Stem Cell Clinic

Top Beverly Hills Orthopedic Doctor, Dr. Raj, Now Offering Platelet Rich Plasma Therapy for All Sports Injuries and …

By Stem Cell Treatment

Beverly Hills, California (PRWEB) October 13, 2014

Top Beverly Hills and LA orthopedic doctor, Dr. Raj, is now offering platelet rich plasma therapy for sports injuries and all types of degenerative arthritis. The treatment option has recently been added to Dr. Raj's regenerative medicine therapies such as bone marrow derived stem cell procedures and amniotic derived stem cell therapies. Call (310) 247-0466 for more information and scheduling.

Platelet Rich Plasma Therapy, known as PRP for short, has been increasing in popularity due to the success shown in several research studies. There was a recent study out of HSS showing amazing outcomes for degenerative knee arthritis, with preservation of cartilage and significant pain relief. Results with rotator cuff tendonitis, tennis elbow, plantar fasciitis and knee/achilles tendonitis have also been excellent as well.

Athletes in all types of sports have benefited from PRP therapy including golf, tennis, basketball, football, baseball and more. Whether or not an athlete is professional or amateur, the PRP treatment can be instrumental in helping patients avoid surgery and get back on the field quickly.

PRP therapy at Beverly Hills Orthopedic Institute involves an outpatient procedure that begins with a simple blood draw from the patient's arm of approximately 30 to 60 millileters. The blood is placed into a centrifuge and spun rapidly for 15-20 minutes. The platelets become concentrated in the middle layer, and this is what is utilized for the platelet rich plasma therapy in Beverly Hills.

The PRP therapy is injected under sterile conditions into the painful area. Results are typically seen over the ensuing weeks. Along with the PRP treatment, Dr. Raj also offers bone marrow and amniotic stem cell therapy. Typically, the best regenerative medicine therapy option is decided upon in conjunction with the patient.

Dr. Raj is a Double Board Certified Beverly Hills and Los Angeles orthopedic surgeon, who is also an ABC News Medical Correspondent along with a WebMD expert. For those interested in PRP and stem cell therapy Beverly Hills trusts, call (310) 247-0466.

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Top Beverly Hills Orthopedic Doctor, Dr. Raj, Now Offering Platelet Rich Plasma Therapy for All Sports Injuries and ...

Stem-Cell Researchers Make Breakthrough in Type 1 Diabetes Treatment

By Stem Cell Treatment

TIME Health Research Stem-Cell Researchers Make Breakthrough in Type 1 Diabetes Treatment "We are now just one pre-clinical step away from the finish line"

Updated Oct. 13

Researchers have made a major breakthrough in finding a treatment for type 1 diabetes, Harvard University announced Thursday.

For the first time, scientists were able to create insulin-producing beta cells using human embryonic stem cells, at a volume required for cell transplantation and pharmaceutical use. Type 1 is the variety of the metabolic disease that can be inherited and which is likely due to an underlying autoimmune condition in which the body destroys the beta cells that produce insulin, a hormone that regulates glucose and helps the body process sugar. (Unlike type-2 diabetes, there is no way to prevent type-1.)

We are now just one pre-clinical step away from the finish line, said Doug Melton, who led the research and who has worked toward finding a cure for diabetes since his son was diagnosed as an infant 23 years ago.

That final step is finding a way to protect the 150 million beta cells needed to for transplant in the treatment of each patient from their immune systems, which automatically attack those cells. Melton is working with other researchers to develop a device for such protection. Tests of a device in mice have so far protected insulin-producing beta cells for several months.

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Stem-Cell Researchers Make Breakthrough in Type 1 Diabetes Treatment

Neural stem cell overgrowth, autism-like behavior linked, mice study suggests

By Stem Cell Medicine

People with autism spectrum disorder often experience a period of accelerated brain growth after birth. No one knows why, or whether the change is linked to any specific behavioral changes.

A new study by UCLA researchers demonstrates how, in pregnant mice, inflammation, a first line defense of the immune system, can trigger an excessive division of neural stem cells that can cause "overgrowth" in the offspring's brain.

The paper appears Oct. 9 in the online edition of the journal Stem Cell Reports.

"We have now shown that one way maternal inflammation could result in larger brains and, ultimately, autistic behavior, is through the activation of the neural stem cells that reside in the brain of all developing and adult mammals," said Dr. Harley Kornblum, the paper's senior author and a director of the Neural Stem Cell Research Center at UCLA's Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior.

In the study, the researchers mimicked environmental factors that could activate the immune system -- such as an infection or an autoimmune disorder -- by injecting a pregnant mouse with a very low dose of lipopolysaccharide, a toxin found in E. coli bacteria. The researchers discovered the toxin caused an excessive production of neural stem cells and enlarged the offspring's' brains.

