Freezing newborns own stem cells for possible future use

CORDLIFE is now the largest network of private cord blood banks in Asia Pacific with state-of-the-art cord-blood and tissue processing and cryopreservation facilities in the country.

Once considered a medical waste, the blood left in the umbilical cordthe part of the placenta that delivers nutrients to a fetusafter a baby is delivery is now known to be a rich source of blood-forming stem cells.

These cells have been found to be potentially useful in treating diseases that require stem cell transplants (also called bone marrow transplants) such as certain kinds of leukemia or lymphoma, aplastic anemia (a blood disorder in which the bodys bone marrow doesnt make enough new blood cells), severe sickle cell disease and severe combined immunodeficiency.

Unlike with bone marrow, which is obtained through a painful medical procedure, there is only one chance to collect this seemingly precious stuff: immediately after the babys birth.

This is why a number of expectant parents in the country are being offered a chance to save stem cells from their babys umbilical cord blood via what is known as cord-blood banking.

Safeguard

Cordlife Philippines medical director Arvin Faundo said: Its a type of safeguard because the genetically unique stem cells have current and potential uses in medical treatment. No parent wishes his/her child to experience the heartbreaking effects of any illness. What we at Cordlife offer them is the chance to prepare for potential eventualitiesto secure the future well-being and happiness of their family.

Cordlife Philippines is a subsidiary of Cordlife Group Ltd., a company listed on the Singapore Exchange. Launched in February 2010 as the Philippines first and only cord-blood processing and cryopreservation facility, its facility was ISO-certified and built in accordance to global gold standards such as the American Association of Blood Banks.

The 365-day facility, located within UP-Ayala Land TechnoHub in Quezon City, is equipped with the worlds most advanced fully automated cord-blood processing system, the Swiss-made Sepax.

CordLife uses the US FDA-approved cryogenic storage pouch.

Originally posted here:
Freezing newborns own stem cells for possible future use

Stem Cell Cure: New Therapy For Joint Pain

DALLAS We all get those aches and pains every once in a while. But for some folks, those nagging aches are a pain in the well, you know.

My pain is a variety of different type of pain, David Flory said. In certain parts of the knee, certain types of activities bother it. some dont. Some do.

He has had knee problems since high school and has had five knee surgeries throughout his life.

Now his doctors have told him he needs a total knee replacement, but like a lot of people, Flory didnt want to go through the long recovery time that comes with going under the knife.

So in order to do that, Flory found a doctors office that offers stem cell replacement therapy.

Stem Cells are the type of cells that replicate and become other cells that are used in most healing, said Dr. Bill Johnson with Innovations Medical.

Basically what the doc does is take the stem cells from fat stored on your body, then inject that into the joint. This type of stem cell therapy is still being researched. Dr. Johnson says so far, 85% of knee patients have seen improvement.

Thats improvement to the point where they dont require joint replacement, Dr. Johnson said.

Since the procedure is still in the investigational stage, it isnt covered by insurance and can get a little pricey up to $6,000.

With the investment Im making out-of-pocket, Im hopeful what were doing today will pay off, said Flory.

See the original post:
Stem Cell Cure: New Therapy For Joint Pain

Doctors think stem cell injections could provide hope for Huntington disease patients

SOUTH BEND, Ind.--- Mike and Katie have been a couple since college, but they've known each other much longer.

"We've been together forever," said Mike.

"I've actually known Mike since I was 5-years-old," said Katie.

A marriage and three kids later they've been through good times, and bad. The worst came nine-years-ago when Mike found out he had Huntington's disease.

Huntington's is a deadly, inherited disease that affects about 30,000 Americans; 150,000 more are at risk.

Until now there has been no hope for these patients, who typically die of the disease within 15 years of diagnosis.

"My father had it, said Mike. He died from it."

Huntington's causes uncontrollable movements and mental decline, there is no cure.

"Unfortunately, it ends in death, said Dr. Vicki Wheelock, a neurologist at UC Davis Health System. It's a fatal disease."

Now researchers are gearing up for a new trial in humans.

