this stage, the cancer has also spread beyond the blood into organs or other tissues.

Additionally, a person will likely experience fever, small appetite, and weight loss.

Treatment will vary between people depending on the cancer and the type of treatment a person has already undergone.

A cure for CML in the blast phase is unlikely. That is why doctors will possibly recommend medication and therapy to help a person feel better and relieve their symptoms.

According to the American Cancer Society, a doctor may recommend newer TKIs, such as bosutinib, dasatinib, or nilotinib. Chemotherapy drugs may be effective.

If treatment is successful, a doctor may recommend a stem cell transplant.

With newer therapies, the exact survival rate of people with a blast phase CML diagnosis is not clear.

People with blast phase CML are less likely to respond well to treatment and to recover from their condition than people with a chronic phase CML.

A 2018 study reports that people with CML whose cancer cells have the T315I mutation are less likely to respond to both older and newer TKIs.

As a result, doctors will likely recommend a different strategy, such as:

CML is a type of cancer. There are several potential therapies a doctor may recommend a person undergo to treat the cancer, slow its growth, or improve a persons quality of life.

Below, we describe some of the most common approaches.

Targeted therapies are medications that identify and attack cancer cells based on certain markers.

CML contains BCR-ABL, a gene that is not present in healthy cells. The gene causes the production of BCR-ABL protein, which is a type of tyrosine kinase. Targeted therapies for CML contain TKIs that stop the growth and reproduction of cancer cells with the protein.

According to the American Cancer Society, TKIs are a frequently used treatment option in the chronic phase of CML. However, doctors may also use them in later phases of the condition.

Interferon therapy is the most common treatment for CML.

It recreates interferons, a substance the immune system produces naturally. The therapy helps prevent the growth and division of cancer cells.

Chemotherapy, or chemo, which doctors use to treat many different types of cancer, slows or stops the growth and division of cancer cells.

It may cure the cancer, reduce the likelihood of it returning, or slow or stop its growth. It may also improve symptoms.

Chemotherapy used to be the primary treatment for CML. However, TKIs are now the first line of treatment.

Doctors will typically only recommend chemotherapy if a person does not respond well to TKIs or is undergoing a stem cell transplant.

Radiation therapy uses high doses of waves of energy to destroy cancer cells. The damaged cancer cells can no longer reproduce, and die as a result.

The National Cancer Institute states that it can take several weeks of treatment to damage cancer cells enough for them to start dying off. It could then take a few weeks or months for the cells to die off completely.

However, according to the American Cancer Society, radiation is not a common treatment for CML.

Doctors may use it to reduce the size of the spleen if the cancer has spread there, to treat bone pain resulting from bone damage. They may also use it during stem cell transplant throughout the body.

Surgery is not a typical treatment option for CML. That is because the cancer can spread throughout a persons bone marrow and other organs.

Doctors will typically only recommend surgery to remove the spleen if the cancer has affected it.

A stem cell transplant involves destroying cancer cells and some healthy cells in the bone marrow, where the leukemia starts.

Once the cancer is destroyed, a doctor replaces the cells with healthy bone marrow cells that a donor provided. Usually, doctors offer this treatment option to younger people who have a matched tissue donor.

While this is the only treatment that can cure CML, it has several associated risks, including infection and graft-versus-host disease.

A person with a diagnosed CML may wish to try alternative or complementary therapies to help alleviate symptoms. They should seek guidance from a doctor to find the most suitable therapies.

According to a 2016 study, traditional Chinese herbal medicine may be effective in managing CML when people use it in conjunction with Gleevec.

However, a person should speak with their doctor about this type of treatment before finding a licensed practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine.

Another study looked at several different herbs and fruits for the treatment of leukemia. Although the study indicates more research is necessary, it reports positive results when using herbs such as ginger, garlic, and carrots.

CML is a slow-growing type of leukemia that develops in the bone marrow.

Experts distinguish three phases of the condition: chronic, accelerated, and blast. Treatments across the three phases are often similar and involve using TKIs.

A person can work with their doctor to create the best treatment options for them. If the treatment is ineffective, a doctor may recommend other therapies to achieve remission or improve a persons quality of life.

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