Stem Cell Clinic

Herald News: A hopeful discovery on stem cells

By Stem Cell Doctors

TWO NEW studies offer extraordinary hope that we may be closer to the day when people can use their own cells to treat significant medical conditions, without using controversial stem cell methods that involve harvesting human embryos.

Stem cell research has provided a glimpse of a future where doctors can reverse the effects of certain ailments and decrease people's suffering. But the topic also carries with it a passionate ethical debate. This new, faster method if proved successful could push us past much of that controversy.

Researchers in Japan published studies in the journal Nature this week that described how they "reprogrammed" blood cells taken from mice by soaking them in an acidic solution. The scientists found that when the cells which they called stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency were injected back into mice, they multiplied and grew into heart, bone, brain and other organs.

Medical researchers have worked for years to use pluripotent stem cells to treat diseased organs, severed spinal cords and other conditions like diabetes, blindness and muscular dystrophy.

While not all stem cell research has involved human embryos, that method is commonly known by the public and makes many people uncomfortable. Some religious groups have pushed to have the practice banned. Scientists aren't even sure that method would work, since a patient's body could reject foreign cells.

However, researchers say this new method could increase the chance of success because it would use a person's own cells.

"If it works in man, this could be the game changer that ultimately makes a wide range of cell therapies available using the patient's own cells as starting material," said Chris Mason, a professor of regenerative medicine bioprocessing at University College London. "The age of personalized medicine would have finally arrived."

Mason wasn't involved in the study but is one of several outside experts who have weighed in expressing that this study looks extremely promising.

"It's remarkable," said Rudolf Jaenisch, a pioneering stem cell researcher at MIT. "Let's see whether it works in human cells, and there's no reason why it shouldn't."

The lead study author, Haruko Obokata, a biochemistry researcher at the RIKEN research institute in Japan, said they have started looking at how this method works with human cells.

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Herald News: A hopeful discovery on stem cells

New Method of Creating Stem Cells is a "Game Changer"

By Stem Cell Medicine

STAP cells, glowing green, have been integrated into the mouse fetuss body tissues. Credit: Haruko Obokata

Researchers have observed that plants, when stressed, can reprogram their cells into stem cells, capable of differentiating into many different cell types. Now, it appears mammals can perform the same trick. Japanese scientists say they have successfully reverted blood cells back to their embryonic state after dipping them in a stress-inducing bath of acid.

The team accomplished the feat using blood cells from mouse spleens, but are now trying to replicate it using human blood cells. Independent researchers are praising the discovery for both its simplicity and its potential to usher in new therapies and cloning techniques.

Scientists currently deploy one of two methods to obtain stem cells: extract them from human embryos, or reprogram adult cells into a stem-cell state (called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells). However, both methods have their drawbacks. Taking cells from an embryo destroys it in the process, and creating iPS cells requires a complicated choreography of genetic modifications.

The new method called STAP, for stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency appears to be far easier. Chris Mason, a professor of regenerative medicine at University College of London, didnt mask his excitement for the BBC:

I thought my God thats a game changer! Its a very exciting, but surprise, finding If this works in people as well as it does in mice, it looks faster, cheaper and possibly safer than other cell reprogramming technologies personalized reprogrammed cell therapies may now be viable.

Haruko Obokata, the studys lead author, conceived of the idea after she noticed blood cells behaved peculiarly after squeezing them through a capillary tube. The cells would shrink to a size resembling stem cells. Intrigued, she replicated the technique by exposing blood cells to different types of stress. Three stressors perforating the cell membrane, exposure to an acidic solution, and physical squeezing caused the cells to behave like stem cells.

However, it was only the first step. Scientists needed to demonstrate that the transformed cells were truly pluripotent or capable of morphing into any type of cell.

To test that, scientists used mice bred to carry a gene that causes a protein in pluripotent cells to glow neon green. They injected the newly created stem cells into mouse embryos and the developing pups glowed all over, indicating that the embryos had successfully incorporated the stem cells into every tissue in their body. The team published their findings Wednesday in Nature.

Stressing blood cells harnesses a natural process, and could streamline the creation of stem cells. Jeff Karp, an associate professor at Brigham & Womens Hospital in Boston, told CNN the new method could produce stem cells up to 10 times faster than current methods.