Visit link:
Doctors think stem cell injections could provide hope for Huntington disease patients

Pearland boy makes remarkable recovery via stem cells

Six-year-old Pearland resident Tucker Beau Hyatt has known that he has been battling Monstritis for a long time. He has taken on the guise of Batman (shhh!) in order to beat it.

Monstritis was the then two-year-old Tuckers way of understanding his diagnosis of Systemic Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA), a rare form of Rheumatoid Arthritis that affects about 300,000 children in the U.S. Over time, the membranes in the joints wear down, causing severe pain, loss of appetite and mobility.

Tuckers mother, Linsey Hyatt, recalls that it all started with a very high fever and a rash all over Tuckers body. We took him to the pediatrician thinking it was just some sort of infection, she said.

The blood work came back all over the place, and the youngster was referred to an Infectious Disease Specialist at Texas Tech.

The doctor took one look at Tucker and his chart and instantly knew what it was, Hyatt said.

By that time, Tucker had stopped eating and was unable to walk. We went to a rheumatoid specialist in Austin, which was the closest doctor to Midland, where we were living at the time, recalls Hyatt. They started him on chemotherapy, which was awful.

Tuckers mom and dad, Todd Hyatt, never stopped searching for a better solution to help their son, who was slowly wasting away from the disease. This is not a quick thing, said Linsey. Its slow and painful.

The Hyatts moved to Pearland in June of 2013 because of Todds job. They had become active with the Arthritis Foundation right after Tuckers diagnosis and attended an RAF luncheon in Austin featuring former Houston Oiler Earl Campbell, who suffers from osteoarthritis, in February 2014.

It was there that they first heard about Celltex, a company that facilitates stem cell therapy for RA, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinsons and other autoimmune diseases.

We wanted to be able to tell Tucker Beau that we had done everything possible to help him, said Linsey.

Originally posted here:
Pearland boy makes remarkable recovery via stem cells

Press Conference for Researcher Accused of Fraud Becomes TV Phenomenon in Japan

TOKYO Live broadcasts of scientist Haruko Obokata's press conference, in which she defended her groundbreaking stem cell research against allegations of data fabrication, were a ratings hit on multiple TV networks and online platforms on Wednesday.

The event in a hotel in Osaka attracted 300 members of the domestic and international media, and was broadcast live on most of Japan's major networks. Nihon Terebi (NTV) topped the ratings with 12.3 percent, with public broadcaster NHK in second with 9.4 percent and Tokyo Broadcasting Systems (TBS) in third with 6.8 percent, according to Video Research Inc.

GALLERY: Bollywood's Blatant Copies of Hollywood Movie Posters

The press conference was scheduled to run for 30 minutes, but ended up lasting more than two hours, as Obokata, age 30, sometimes struggled to answer questions from hostile members of the media. TV networks extended news programs and shifted schedules to continue coverage.

TV Tokyo, famous for ignoring major news events and sticking with its regular schedule, went ahead with an episode of Law & Order, followed by straight-to-video Canadian action movie Recoil.

The Wednesday lunchtime event attracted more than 1.26 million to a live Ustream broadcast and 550,000 viewers to a live stream on Nico Nico Douga, a Japanese online video platform that allows users to post comments on-screen in real time. More than 690,000 comments were posted during the course of the press conference.

Around 112,500 Tweets relating to the events at the press conference were sent in two hours.

STORY: Japan's Fuji TV Links With Crunchyroll to Stream Dramas in the U.S.

Obokata, who had been hailed as a pioneer in Japan's male-dominated scientific world, was hospitalized on Monday suffering from stress, and faced the media against the advice of doctors.

In January, Obokata was hailed as a scientific star in the local media after what appeared to be groundbreaking stem cell research by a team she led was published in British scientific journal Nature. Stories about the researcher, who spent two years at Harvard, focused on her cute apron worn in place of a traditional lab coat, and how she had persevered in the face of adversity.

More:
Press Conference for Researcher Accused of Fraud Becomes TV Phenomenon in Japan

Family doctor a womans ticket for coming home

Ingrid Steppan with Dr. Harry Atkins

image credit: For the Townsman

Trying to find a family doctor isn't a new challenge for people living in rural communities, but for Ingrid Steppan, it is the ticket for coming home.