Neural stem cells become the major types of cells in the brain, including the neurons that process and transmit information and the glial cells that support and protect them.

Notably, the researchers found that mice with enlarged brains also displayed behaviors like those associated with autism in humans. For example, they were less likely to vocalize when they were separated from their mother as pups, were less likely to show interest in interacting with other mice, showed increased levels of anxiety and were more likely to engage in repetitive behaviors like excessive grooming.

Kornblum, who also is a professor of psychiatry, pharmacology and pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, said there are many environmental factors that can activate a pregnant woman's immune system.

"Although it's known that maternal inflammation is a risk factor for some neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, it's not thought to directly cause them," he said. He noted that autism is clearly a highly heritable disorder, but other, non-genetic factors clearly play a role.

The researchers also found evidence that the brain growth triggered by the immune reaction was even greater in mice with a specific genetic mutation -- a lack of one copy of a tumor suppressor gene called phosphatase and tensin homolog, or PTEN. The PTEN protein normally helps prevent cells from growing and dividing too rapidly. In humans, having an abnormal version of the PTEN gene leads to very large head size or macrocephaly, a condition that also is associated with a high risk for autism.

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Neural stem cell overgrowth, autism-like behavior linked, mice study suggests

Stem Cell Breakthrough Brings Researchers One Step Closer To Type 1 Diabetes Cure

By Stem Cell Medicine

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

Researchers writing in the October 9 edition of the journal Cell report they have for the first time successfully converted human embryonic stem cells into insulin-producing beta cells equivalent in nearly every way to regular, normally-functioning beta cells.

The discovery, which was the work of a team led by Douglas Melton of the Harvard University Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, is being hailed as a breakthrough in the search for an effective way to treat type 1 diabetes a disease which affects an estimated three million Americans each year.

According to BBC News online health editor James Gallagher, Melton and his colleagues were able to produce hundreds of millions of the cells in their laboratory. Furthermore, their tests on mice demonstrated that the cells could treat the disease, which is caused when the immune system begins destroying the cells that are responsible for controlling blood glucose levels.

Beta cells in the pancreas pump out insulin to bring down blood sugar levels, Gallagher said. But the bodys own immune system can turn against the beta cells, destroying them and leaving people with a potentially fatal disease because they cannot regulate their blood sugar levels. It is different to the far more common type 2 diabetes.

Melton, who started his search for a cure for type 1 diabetes when his infant son Sam was diagnosed with the disease 23 years ago, said that he hopes to start human transplantation trials using the cells within a few years time. The professor, whose daughter also has type 1 diabetes, said in a statement that his team is now just one preclinical step away from the finish line.

The breakthrough comes after 15 years of seeking a bulk recipe for making beta cells, which sense the level of sugar in the blood and keep it in a healthy range by making precise amounts of insulin, said John Lauerman of Bloomberg Businessweek. He added that the technique, which begins with human stem cells, which have the ability to become any type of tissue or organ, is an important step toward understanding and treating diabetes.

This is part of the holy grail of regenerative medicine or tissue engineering, trying to make an unlimited source of cells or tissues or organs that you can use in a patient to correct a disease, added Albert Hwa, director of discovery science at JDRF, a New York-based type 1 diabetes research group that funded Meltons work.

The Harvard researcher explained to Lauerman that their research has led to the development of a six-step recipe for making mature, insulin-secreting beta cells that takes 30 days. He added that laboratories will be able to use the cells to test drugs to treat type 1 diabetes, as well as to gain new insight as to how the disease originally occurs.

In addition, since the researchers successfully manufactured the millions of beta cells required for transplantation, Telegraph Science Editor Sarah Knapton said that it could spell the end of daily insulin injections for the 400,000 type 1 diabetes patients in the UK and the over 30,000 Americans newly diagnosed with the disease each year.

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Stem Cell Breakthrough Brings Researchers One Step Closer To Type 1 Diabetes Cure

Successful stem cell treatment in mice could one day help cure type 1 diabetes

By Stem Cell Treatment

On Thursday important research on stem cells and type 1 diabetes, done by professor Doug Melton, was published in the journal Cell. The results of this study have both wide and very personal implications.

Two decades ago, National Geographic reported, the current Harvard professor and stem cell researcher vowed to cure type 1 diabetes. His infant son had just been diagnosed with the disease. Professor Meltons efforts redoubled when, at age 14, his daughter was also diagnosed with the autoimmune disorder.

With the publication of this research he may have taken a step towards helping cure this disease. According to National Geographic, Melton has created a virtually unlimited supply of the cells that are missing in people with type 1 diabetes.

