Stem Cell Clinic

Protein synthesis studied in stem cells for the first time

By Stem Cell Medical Center

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A new breakthrough in stem cell research has occurred, thanks to scientists at the Children's Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas.

The researchers claim that protein synthesis - an essential biological process - can be studied in adult stem cells. This is something that scientists have been previously unable to accomplish.

It is believed that many degenerative diseases and some cancers are linked with mutations that affect the process of protein synthesis. But experts have been unable to pinpoint why this happens.

Therefore, the team's discovery is important in improving understanding of protein synthesis and why changes in the process are linked with the development of disease.

The research built on previous work that used a modified antibiotic, called puromycin, to make it possible to see and measure the amount of protein that is being synthesized in the body.

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Protein synthesis studied in stem cells for the first time

Stem cell center starting trials

By Uncategorized

Seven months after a bill to create a regional stem cell therapy hub at the University of Kansas Medical Center took effect, two doctors from the center say it is enrolling patients in clinical trials and they are beginning their work.

David Prentice and Buddhadeb Dawn expressed excitement Monday about what the Midwest Stem Cell Therapy Center has been able to accomplish in a short time and what possibilities it holds for the future.

"Kansas can be the leader in providing adult stem cell treatments and information to physicians and patients around the world," Dawn said.

Prentice said the center, which limits itself to research on adult stem cells, will foster "ethical, non-controversial" treatments for patients with multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injuries, heart damage, stroke and juvenile diabetes.

At the same time he said it will serve to educate schoolchildren on the promise of adult stem cells and act as a "hub" for regional research.

Potentially physicians from across the region could be sending samples," Prentice told the Senate Ways and Means Committee that approved millions in start-up funds for the center last year.

Sen. Jeff Melcher, R-Leawood, said he was heartened by news of the center beginning work, but somewhat concerned about it monetizing that work.

He noted that the 15 members of the center's advisory board are academics and legislators, with no one from the business community.

I see kind of a void in that I dont see the people that it would take to product-ize this," Melcher said. "The sales and marketing expertise, the product development.

Dawn said the medical center has some "in-house" experts who can help with that and that it will also be working with specific companies in some of its clinical trials.

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Stem cell center starting trials

Stem Cell Center advancing treatments, officials say

By Uncategorized

Topeka Eight months after the establishment of the Midwest Stem Cell Therapy Center at Kansas University Medical Center, the center is conducting clinical trials and advancing treatments for numerous diseases, KU officials said Monday.

"We are very excited about the work that is going on," said Dr. Doug Girod, executive vice chancellor of the KU Medical Center.

Dr. Buddhadeb Dawn, the center's director, detailed clinical trials that are under way and several in the planning stages to the Senate Ways and Means Committee.

"These trials will help local patients to get access to stem cell therapy," Dawn said. "Kansas can be a leader in providing stem cell treatments."

Created last year by the Legislature and Gov. Sam Brownback, the center will work on adult stem cell, cord blood and related stem cell research, providing therapies to patients and serving as a clearinghouse for physicians on cutting-edge treatments.

The center is prohibited from using embryonic stem cells or cells taken from aborted fetal tissue. Abortion opponents oppose human embryonic stem cell research because it involves the destruction of the embryo.

David Prentice, senior fellow for life sciences of the Family Research Council, said the center was unique in the country.

Prentice, who was involved in the development of the center and is on the center's advisory board as a representative of the scientific community, said, "I do want to reemphasize the focus on the center is patient-centered," while also working on education, clinical trials and research.

The FRC describes itself as a Christian organization promoting the traditional family unit and the Judeo-Christian value system. Its critics say it spreads anti-gay propaganda.

State Sen. Jeff Melcher, R-Overland Park, said the research sounded exciting but that he was concerned that the advisory board had no business people on it to secure private and business funding.

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Stem Cell Center advancing treatments, officials say

Regenestem and Global Stem Cells Group Announce Alliance With Eric Yalung, M.D. to Build First Regenestem Clinic in …

By Stem Cell Treatment

Miami (PRWEB) March 10, 2014

Regenestem, Inc., a division of Global Stem Cells Group, has announced plans to build the first Regenestem brand clinic in the Philippines. The planned, 22,000 square foot, state-of-the-art medical facility in Manila will focus on providing the latest stem cell-based anti-aging and cosmetic therapies available, eliminating the need for invasive surgery.

