Stem Cell Clinic

Researchers take broad look at stem cells – Science Daily

Researchers take broad look at stem cells Science Daily The article, "Fat and Furious: Harnessing the Full Potential of Adipose-Derived Stromal Vascular Fraction," is a review of the various types of stem cells found in humans and how they can be used in medical applications. The researchers emphasized the ... and more »

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Researchers take broad look at stem cells - Science Daily

Penn State and the University of Michigan collaborate on cancer cell and infection research – The Daily Collegian Online

As Penn State students worked to raise money for childhood cancer research, two researchers at Penn State worked on a study determining the best treatment methods for cancer and infections.

Dr. Andrew Read and Elsa Hansen, from Penn State, and Dr. Robert Woods, from the University of Michigan, all co-authored a paper on the research. The main goal of their research was to determine whether containment or aggressive medication was the best method of treatment for cancer or a serious infection. The research hinges on delaying drug resistance in cells, which would make the problem much harder to treat.

When containing cancer or an infection, just enough drug is used to keep the cancer or infection from spreading too much beyond its original area.

Elsa Hansen, a research associate at Penn State and co-author of the study, explained why just containment may sometimes be a surprisingly good treatment.

Health care providers and researchers are starting to question whether the traditional approach of aggressively treating a cancer or infection is really the best option for a patient, Hansen said via email.

Using a containment strategy may seem counterintuitive, but the idea is to leverage the fact that drug sensitive cells can competitively suppress the expansion of drug resistant cells, Hansen said, mentioning that drugs without immunity to medicine can block the spread of resistant cancer cells or infection. A milder form of treatment is used to control medicine-sensitive cells, which then control the resistant cells.

In these situations, aggressively treating the patient with a drug may cause the patients cancer or infection to develop an immunity to the treatment. In the case of infections, the containment method leads to the bodys immune system fighting off the resistant cells. In the case of cancer, it slows the spread as long as possible.

This research proves that containment of cells is a viable option those in the medical field should consider more often. However, the research also highlighted that there are situations where aggressive treatment is the preferred choice. The traditional approach to treating cancer and infections is still viable when containment will not improve the situation.

As resistance is involved in most cancer and infection associated deaths, Hansen believes researching new drugs and novel forms of treatment is crucial. However, she stated that its also important to figure out how to extend the life of the drugs we have, part of the teams research goal.

Collaborating with a clinical lecturer from the University of Michigan proved paramount to the success of the research. Dr. Robert Woods, co-author of the study and a specialist in internal medicine, infectious diseases at the University of Michigan, had unique skills to contribute to the research. As an expert in putting research into use in the medical field, particularly in the hospital on the universitys campus, Woods had the unique opportunity to see the research happening in his workplace.

Its sometimes hard to translate evolutionary concepts into clinical use, Woods said.

The combination of his practical experience with treating cancer and infection cells combined with the mathematical and theoretical work of Hansen and Read led to the success of this research, Woods added.

He focused on the physical aspects of the research instead of the theoretical aspects as someone who works in the hospital. Here, the research might have an effect by changing the way doctors treat cancer or infections.

Both Hansen and Woods said they found the collaborative research to be a positive experience, as the unique combination of skills and resources at the two universities made the research such a success.

With today's technology, I think long distance collaborations can work really well, Hansen said. Increasing ease of communication across universities can open up the opportunity for more collaborations such as this study.

This research has been highly regarded by Reads and Hansens colleagues at Penn State.

This is really important research because it points to a course of treatment that is not just the hell and fury approach, hit the cancer with all we have, Dr. David Hughes, an assistant professor of entomology and biology at Penn State said. These models will considerably aid in better decision making.

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Penn State and the University of Michigan collaborate on cancer cell and infection research - The Daily Collegian Online

‘Small Town Throwdown’ will benefit Zach Standen – Easton Courier

Bobby Paultauf and his band will play the throwdown.

Those in the Redding, Easton area are probably aware of what happened to Joel Barlow High School student Zach Standen in the summer of 2016. Zach was in a devastating auto accident that left him partially paralyzed.

He needs hope and support from as many people as possible. He needs countless medical procedures in order to gain movement to his legs again through stem cell treatment due to a tragic car accident that made him paralyzed.

To help support Standens recovery, local musicians Bobby Paltauf, of the Bobby Paltauf Band, and Grayson Hugh, of Grayson Hugh & the Moon Hawks, will play a benefit show on Saturday, March 11 at the Fairfield Theater Company.

The family has started a GoFundMe account where people are able to donate to this expensive treatment. Lets all get together and help him walk again, Paultaufs mother, Tiffany, wrote in a press release.

Bobby Paltauf is a senior at Joel Barlow High School, where Standen goes.

Lets all get together and support local live music, especially where it benefits the hope of Zach being able to walk again, his mother wrote.

For the concert benefitting Standen, more information can be found on The Bobby Paltauf Band page on Facebook, and tickets are available at http://www.fairfieldtheatre.org.

