Category Archives: Stem Cell Clinic


Stem Cell Clinic > Stem Cell Clinic

Hometownstations.com-WLIO- Lima, OH News Weather SportsCalifornia's stem cell agency ponders its future

By Stem Cell Clinic

By ALICIA CHANG AP Science Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The creation of California's stem cell agency in 2004 was greeted by scientists and patients as a turning point in a field mired in debates about the destruction of embryos and hampered by federal research restrictions.

The taxpayer-funded institute wielded the extraordinary power to dole out $3 billion in bond proceeds to fund embryonic stem cell work with an eye toward treatments for a host of crippling diseases. Midway through its mission, with several high-tech labs constructed, but little to show on the medicine front beyond basic research, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine faces an uncertain future.

Is it still relevant nearly eight years later? And will it still exist when the money dries up?

The answers could depend once again on voters and whether they're willing to extend the life of the agency.

Several camps that support stem cell research think taxpayers should not pay another cent given the state's budget woes.

"It would be so wrong to ask Californians to pony up more money," said Marcy Darnovsky of the Center for Genetics and Society, a pro-stem cell research group that opposed Proposition 71, the state ballot initiative that formed CIRM.

Last December, CIRM's former chairman, Robert Klein, who used his fortune and political connections to create Prop 71, floated the possibility of another referendum.

CIRM leaders have shelved the idea of going back to voters for now, but may consider it down the road. The institute recently submitted a transition plan to Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature that assumes it will no longer be taxpayer-supported after the bond money runs out. CIRM is exploring creating a nonprofit version of itself and tapping other players to carry on its work.

"The goal is to keep the momentum going," board Chairman Jonathan Thomas said in an interview.

Link:
Hometownstations.com-WLIO- Lima, OH News Weather SportsCalifornia's stem cell agency ponders its future

Stem Cell Transplant Keeps Hope Alive

By Stem Cell Clinic

Memphis, Tn - Jana Stressel and her husband Jay were living life as empty nesters. She was active and healthy, walking five miles a day. The couple was getting ready for an out of town trip back in 2009, when sickness settled in. Jay knew it was trouble so he rushed his wife of 28 years to the hospital.

"They immediately sensed something was wrong. My blood pressure was really high. I was in bad shape...they went to work on me very quickly," says Jana.

Doctors told Jana she was losing blood from somewhere, so she underwent several blood transfusions. Her kidneys were shutting down. For two weeks, doctors wondered what was going on. Doctor Ed Muir, an oncologist with the Jones clinic, was the doctor who finally diagnosis her.

"He came in and told us I had multiple myeloma."

The cancer was at stage 3, which means the disease was already advanced. To make matters worse, she had kidney dysfunction, which required dialysis. She started chemotherapy the next day.

"My cancer is aggressive so they have to treat it aggressively, and there have been some pretty bad days."

At one point, she was receiving 3 different chemotherapy treatments at one time.

"I never cried, I was never sad, I was never scared. I just pretty much felt like ok, what do I need to go? Let's do it."

Dr. Muir explains Multiple Myeloma as cancer of the plasma cells in the bone marrow. The plasma cells grow out of control and form tumors in the areas of solid bone.

The growth of the bone tumors make it harder for the bone marrow to make healthy blood cells. This makes a person more prone to infections, back pain, fatigue, and unexplained broken bones, all symptoms Jana had, but ignored.

Read the rest here:
Stem Cell Transplant Keeps Hope Alive

Science Fiction Books: Polar nuke hunt; stem-cell underground; a huge problem

By Stem Cell Clinic

Arctic Rising, by Tobias S. Buckell (The Denver Post | NA)

Arctic Rising

by Tobias S. Buckell (Tor)

Tobias Buckell hasn't written a warning about climate change. It's too late for that. Instead he tells a story about the wild frontier of the North Pole.

Anika Duncan left Nigeria to escape violence for a safer life as a pilot for the United Nations Polar Guard. She patrols the open Arctic seas for illegal dumping of dangerous waste. But her plane is shot down when she spots a ship with a highly radioactive cargo. After she is rescued, someone is still trying to kill her. The people she counted on aren't helping, so she sets out on her own to find the truth behind a nuclear weapon that has now vanished.

The clues lead

Living Proof, by Kira Peikoff (The Denver Post | NA)

Anika picks up interesting allies on her journey north. "Arctic Rising" is a very good classic spy thriller set in an exotic location. A location that exists only because of the drastic changes in our planet's climate.

Living Proof

by Kira Peikoff (Tor)

Read the original here:
Science Fiction Books: Polar nuke hunt; stem-cell underground; a huge problem

Stem cell research allows for mismatched kidney transplants

By Stem Cell Clinic

Donating a kidney may save a person's life - but only if the conditions are precise.

Kidney donors must be related and immunologically matched to their donors and even then, the recipient must take a lifetime of anti-rejection medications, which dont guarantee the organ won't be rejected.

But a new clinical trial from Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Ill. has shown how stem cells can be used to trick a recipients immune system into believing the new organ has been part of that persons body all along.