Type 1 diabetes, which is often diagnosed in children or young adults, affects around three million Americans. Type 1 diabetes is a chronic condition in which the pancreas produces little or no insulin, a hormone needed to allow sugar (glucose) to enter cells to produce energy, according to Mayo Clinic. This is due to the fact that the bodys immune system attacks beta cells in the pancreas, which control insulin production.

Professor Melton, along with a whole host of graduate students over 15 years, used stem cells to create replacement beta cells for mice, and human testing will begin in the next two years with government approval.

National Geographic explains:

The researchers started with cells taken from a days-old human embryo. At that point, the cells are capable of turning into any cell in the body. Others have tried to make beta cells from these human embryonic stem cells, but never fully succeeded. Meltons team spent a decade testing hundreds of combinations before finally coaxing the stem cells into becoming beta cells.

The procedure can also be done with non-embryonic stem cells, to avoid the sometimes controversial destruction of an embryo. Adult cells are turned back into stem cells and then into beta cells.

The next step is to create a protective coating for these cells so that the bodys immune system does not attack the beta cells.

MIT professor Daniel Anderson is helping Melton with a method of protection, which would work like an inkjet printer coating the cells with algae that prevents them from being attacked. This device would be implanted into patients. Two other companies are also working on strategies to coat the beta cells.

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Successful stem cell treatment in mice could one day help cure type 1 diabetes

Stem Cell Success Raises Hopes of Type 1 Diabetes Cure

By Stem Cell Treatment

By Alan Mozes HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Oct. 9, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- In what may be a step toward a cure for type 1 diabetes, researchers say they've developed a large-scale method for turning human embryonic stem cells into fully functioning beta cells capable of producing insulin.

Type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disorder affecting upwards of 3 million Americans, is characterized by the body's destruction of its own insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells. Without insulin, which is needed to convert food into energy, blood sugar regulation is dangerously out of whack.

Currently, people with type 1 diabetes need daily insulin injections to maintain blood sugar control. But "insulin injections don't cure the disease," said study co-author Douglas Melton, of Harvard University. Patients are vulnerable to metabolic swings that can bring about serious complications, including blindness and limb loss, he said at a teleconference this week.

"We wanted to replace insulin injections using nature's own solution, being the pancreatic beta cell," Melton said. Now, "we are reporting the ability to make hundreds of millions of these cells," he added.

Melton ultimately envisions a credit card-sized package of beta cells that can be safely transplanted into a diabetes patient and left in place for a year or more, before needing to be replaced.

But between then and now, human trials must be launched, a venture Melton thinks could begin in about three years.

If that research pans out, the Harvard team's results may prove to be a benchmark in the multi-decade effort to deliver on the promise of stem cell research as a way to access new treatments for all sorts of diseases.

Melton, co-director of the Stem Cell Institute at Harvard, described his work as a "personal quest," given that he has two children with type 1 diabetes.

He and his colleagues outlined the recent results in the Oct. 9 issue of Cell.

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Stem Cell Success Raises Hopes of Type 1 Diabetes Cure

Harvard researchers grow insulin-producing stem cells

By Stem Cell Doctors

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 9 (UPI) -- Patients with type 1 diabetes lack the insulin-producing cells that keep blood glucose levels in check. Currently, these patients must use insulin pumps or daily hormone injections to keep levels stable.

But in a recent breakthrough in laboratories at Harvard University, researchers came upon a new technique for transforming stem cells into pancreatic beta cells that respond to glucose levels and produce insulin when necessary. The breakthrough could lead to new less invasive, more hands-off treatment for diabetes.

Remarkably, the new technique -- a complex process which involves turning on and off specific genes and takes about 40 days and six precise steps to complete -- was replicated not only on embryonic stem cells but also on human skin cells reprogrammed to act in a stem-cell-like manner. This revelation allows scientists to produce millions of insulin-producing cells while avoiding the ethical dilemmas attached to traditional stem cell research.

Previous attempts to convert stem cells into insulin-producers have proven moderately successful, but these cells mostly produced insulin at will, unable to adjust their output on the fly. The latest techniques -- developed by Douglas Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and his research colleagues -- produce insulin cells that react to glucose spikes by upping production, and lowering insulin output when there's not excess sugar to break down.

The breakthrough has already shown significant promise when used on lab mice. Diabetic mice who received a transplant of the stem cell beta cells had improved blood sugar levels, and were shown to be capable of breaking down sugar.

"We can cure their diabetes right away -- in less than 10 days," Melton told NPR. "This finding provides a kind of unprecedented cell source that could be used for cell transplantation therapy in diabetes."

But there's still one major issue. For reasons doctors still don't understand, the beta cells in humans with diabetes are attacked by the body's immune system. Researchers like Melton still have to figure out a way to protect the new beta cells from being killed -- otherwise the breakthrough won't become anything more than another short-term solution.