Standen may be helped by stem cell medical treatments that can be administered in Panama.

The Standen family is in discussions and communication with the Cell Medicine Institute in that country and are pursuing this line of treatment for the young man, who is paralyzed.

We have done much research into stem cell therapy for spinal cord injuries here in the U.S. and Canada, and there just are no clinical trials or clinics that have the experience and track record like this one, the family said in a recent letter. Cell Medicine has been doing this specific treatment since 2006 and has a 60% to 70% success rate of some kind of improvements in most patients within a year.

Each procedure costs $37,200, which includes all medical procedures and ancillary needs. This is not covered by medical insurance.

The family is hoping everyone reading this could go to his GoFundMe page and donate $25, to help Zachs recovery.

To donate, visit: https://www.gofundme.com/stem-cell-therapy-for-zach-standen.

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'Small Town Throwdown' will benefit Zach Standen - Easton Courier

Scientists identify chain reaction that shields breast cancer stem cells from chemotherapy – Medical Xpress

February 22, 2017 Micrograph showing a lymph node invaded by ductal breast carcinoma, with extension of the tumour beyond the lymph node. Credit: Nephron/Wikipedia

Working with human breast cancer cells and mice, researchers at Johns Hopkins say they have identified a biochemical pathway that triggers the regrowth of breast cancer stem cells after chemotherapy.

The regrowth of cancer stem cells is responsible for the drug resistance that develops in many breast tumors and the reason that for many patients, the benefits of chemo are short-lived. Cancer recurrence after chemotherapy is frequently fatal.

"Breast cancer stem cells pose a serious problem for therapy," says lead study investigator Gregg Semenza, M.D., Ph.D., the C. Michael Armstrong Professor of Medicine, director of the Vascular Biology Program at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering and a member of the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. "These are the cells that can break away from a tumor and metastasize; these are the cells you most want to kill with chemotherapy. Paradoxically, though, cancer stem cells are quite resistant to chemotherapy."

Semenza says previous studies have shown that resistance to chemotherapy arises from the hardy nature of cancer stem cells, which are often found in the centers of tumors, where oxygen levels are quite low. Their survival is made possible through proteins known as hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs), which turn on genes that help the cells survive in a low-oxygen environment.

In this new study, described Feb. 21 in Cell Reports, Semenza and his colleagues conducted gene expression analysis of multiple human breast cancer cell lines grown in the laboratory after exposure to chemotherapy drugs, like carboplatin, which stops tumor growth by damaging cancer cell DNA. The team found that the cancer cells that survived tended to have higher levels of a protein known as glutathione-S-transferase O1, or GSTO1. Experiments showed that HIFs controlled the production of GSTO1 in breast cancer cells when they were exposed to chemotherapy; if HIF activity was blocked in these lab-grown cells, GSTO1 was not produced.

Semenza notes that GSTO1 and related GST proteins are antioxidant enzymes, but GSTO1's role in chemotherapy resistance did not require its antioxidant activity. Instead, following exposure to chemotherapy, GSTO1 binds to a protein called the ryanodine receptor 1, or RYR1, that triggers the release of calcium, which causes a chain reaction that transforms ordinary breast cancer cells into cancer stem cells.

To more directly assess the role of GSTO1 and RYR1 in the breast tumor response to chemotherapy, the researchers injected human breast cancer cells into the mammary gland of mice and then treated the mice with carboplatin after tumors had formed. In addition to using normal breast cancer cells in the experiments, the team also used cancer cells that had been genetically engineered to lack either GSTO1 or RYR1. Loss of either GSTO1 or RYR1, the researchers report, decreased the number of cancer stem cells in the primary tumor, blocked metastasis of cancer cells from the primary tumor to the lungs, decreased the duration of chemotherapy required to induce remission and increased the duration of time after chemotherapy was stopped that the mice remained tumor-free.

Although the study showed that blocking the production of GSTO1 may improve the efficacy of chemotherapy drugs, such as carboplatin, GSTO1 is only one of many proteins that are produced under the control of HIFs in breast cancer cells that have been exposed to chemotherapy. The Semenza lab is working to develop drugs that can block the action of HIFs, with the hope that HIF inhibitors will make chemotherapy more effective.

Explore further: Toughest breast cancer may have met its match

More information: Haiquan Lu et al. Chemotherapy-Induced Ca2+ Release Stimulates Breast Cancer Stem Cell Enrichment, Cell Reports (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2017.02.001

Triple-negative breast cancer is as bad as it sounds. The cells that form these tumors lack three proteins that would make the cancer respond to powerful, customized treatments. Instead, doctors are left with treating these ...

Working with mice, Johns Hopkins researchers report they have identified chemical signals that certain breast cancers use to recruit two types of normal cells needed for the cancers' spread. A description of the findings ...

Working with human breast cancer cells and mice, scientists at The Johns Hopkins University say new experiments explain how certain cancer stem cells thrive in low oxygen conditions. Proliferation of such cells, which tend ...