The breakthrough has the potential to eliminate both the risks associated with kidney transplantation and the need for anti-rejection medications within one year after surgery.

Its the holy grail of transplantation, said lead author Dr. Joseph Leventhal, transplant surgeon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and associate professor of surgery and director of kidney and pancreas transplantation at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Ill. This notion of being able to achieve tolerance through donor derived cells has been around for more than 50 years, but its translation to the clinic has been quite elusive. This article details the first successful attempt of this in mismatched and unrelated kidney recipients.

The research was published Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine, and it is the first study of its kind in which the donor and recipient were not related and did not have to be immunologically matched. Only 25 percent of siblings are immunologically identical, severely limiting the possibility of being a kidney donor.

The procedure worked by extracting a little bit more from the kidney donor than just their kidney. They also donated part of their immune system. About one month before surgery, bone marrow stem cells were collected from the donor and then enriched with facilitating cells becoming stem cells that will ultimately fool the donors immune system allowing the transplant to succeed.

One day after the kidney transplant occurs, the facilitating cell-enriched stem cells are also transplanted in the recipient, which then prompts the formation of stem cells in the bone marrow. This then causes specialized immune cells similar to the donors immune cells to develop, creating a dual bone marrow system environment, so both the donors immune system and the recipients immune system function inside the persons body.

Leventhal said that the ultimate goal is for the recipient to initially take anti-rejection medications but then slowly wean off of them within a year. According to Leventhal, the drugs come with their own share of negative side effects.

The foundation of clinical transplantation revolves around the use of medicines and suppressive drugs to control the immune system, Leventhal said. These drugs have been very successful in reducing the rates of loss of organs due to acute rejection where side effects include increase risk of infection and cancer, and metabolic side effects, such as the increase risk of hypertension and bone disease. But the drugs themselves are potentially harmful to the organs we transplant. Despite our ability to reduce rates of acute rejection, most individuals go on to lose organs because of chronic (long-term) rejection.

View post:
Stem cell research allows for mismatched kidney transplants

:: 01, Mar 2012 :: A*STAR SCIENTISTS MAKE GROUNDBREAKING DISCOVERY ON STEM CELL REGULATION

By Stem Cell Clinic

MEDIA RELEASE

A*STAR Scientists Make Groundbreaking Discovery on Stem Cell Regulation

New link between polyamine levels and embryonic stem cell state deepens our understanding of embryonic stem cell regulation which is a key step in bringing cellular therapies from the laboratory to the clinic.

1. A*STAR scientists have for the first time, identified that precise regulation of polyamine[1] levels is critical for embryonic stem cell (ESC) self-renewal the ability of ESCs to divide indefinitely and directed differentiation. This paper is crucial for better understanding of ESC regulation and was published in the journal Genes & Development on 1st March by the team of scientists from the Institute of Medical Biology (IMB), a research institute under the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR).

2. Embryonic stem cells hold great potential for the development of cellular therapies, where stem cells are used to repair tissue damaged by disease or trauma. This is due to their unique ability to renew themselves and differentiate into any specific types of cell in the body. One of the challenges with cellular therapies is ensuring that ESCs are fully and efficiently differentiated into the correct cell type. This study sheds light on understanding how ESCs are regulated, which is essential to overcome these challenges and turn the vision of cell therapies into reality.

3. Using a mouse model, the team of scientists from IMB showed that high levels of Amd1[2], a key enzyme in the polyamine synthesis pathway, is essential for maintenance of the ESC state and self renewal of ESCs. To further demonstrate the critical role of Amd1 in ESC self-renewal, the scientists showed that increasing Amd1 levels led to delayed ESC differentiation. The research also revealed that downregulation of Amd1 was necessary for differentiation of ESCs into neural precursor cells and that Amd1 is translationally regulated by a micro-RNA (miRNA), the first ever demonstration of miRNA-mediated regulation of the polyamine pathway.

4. While the polyamine pathway is well established and polyamines are known to be important in cancer and cell proliferation, their role in ESC regulation until now was unknown. This novel discovery, linking polyamine regulation to ESC biology, came about when the team set up a genome-wide screen to look for mRNAs under translational control in order to identify new regulators of ESC differentiation to neural precursor cells.

6. Dr Leah Vardy, Principle Investigator at the IMB and lead author of the paper, said, The polyamines that Amd1 regulate have the potential to regulate many different aspects of self renewal and differentiation. The next step is to understand in more detail the molecular targets of these polyamines both in embryonic stem cells and cells differentiating to different cellular lineages. It is possible that manipulation of polyamine levels in embryonic stem cells through inhibitors or activators of the pathway could help direct the differentiation of embryonic stem cells to more clinically useful cell types.

7. Prof. Birgitte Lane, Executive Director of IMB, said, This is a fine piece of fundamental research that will have breakthrough consequences in many areas and can bring about far-reaching applications. Developing cellular therapies is just one long-term clinical benefit of understanding ESC biology, which can also help develop stem cell systems for disease modeling, developing new drugs as well as a tool for researchers to answer other biological questions.