Regenestem is collaborating with distinguished Philippine Cosmetic Surgeon Eric Yalung, M.D. of the Cosmetic Surgery Institute-Manila, Inc. to create the stem cell therapy center, offering the most advanced protocols in cosmetic cellular medicine to patients from around the world.

The new Regenestem clinic will be headed by Yalung, a prominent and popular cosmetic surgeon in Manila who has built a reputation for incorporating the latest, most modern and least-invasive techniques in aesthetic medicine into his practice. Yalung will be joined by a team of talented stem cell specialists to provide patient treatment and follow-up care under the Regenestem brand.

Regenestem currently offers stem cell treatments for arthritis, autism, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), diabetes and multiple sclerosis among other conditions at various facilities worldwide

As part of its commitment to maintaining the highest standards in service and technology, Regenestem provides an international staff and the leading cellular therapies available.

All Regenestem facilities are certified for the medical tourism market, and staff physicians are board-certified or board-eligible. Regenestem clinics provide services in more than 10 specialties, attracting patients from the United States and around the world.

For more information, visit the Regenestem website, email info(at)regenstem(dot)com, or call 305-224-1858.

About Regenestem:

Regenestem, a division of the Global Stem Cells Group, Inc., is an international medical practice association committed to researching and producing comprehensive stem cell treatments for patients worldwide. Having assembled a highly qualified staff of medical specialistsprofessionals trained in the latest cutting-edge techniques in cellular medicineRegenestem continues to be a leader in delivering the latest protocols in the adult stem cell arena.

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Regenestem and Global Stem Cells Group Announce Alliance With Eric Yalung, M.D. to Build First Regenestem Clinic in ...

Stem cell study opens door to undiscovered world of biology

By Stem Cell Medical Center

13 hours ago This photo shows Dr. Sean Morrison, Director of the Children's Research Institute and senior author of the study, right, and Dr. Robert A.J. Signer, a postdoctoral research fellow and the study's first author. Credit: University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

For the first time, researchers have shown that an essential biological process known as protein synthesis can be studied in adult stem cells something scientists have long struggled to accomplish. The groundbreaking findings from the Children's Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) also demonstrate that the precise amount of protein produced by blood-forming stem cells is crucial to their function.

The discovery, published online today in Nature, measures protein production, a process known as translation, and shows that protein synthesis is not only fundamental to how stem cells are regulated, but also is critical to their regenerative potential.

"We unveiled new areas of cellular biology that no one has seen before," said Dr. Sean Morrison, Director of the Children's Research Institute, Professor of Pediatrics, and the Mary McDermott Cook Chair in Pediatric Genetics at UT Southwestern Medical Center. "No one has ever studied protein synthesis in somatic stem cells. This finding not only tells us something new about stem cell regulation, but opens up the ability to study differences in protein synthesis between many kinds of cells in the body. We believe there is an undiscovered world of biology that allows different kinds of cells to synthesize protein at different rates and in different ways, and that those differences are important for cellular survival."

Dr. Adrian Salic's laboratory at Harvard Medical School chemically modified the antibiotic puromycin in a way that made it possible to visualize and quantify the amount of protein synthesized by individual cells within the body. Dr. Robert A.J. Signer, a postdoctoral research fellow in Dr. Morrison's laboratory and first author of the study, realized that this reagent could be adapted to measure new protein synthesis by stem cells and other cells in the blood-forming system.

What they came across was astonishing, Dr. Morrison said. The findings suggested that different types of blood cells produce vastly different amounts of protein per hour, and stem cells in particular synthesize much less protein than any other blood-forming cells.

"This result suggests that blood-forming stem cells require a lower rate of protein synthesis as compared to other blood-forming cells," said Dr. Morrison, the paper's senior author.

Researchers applied the findings to a mouse model with a genetic mutation in a component of the ribosome the machinery that makes proteins and the rate of protein production was reduced in stem cells by 30 percent. The scientists also increased the rate of protein synthesis by deleting the tumor suppressor gene Pten in blood-forming stem cells. In both instances, stem cell function was noticeably impaired.