Steppan is currently in Ottawa recovering from a stem-cell transplant after a four-year battle with an extremely rare disease. Though she has needed specialized treatment that required her to seek care in Ottawa, she is hopeful she can return home to continue her recovery.

However, she needs access to a family doctor to supervise her condition in order to make the move back to Cranbrook, according to her daughter Kyla Beauchamp.

Steppan has been battling stiff-person syndrome a disease with symptoms including convulsions, muscle rigidity and impaired mobility but a new treatment has dramatically improved her condition.

After symptoms began in 2008, she was told by doctors that there was no cure and that she would probably die. She bought a house in Saskatchewan to spend the remaining time she had left closer to extended family.

While in Saskatchewan, another doctor convinced her to seek out more specialized treatment in Ottawa. There, she met Dr. Harry Atkins, a bone-marrow transplant specialist with the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, who performed a autologous stem-cell transplant, along with a group of other specialists.

The operation, which has traditionally been used to treat leukaemia, involves purifying blood-forming stem cells and reintroducing them into the body after knocking out the immune system.

Atkins has performed two similar operations on two other patients, with both those cases going into remission.

Continued here:
Family doctor a womans ticket for coming home

Vast Majority of Life-Saving Cord Blood Sits Unused

High costs keep patients from using stem cells harvested from umbilical cords

Scientists are studying ways to treat HIV, cerebral palsy and other diseases using umbilical cord blood, although little of the collected blood will actually be used. Credit:Banc de Sang via flickr

Youd think doctors and patients would be clamoring for cells so versatile they could help reboot a body suffering from everything from leukemia to diabetes. But a new report shows that an important source of these stem cellsdiscarded umbilical cordsis rarely used because of high costs and the risk of failure.

Stem cells drawn from newborns umbilical cord blood are sometimes used to treat medical conditions, especially bone and blood cancers like multiple myeloma or lymphoma by replacing dysfunctional blood-producing cells in bone marrow. Generally the diseased cells are destroyed with chemotherapy and irradiation. Then new stem cells are transplanted into the patient to restore function. Cord blood stem cells are an alternative to bone marrow transplants and peripheral blood transplants, in which stem cells are gathered from the blood stream. Cord blood tends to integrate better with the body and it is easier to find a suitable donor than the alternatives.

Yet less than 3 percent of cord blood collected in the U.S. is ever used whereas the rest sits uselessly in blood banks, according to a recent report in Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News. Immunologist Enal Razvi is author of the report and managing director of Select Biosciences, a biotechnology consulting agency. Razvi found that public cord blood banks, which store donated frozen units for transplants as needed, have only a 1 to 3 percent turnover annually. Most of their inventory sits unused year after year. For example, at Community Blood Services in New Jersey, patients have only used 278 of its 13,000 cords since it opened in 1996, according to business development director Misty Marchioni. Usage is even lower at private cord blood banks, which charge clients thousands of dollars to store a cord in the event a family member one day needs it.

Unlike bone marrow, the main alternative stem cell source, cells transplanted from cord blood carry little risk of graft-versus-host disease, a deadly condition in which the body rejects a transplant. Scientists believe this is because a babys immune system is closer to a blank slate, so their stem cells can integrate with the patients body more easily. But cord blood transplants also take longer to start working, requiring longer hospital stays and upping the bill. Due to storage and testing costs, the cords themselves also get pricy. The cost of the cord is prohibitively high, Razvi explains. Each unit of cord blood costs between $35,000 and $40,000 and most adults require two units for a successful transplant. Insurance companies will generally pay a set amount for a stem cell transplant regardless of where the cells come from. The price tag on a cord blood transplant can run up to $300,000, which may not be fully covered.

Cord blood stem cell transplants also have a higher failure rate than other transplant methods. If the transplant fails, it leaves patients with a compromised immune system in addition to their original disease and medical bills. Because the preparation for transplant includes wiping out the patients original bone marrow, the entire body has to be repopulated with stem cells able to replace it. There are not many stem cells in each cord. Compared with bone marrow or peripheral blood there is a greater chance that there will not be enough stem cells that actually implant and begin producing blood and bone marrow. Its like spreading a small amount of seeds in a big garden, says Mitchell Horwitz, who teaches cell therapy at Duke University Medical Center. Sometimes it just doesnt take.