Notes for editor:

Originally posted here:
:: 01, Mar 2012 :: A*STAR SCIENTISTS MAKE GROUNDBREAKING DISCOVERY ON STEM CELL REGULATION

IU doctors land large grant for adult stem cell research

By Stem Cell Clinic

INDIANAPOLIS -

An announcement involving cutting edge research of adult stem cells has doctors at Indiana University excited.

The doctors have been included in a $63 million National Institutes of Health project nabbing spots the Cleveland Clinic and Vanderbilt lost and patients here will benefit from.

Dr. Mike Murphy and Dr. Keith March will head up the IU effort, one of seven nationwide sites just named to recruit 500 patients over the next seven years who have heart attacks, heart failure or poor circulation in the legs for adult stem cell research.

"What we are doing is taking the cells from one part of the body and bringing them to another area that needs repair more urgently,' said March. "They are able to repair a variety of tissues by either decreasing inflammation by helping tissues not to die if they are at risk of death, or by helping them even to grow and regenerate."

The new NIH Cardiovascular Cell Therapy Research Network distinction follows years of work with patients like Ruth Diggs, who was diagnosed with peripheral arterial disease in New York.

"They were just telling me the only solution for me was to amputate the leg," Diggs said.

Unhappy with that option, Ruth traveled to Indiana and enrolled in a clinical trial at IU, where adult stem cells were injected in to her leg. That led to regeneration and Ruth's leg was saved.

"The fact that she has her leg, we are very, very grateful," said Ruth's daughter, Melvina Jagack.

Murphy showed images of blood flow through the leg of a male patient from Maine who enrolled in the clinical trial.

Visit link:
IU doctors land large grant for adult stem cell research

Cryo-Save Carries on its Stem Cell Education Program in Bulgaria

By Stem Cell Clinic

ZUTPHEN, The Netherlands, February 29, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Cryo-Save Bulgaria participated in the 5th National Conference of Obstetricians & Gynecologists from the Out-patient Setting, held on February 24-26 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

After the recent initiatives in Italy, Serbia and Bosnia, Cryo-Save Bulgaria joins Cryo-Saves official training plans and reaffirms the efforts of the company to put together its educational program about stem cells therapies and current applications.

Cryo-Save Bulgaria gave a presentation about why the stem cells from the umbilical cord blood should be donated or saved, and not wasted. Topics that have been covered include the advances and perspectives on stem cell therapies, the regulatory issues of the physician and his responsibility to inform the patient, and the different services offered by Cryo-Save to the patients.

Dr. Mandov, from Vesela Maternity Clinic, Plovdiv, said: "In the last couple of years, there was an ever growing interest in cryo-preservation of stem cells among pregnant women. We welcome Cryo-Saves initiative to be pro-active in educating obstetricians about this topic, so that we can convince patients more effectively about the potential benefits of stem cell storage."

The conference has been organized by the National Society of Obstetricians/Gynecologists from the Ambulatory Care.

Dr. Petrov, Chief Organizer of the event and Chairman of the Bulgarian Society of Obstetricians & Gynecologists in the Out-patient Setting, said: "Stem cell based therapies and regenerative medicine represent one of the most promising development avenues for modern medicine to go. We appreciate Cryo-Saves participation in this event because it gave us some up-to-date insight into cryo-preservation and clinical application of cord blood derived stem cells. We also highly appreciate Cryo-Saves "Donate or Save" initiative because of its clear public health benefit potential."

Because of its leading role in the stem cell storage industry, Cryo-Save has developed multiple educational programs aimed at increasing global awareness about current treatments and future promising applications. The company is convinced that everyone should be aware of the options available to them and have the opportunity to store their babys stem cells.

Cryo-Save: http://www.cryo-save.com/group

Cryo-Save, the leading international family stem cell bank, stores more than 200,000 samples from umbilical cord blood, cord tissue and adipose tissue. There are already many diseases treatable by the use of stem cells, and the number of treatments will only increase. Driven by its international business strategy, Cryo-Save is now represented in over 40 countries on four continents, with ultra-modern processing and storage facilities in the United States, Belgium, Germany, Dubai, India, South Africa and France (validation in progress).

Excerpt from:
Cryo-Save Carries on its Stem Cell Education Program in Bulgaria

Sonya Dakar Snake Venom Facial on Good Morning America – with NutraSphere Stem Cell Transformer – Video

By Stem Cell Clinic

24-01-2012 11:14 Skincare Guru Sonya Dakar (www.sonyadakarskinclinic.com) on Good Morning America (GMA) Bizarre Beauty Segment showcases her Snake Venom Facial Treatment at the Sonya Dakar Skin Clinic in Beverly Hills utilizing her new NutraSphere Stem Cell Transformer. Made with synthetic snake venom the Stem Cell Transfomer works to inhibit muscle contraction giving skin a natural botox-like effect on the skin. Learn more at http://www.sonyadakarskinclinic.com

Read the original here:
Sonya Dakar Snake Venom Facial on Good Morning America - with NutraSphere Stem Cell Transformer - Video

→←