Together, these observations demonstrate that blood-forming stem cells require a highly regulated rate of protein synthesis, such that increases or decreases in that rate impair stem cell function.

"Amazingly, when the ribosomal mutant mice and the Pten mutant mice were bred together, stem cell function returned to normal, and we greatly delayed, and in some instances entirely blocked, the development of leukemia," Dr. Morrison said. "All of this happened because protein production in stem cells was returned to normal. It was as if two wrongs made a right."

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Stem cell transplant shows 'landmark' promise for treatment of degenerative disc disease

By Stem Cell Treatment

Stem cell transplant was viable and effective in halting or reversing degenerative disc disease of the spine, a meta-analysis of animal studies showed, in a development expected to open up research in humans. Recent developments in stem cell research have made it possible to assess its effect on intervertebral disc (IVD) height, Mayo Clinic researchers reported in a scientific poster today at the 30th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Pain Medicine.

"This landmark study draws the conclusion in pre-clinical animal studies that stem cell therapy for disc degenerative disease might be a potentially effective treatment for the very common condition that affects people's quality of life and productivity," said the senior author, Wenchun Qu, MD, PhD, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Dr. Qu said not only did disc height increase, but stem cell transplant also increased disc water content and improved appropriate gene expression. "These exciting developments place us in a position to prepare for translation of stem cell therapy for degenerative disc disease into clinical trials," he said.

The increase in disc height was due to restoration in the transplant group of the nucleus pulposus structure, which refers to the jelly-like substance in the disc, and an increased amount of water content, which is critical for the appropriate function of the disc as a cushion for the spinal column, the researchers concluded.

The researchers performed a literature search of MEDLINE, EMBASE and PsycINFO databases and also manually searched reference lists for original, randomized, controlled trials on animals that examined the association between IVD stem cell transplant and the change of disc height. Six studies met inclusion criteria. Differences between the studies necessitated the use of random-effects models to pool estimates of effect.

What they found was an over 23.6% increase in the disc height index in the transplant group compared with the placebo group (95% confidence interval [CI], 19.7-23.5; p<0.001). None of the 6 studies showed a decrease of the disc height index in the transplant group. Increases in the disc height index were statistically significant in all individual studies.

The authors commented that it is time to turn attention to the much-needed work of determining the safety, feasibility, efficacy of IVD stem cell transplant for humans.

"A hallmark of IVD degenerative disease is its poor self-repair capacity secondary to the loss of IVD cells. However, current available treatments fail to address the loss of cells and cellular functions. In fact, many invasive treatments further damage the disc, causing further degeneration in the diseased level or adjacent levels," said the lead study author Jason Dauffenbach, DO. "The goal of tissue engineering using stem cells is to restore the normal function and motion of the diseased human spine."

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The above story is based on materials provided by American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM). Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Stem cell transplant shows 'landmark' promise for treatment of degenerative disc disease

Chicago Hospital Evaluates New Stem-Cell Therapy For Pain

By Stem Cell Doctors

CBS Chicago (con't)

Affordable Care Act Updates: CBSChicago.com/ACA

Health News & Information: CBSChicago.com/Health

(CBS) Is it the future of pain relief, the end of pain pills, physical therapy and knee or hip replacements?

CBS 2s Mary Kay Kleist looks at a new procedure offered at only a handful of places. Its still a bit controversial. But some doctors and their patients swear by it.

Linda Morning-Starpoole suffered terrible knee pain, the result of sports injuries when she was younger.

Traditional treatment might involve steroid injections, physical therapy and joint replacement. But she wanted an alternative.

The thought of me healing me with through my own stem cells is what sold me on the procedure, she says.

Heres how it works: Doctors take bone marrow from the hip and spin it in a machine to get the stem cells. Those cellsare then mixed with the patients platelets, a type of blood cell involved in healing.

The mixture is injected back into the joint, where the stem cells turn into new tissue, reduce pain and improve function.