Chemotherapy is a key part of the standard treatment regimen for triple-negative breast cancer patients whose cancer lacks expression of estrogen and progesterone receptors and the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 ...

Existing chemotherapy approaches treat cancer by targeting cells that are actively multiplying and have a high metabolic rate. However, cancer stem cells can escape this targeting, leading to chemotherapy-resistant cancer ...

Conventional, high-dose chemotherapy treatments can cause the fibroblast cells surrounding tumors to secrete proteins that promote the tumors' recurrence in more aggressive forms, researchers at Taipei Medical University ...

Chemotherapy has long been standard treatment for many cancers, but its clinical benefits can also come with well-documented side effects. Doctors say the challenge is knowing which patients will experience these side effects, ...

Working with human breast cancer cells and mice, researchers at Johns Hopkins say they have identified a biochemical pathway that triggers the regrowth of breast cancer stem cells after chemotherapy.

In order for cancer to spread, malignant cells must break away from a tumor and through the tough netting of extracellular matrix, or ECM, that surrounds it. To fit through the holes in this net, those cancerous cells must ...

How we think and fall in love are controlled by lightning-fast electrochemical signals across synapses, the dynamic spaces between nerve cells. Until now, nobody knew that cancer cells can repurpose tools of neuronal communication ...

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have uncovered a novel genetic mechanism of thyroid cancer, as well as a marker that may predict response to a particular class of drugs, not just in patients ...

Treating multiple myeloma (MM) with myxoma virus (MYXV) eliminated a majority of malignant cells in preclinical studies, report investigators at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) and elsewhere in an article ...

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Scientists identify chain reaction that shields breast cancer stem cells from chemotherapy - Medical Xpress

VetStem Biopharma, Inc., Announces The Opening Of Its GMP Cell Therapy Manufacturing Facility – Laboratory Network

VetStem constructed and validated a state-of-the-art GMP stem cell manufacturing plant at its headquarters laboratory in Poway, California

Poway,CA (PRWEB)- VetStem Biopharma, Inc., announced the opening of its GMP cell therapy manufacturing facility at its headquarters laboratory in Poway, California. Based upon 12 years of knowledge gained by following GTP laboratory guidelines and utilizing the experience of both in-house personnel and consultants, VetStem constructed and validated a state-of-the-art GMP stem cell manufacturing plant. This clean room facility has already produced three registration batches of stem cell product and those batches have been officially released for use in pivotal FDA studies of safety and efficacy.

Carolyn Wrightson, Ph.D., VP of Operations, stated, This facility is the culmination of six years of planning and research, supported by over 12 years of commercial stem cell laboratory operations by VetStems experienced cell therapy team. We believe this is the first dedicated veterinary-specific cell therapy facility in the United States. It will provide all the stem cell products for use in VetStem FDA product development programs. The facility operates under FDA GMP guidelines and is designed to produce commercial products, once approved by the FDA.

Quality is a critical element necessary to bring stem cell therapy into mainstream veterinary practice. VetStem has been committed to quality since its founding and has worked directly with the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine since 2003 to assure our products and services adhere to the strictest guidelines for safety and efficacy, saidBob Harman, DVM, MPVM, CEOof VetStem. VetStem offers tours of this unique facility via large viewing windows in an exterior corridor and veterinarians are amazed at the high tech approach to veterinary cell therapy including the specialized approach to donor selection, disease screening, clean room cell culture and final packaging of the product in specialized cell product vials.

Stem cell therapy is a truly novel and natural approach to treatment of acute and chronic diseases in animals that have few or less efficacious therapeutic options. Using donor derived allogeneic stem cells provides cell therapy in a ready to use format without the need for tissue collection, or processing thus expanding the availability to more animals. VetStem is dedicated to providing affordable stem cell therapy for diseases of dogs, cats and horses, especially in areas of unmet needs, according to Harman.

About VetStem Biopharma VetStem Biopharma is a veterinarian-lead company that was formed in 2002 to bring regenerative medicine to the profession. This privately held biopharmaceutical enterprise, based near San Diego (California), currently offers veterinarians an autologous stem cell processing service (from patients own fat tissue) among other regenerative modalities. With a unique expertise acquired over the past 14 years and 12,000 patients treated by veterinarians for joint, tendon or ligament issues, VetStem has made regenerative medicine applications a therapeutic reality beyond the realm of research. The VetStem team is focused on developing new clinically practical and affordable veterinary solutions that leverage the natural restorative abilities present in all living creatures. The companys stated mission is to extend and enhance the lives of animals by improving the quality of recovery in acute conditions, but also by unlocking ways to slow, stop and ultimately revert the course of chronic diseases. In addition to its own portfolio of patents, VetStem holds exclusive global veterinary licenses to a portfolio of over 70 issued patents in the field of regenerative medicine.

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VetStem Biopharma, Inc., Announces The Opening Of Its GMP Cell Therapy Manufacturing Facility - Laboratory Network