Martin Smithmyer, chief executive of the private bank Americord, claims that more clients will eventually use their cords, especially as more applications are found for cord blood stem cells. But some scientists disagree. Steven Joffe, a professor of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, says that many treatments cannot be done with a patients own stem cells because genetic diseases would already be present in the cord blood and that bone marrow might be a better option for relatives. The likelihood they are ever going to use that product is vanishingly small, he says.

Despite the low usage, advocates say cord blood programs have been crucial in improving transplant options for racial minorities, because it can be hard to find a bone marrow match for some groups. Cord blood does not need to match the patient as perfectly as bone marrow. This has transformed the treatment of minority patients, says Andromachi Scaradavou, medical director of the National Cord Blood Program, a public bank based in New York City. In the past we didnt have good donors to offer them. Community Blood Servicess Marchioni also maintains that cord blood is a good emergency option, because finding a compatible bone marrow or peripheral blood donor can take months or years. If you need a transplant quickly, she says, its easy to get cord blood off of a shelf.

Still, experts are working on more efficient ways of ensuring widespread availability of cord blood without having so much of it sit forever unused. Researchers are also continuing to look for ways to improve transplant success and to increase the number of stem cells obtained from each cord, potentially bringing down costs and making cord blood transplants feasible for more patients. If the cost could be lowered, Scaradavou says, it would help a lot of patients get the treatment they need.

Read more from the original source:
Vast Majority of Life-Saving Cord Blood Sits Unused

Harvard researchers have successfully created human pain in a petri dish

Its not easy to develop new treatments for a disease. In fact, many of the things doctors try never make it past the early stages. This kind of trial and error takes time, but sometimes patients dont have time to wait around for the next big breakthrough. Thats why having a model for safely studying the human body is ideal. You can do a lot of things to a petri dish that you couldnt do to a living, breathing human, and now that petri dish can feel pain. Researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) have created pain sensing neurons outside the human body.

This recently published studyis the culmination of years of intensive research. The project originally began with embryonic stem cells derived from human embryos. These cells are undifferentiated, meaning they have the potential to become any cell type in the body (often called pluripotent). However, the team has issues getting these cells through all the developmental stages to become adult neurons. Just when all seemed lost, there was a breakthrough in stem cell research. A different team developed induced pluripotent stem cells (resulting in a 2012 Nobel Prize), which is just what the HSCI project needed.

An induced pluripotent stem cell begins as a regular skin cell called a fibroblast. By manipulating the cell, researchers can rewind genetic time to make it into a stem cell, then allow it to develop into a completely different cell type. This is how the HSCI team finally found success. Using fibroblasts from mice and humans, the team evaluated all the developmental steps involved to make their pain sensing neurons. The key was the discovery of new transcription factors that cause cells to produce different proteinsessentially flipping on different parts of the genome that make it a neuron.

The neurons created by the HSCI researchers behave just like real human cells that developed the old fashioned way. They can detect the acute pain associated with stubbing your toe or being pricked by a needle, but more importantly, they also pick up on more subtle signals as with chronic pain or inflammation. This is of particular importance in pain disorders because everyone experiences pain differently and theres only so much a physical examination of the nervous system will tell you.

Going with induced pluripotent stem cells wasnt just a way to reach the goal line. This also makes the resulting model more useful. Patients with chronic neuropathic pain donated fibroblastsfor this study, and the neurons created from those cells ended up with the same neuropathies and hypersensitivity seen in the patients own neurons. So not only do you have a piece of the human nervous system in a dish, you have a model of disease in a real person.

Other teams are sure to begin duplicating this research to better understand human disease, and it will be invaluable to analyze pain sensing neurons outside the body. After all, a flesh and blood person will only put up with so much poking and prodding.

Now read:The 3D printed living bandage that could revolutionize skin grafts

Follow this link:
Harvard researchers have successfully created human pain in a petri dish

Stem cell failure 'led to children's deaths' at Great Ormond Street

preservation laboratory, where stem cells were kept for use in transplants in children whose bone marrow has been damaged during chemotherapy.