"It's taken me 10 to 15 years to get to this point, and I consider this a major step forward," Melton told TIME. "But the longer term plan includes finding ways to protect these cells, and we haven't solved that problem yet."

2014 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.

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Harvard researchers grow insulin-producing stem cells

UCLA study finds link between neural stem cell overgrowth and autism-like behavior in mice

By Stem Cell Medicine

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

9-Oct-2014

Contact: Mark Wheeler mwheeler@mednet.ucla.edu 310-794-2265 University of California - Los Angeles @uclanewsroom

People with autism spectrum disorder often experience a period of accelerated brain growth after birth. No one knows why, or whether the change is linked to any specific behavioral changes.

A new study by UCLA researchers demonstrates how, in pregnant mice, inflammation, a first line defense of the immune system, can trigger an excessive division of neural stem cells that can cause "overgrowth" in the offspring's brain.

The paper appears Oct. 9 in the online edition of the journal Stem Cell Reports.

"We have now shown that one way maternal inflammation could result in larger brains and, ultimately, autistic behavior, is through the activation of the neural stem cells that reside in the brain of all developing and adult mammals," said Dr. Harley Kornblum, the paper's senior author and a director of the Neural Stem Cell Research Center at UCLA's Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior.

In the study, the researchers mimicked environmental factors that could activate the immune system such as an infection or an autoimmune disorder by injecting a pregnant mouse with a very low dose of lipopolysaccharide, a toxin found in E. coli bacteria. The researchers discovered the toxin caused an excessive production of neural stem cells and enlarged the offspring's' brains.

Neural stem cells become the major types of cells in the brain, including the neurons that process and transmit information and the glial cells that support and protect them.

Notably, the researchers found that mice with enlarged brains also displayed behaviors like those associated with autism in humans. For example, they were less likely to vocalize when they were separated from their mother as pups, were less likely to show interest in interacting with other mice, showed increased levels of anxiety and were more likely to engage in repetitive behaviors like excessive grooming.

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UCLA study finds link between neural stem cell overgrowth and autism-like behavior in mice

UCSF, UC Berkeley scientists join forces in new Glenn Center for Aging Research

By Stem Cell Medical Center

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

8-Oct-2014

Contact: Pete Farley peter.farley@ucsf.edu 415-502-6397 University of California - San Francisco @ucsf

Researchers at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley have teamed up to create an innovative, integrated center for research on neurodegenerative diseases. Supported by a $3 million grant from the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research, the new center aims to pave the way to developing novel treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease by investigating the many ways that proteins can malfunction within cells.

In particular, the center's work will focus on a type of protein called the prion, which displays characteristics of infectious agents and is responsible for "mad cow" disease and a related, devastating human brain disorder known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).

Stanley B. Prusiner, MD, UCSF professor of neurology, and Andrew Dillin, PhD, the Thomas and Stacey Siebel Distinguished Chair of Stem Cell Research at UCB and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, will codirect the new inter-campus program, known as the Paul F. Glenn Center for Aging Research. Ten additional researchers from UCSF and 13 from UCB will contribute to the center's work, with more recruitments to come.

"The Glenn Foundation is pleased to welcome UCSF and UC Berkeley to the Glenn Consortium for Research in Aging," said Mark R. Collins, president of the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research, which is based in Santa Barbara, Calif. "I had the pleasure to work with Dr. Dillin previously, when he led the Glenn Center for Aging Research at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences prior to moving to UC Berkeley. I've known Dr. Prusiner and followed his work for many years and it is a propitious time for us to assist these two leaders in biological research to discover treatments for age-related neurodegenerative disease."

In 1997, Prusiner, director of UCSF's Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of prions, which he demonstrated were an abnormally folded form of normal proteins that set up a template for replication in the brain. According to Prusiner, recent work provides persuasive evidence that, in addition to mad cow disease and CJD, many common neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, are caused by abnormally folded forms of normal proteins functioning as prions.

Dillin agrees that prions are ideal targets for research and novel therapeutic approaches. "The Glenn Foundation's confidence to support our hypothesis is greatly appreciated," he said, adding that the combination of UCSF's medical mission with the strong basic research traditions of both campuses will make the new Glenn Center's work uniquely powerful.

Proteins are crucial for many of a cell's normal functions, but as people age, cells' quality-control mechanisms become less efficient. Normally these systems ensure that proteins are properly formed, and target badly formed or "worn-out" proteins for destruction. But as the effectiveness of cellular quality control wanes over time, improperly formed proteins, including prions, can begin to accumulate.

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UCSF, UC Berkeley scientists join forces in new Glenn Center for Aging Research

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