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Chicago Hospital Evaluates New Stem-Cell Therapy For Pain

Bendable Needles Developed to Deliver Stem Cells into Brains

By Stem Cell Doctors

The flexible needles could help doctors deliver stem cells to broader areas of the brain with fewer injections. Such therapies are being investigated for Parkinson's disease, stroke and other neurodegenerative disorders

Flickr/TschiAe

As the surgical team prepared its instruments, a severed human head lay on the plastic tray, its face covered by a blue cloth. It had thawed over the past 24 hours, and a pinky-sized burr hole had been cut near the top of its skull. Scalp covered with salt-and-pepper stubble wrinkled above and below a pink strip of smooth bone.

Over the next two hours, the head would be scanned in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine as the researchers, led by Daniel Lim, a neurosurgeon and stem-cell scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, tested a flexible needle for delivering cells to the brain.

Several laboratories are investigating ways to treat neurological diseases by injecting cells into patients brains, and clinical trials are being conducted for Parkinsons disease, stroke and other neurodegenerative diseases. These studies follow experiments showing dramatic improvements in rats and mice. But as work on potentially therapeutic cells has surged ahead, necessary surgical techniques have lagged behind, says Lim.

In 2008 researchers led by Steven Goldman at the University of Rochester in New York showed that they could make severely disabled mice able to walk by injecting human glial progenitor cells into five sites in the rodents' brains.

Those results are encouraging, but a human brain is more than 1,000 times larger than a mouse brain, and delivering cells to the right places is much harder. People know how to get cells into animals but forget about the scale-up problem with humans, Lim says.

Necessary tools Working with bioengineers and neurosurgeons, Lim designed a needle that bends. First, a straight, thin tube is injected into the brain and a flexible nylon catheter pushed through it. A deflector inside the tube arcs the catheter up and away from the entry track, and an even narrower plunger ejects cells from the catheter. In one injection, the device can deposit cells anywhere within a 2-centimetre radius along the track, a volume bigger than an entire mouse brain.

Several researchers hope to use Lims device for clinical trials in brain cancer and neurodegenerative disease. Xianmin Zeng, a stem-cell scientist at the Buck Institute in Novato, California, who worked with Lim to test the device on swine, says she hopes to file an application to use the device in clinical trials for Parkinson's before the end of 2014.

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Bendable Needles Developed to Deliver Stem Cells into Brains

Guidelines on use of stem cell therapy

By Stem Cell Medicine

Google stem cell therapy and a whole host of results show up. Stem cell therapy for hair loss, diabetes, cancer and practically everything else. It is touted as the medicine of hope, the panacea for all ills.

But to ensure that this potentially-powerful technology is not misused in the country, the Indian Council of Medical Research has come up with a set of guidelines to regulate their use.

Under the new guidelines, any use of stem cells in patients will be considered research, not therapy.

This means stem cells can now only be used on patients within the purview of an approved, and monitored clinical trial anything outside of this would be considered malpractice. Ananthram Shetty, professor of minimally-invasive surgery at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK, said the guidelines are much-needed, welcome move in the right direction.

Prof. Shetty, who has been working with stem-cell technology for 27 years, and is often in India to demonstrate their use in research surgeries, said this would prevent anybody and everybody from claiming unproven benefits. Lots of people dont really understand what stem cells are. And those who have a terminal illness are willing to try anything. There are some people who use this to raise false hopes. And this is what the guidelines seek to stop, he said.

J.S. Rajkumar, chairman, Lifeline Hospital, however, said the guidelines could have been clearer about the use of adult stem cells over embryonic stem cells, he said. Now, the procedures involved and the time it would take could dissuade many, he said, while there is a real need for funds to be pumped in for research into this technology.

Another International Ear Care Day passed by on March 3.

It spelled out a clear message ear care can avoid hearing loss.

But the question is how many people know how to take care of their ears. What is interesting is the ear is a self-cleaning organ and does not require any kind of cleaning. But many clean their ears using safety pins, hair pins and even matchsticks.

While doctors advise against the use of such objects, they discourage the use of cotton buds too. Some heat coconut oil and pour into the ears. This could cause fungal infections. The ear drum is very thin and can be damaged, leading to loss of hearing, said M. Ramaniraj, professor of ENT, Government Stanley Medical College Hospital.

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Guidelines on use of stem cell therapy

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