Concerns were first raised when Sophie Ryan-Palmer, 12, who had acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, failed to make progress after her transplant in June 2013, which involved using a donors stem cells rather than her own.

She had been diagnosed with leukaemia at the age of two and had undergone three previous transplants. She began fundraising for cancer charities when she was six.

By October last year the hospital had identified that a higher than usual proportion of eight children who had undergone stem cell transplantation between March and August had suffered what doctors call delayed engraftment. But by the time it stopped freezing stem cells on site at its base in Bloomsbury, central London, and launched an investigation, three of the eight had died.

Ryan Loughran, aged 13 months, from Bournemouth, died on July 10. Sophie, from Sunbury in Middlesex, followed on July 17. Katie Joyce, from Hertfordshire, died on October 6. A fourth patient, Muhanna al-Hayany, aged five, died in August this year. He had come from Kuwait to have the treatment. Following the deaths it was discovered that the method used to freeze the stem cells had inexplicably stopped working and that, although still alive, the cells were unable to mature properly.

At the inquest, Katie Beattie, the barrister representing Katie Joyces family, questioned whether the girls transplant in August should have been suspended, knowing Sophie and Ryan had died the previous month. Great Ormond Street went ahead even though there was plenty of time to stop it, she said.

Doctors from the hospital told St Pancras coroners court that they regretted not halting transplants sooner and Katies life might have been saved if they had. But they said they believed they were doing the right thing by continuing with the transplants because cancer doesnt wait.

Great Ormond Street said it has since overhauled its procedures to prevent further incidents, but is still investigating why the freezing process stopped working.

A spokesman said: Before giving our patients any frozen cells we carried out tests, which are standard across most laboratories in the UK, to ensure they were alive and viable. All of the samples passed these tests, so there was nothing to suggest there was a problem at this stage.

The coroner, Mary Hassell, is expected to deliver verdicts on all four deaths on Tuesday.

Continued here:
Stem cell failure 'led to children's deaths' at Great Ormond Street

4 strategies doctors are using to cure the blind

Roughly 40 million people across the world are blind and, for a long time, most forms of blindness were permanent conditions. The same situation held for degenerative diseases that affect eyesight.

But recently, scientists have made some surprising headway into changing that. New treatments like gene therapy, stem-cell therapy, and even bionic implants are already starting to restore some patients' sight. And these technologies are expected to keep improving in the future.

Here's a look at all the ways scientists have tried and, increasingly, succeeded in curing the blind:

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Daniel Burke/AP Photo This undated image released by the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia shows doctors Albert Maguire, left, along with wife Jean Bennett at the University of Pennsylvania. The two are part of two teams of scientists in the United States and Britain that are using gene therapy to dramatically improve vision in four patients with an inherited eye disease that causes blindness in children.

Tweaking genes is one promising route to treat blindness.

In 2011, a group led by Jean Bennett of the University of Pennsylvania used gene therapy to treat some patients with a congenital blindness disorder. The patients in question all hada hereditary disease called Leber congenital amaurosis, and they all had mutations in their RPE65 gene.The patients were each given a non-harmful virus that could sneak a healthy copy of the gene into their eye cells. Six out of 12 showed improvement.

Then, in 2014, researchers led by Robert MacLaren, an ophthalmologist at Oxford,presented some promising early results of a very smallstudy of six patients at various stages of a rare, inherited disease calledchoroideremia. These patients all lacked a protein calledREP1, which leads to progressive vision loss. Doctors took the gene forREP1, put it in a non-harmful virus, and injected that virus into the patients' eyes. All reported some improvement in their sight.

"One patient, who before his treatment could not read any lines on an eye chart with his most affected eye, was able to read three lines with that eye following his treatment,"wrote Susan Young Rojahn at MIT Technology Review.

Commercial treatments are still a ways off, however. Researchers first have to continue to monitor these patients to see what happens to their vision over the long term (and check for side effects).The FDA currently recommends 15 years of safety monitoring before trying to get a specific gene therapy approved.

2) Stem cells

Go here to read the rest:
4 strategies doctors are using to cure the blind