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New Method of Creating Stem Cells is a "Game Changer"

Ordinary cells turned into stem cells 'game-changing'

By Stem Cell Medical Center

Japanese scientists say they have developed a new process to make stem cells that is simpler and faster than current methods. Sarah Toms reports.

EMBRYONIC FORM: A mouse embryo formed with Stimulus-Triggered Acquisition of Pluripotency (STAP) cells.

BREAKTHROUGH: Stimulus-Triggered Acquisition of Pluripotency (STAP) cells.

In experiments that could open a new era in stem cell biology, scientists have found a simple way to change mature animal cells back into an embryonic-like state that allows them to generate many types of tissue.

The research, described as game-changing by experts in the field, suggests human cells could in future be reprogrammed by the same technique, offering a simpler way to replace damaged cells or grow new organs for sick and injured people.

Chris Mason, chair of regenerative medicine bioprocessing at University College London, who was not involved in the work, said its approach in mice was "the most simple, lowest-cost and quickest method" to generate so-called pluripotent cells - able to develop into many different cell types - from mature cells.

"If it works in man, this could be the game changer that ultimately makes a wide range of cell therapies available using the patient's own cells as starting material - the age of personalised medicine would have finally arrived," he said.

The experiments, reported in two papers in the journal Nature this week, involved scientists from the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Japan and Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in the United States.

The researchers took skin and blood cells, let them multiply, then subjected them to stress "almost to the point of death", they explained, by exposing them to various events including trauma, low oxygen levels and acidic environments.

One of these "stressful" situations was simply to bathe the cells in a weak acid solution for around 30 minutes.

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Ordinary cells turned into stem cells 'game-changing'

Scientists report making stem cells in about 30 minutes

By Stem Cell Medical Center

In a feat that experts say is a significant advance for regenerative medicine, scientists have discovered a surprisingly simple method for creating personalized stem cells that doesnt involve human embryos or tinkering with DNA.

Two studies published Wednesday in the journal Nature describe a novel procedure for reprogramming the blood cells of newborn mice by soaking the cells in a mildly acidic solution for 30 minutes. This near-fatal shock caused the cells to become pluripotent, or capable of growing into any type of cell in the body.

When the reprogrammed cells were tagged and injected into a developing mouse, they multiplied and grew into heart, bone, brain and other organs, the scientists found.

It was really surprising to see that such a remarkable transformation could be triggered simply by stimuli from outside of the cell, said lead study author Haruko Obokata, a biochemistry researcher at the RIKEN research institute in Japan. Very surprising.

The simplicity of the technique, which Obokata and her colleagues dubbed stimulus triggered acquisition of pluripotency, or STAP, caught many experts off-guard.

So you mistreat cells under the right conditions and they assume a different state of differentiation? Its remarkable, said Rudolf Jaenisch, a pioneering stem cell researcher at MIT who was not involved in the study. Lets see whether it works in human cells, and theres no reason why it shouldnt.

Obokata said that researchers had already begun experiments on human cells, but offered no details.

VIDEO: A beating heart, grown from STAP stem cells

Due to their Zelig-like ability to form any number of specialized cells, pluripotent stem cells are considered the basic building blocks of biology. Scientists are working on ways to use them to repair severed spinal cords, replace diseased organs, and treat conditions as varied as diabetes, blindness and muscular dystrophy.

By using stem cells spawned from the patients own cells, replacement tissues would stand less of a chance of being attacked by the patients own immune system, researchers say. That would spare patients the need to undergo a lifetime regimen of dangerous, immune-suppressing drugs.

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Scientists report making stem cells in about 30 minutes

Family seeks stem cell donors in Meaford for child with leukemia

By Stem Cell Clinic

Meaford Express

By Junior Kindergarten, Katie Star Herron had already beat cancer once.

By 4-years-old, she had been through 25 months of intense treatment for leukemia, including lumbar punctures, bone marrow aspirations, chemotherapy, steroids and more time at the hospital than at home. She received her last does of chemotherapy in September 2012 and was in remission.

But the cancer is back, and now her family is reaching out everywhere they can to find a stem cell donor for Katie. A stem-cell transplant is her only hope.

In some cases, about 30 per cent, there's a compatible donor in the family somewhere.

Katie lives with her parents in Cambridge, but she has extended family in Meaford. Katie's grandparents Georgina (Sewell) and Glenn Hodgkinson grew up in Meaford and they are hoping there might be family left in town who can help their little granddaughter.

One Match is a Canadian registry connected to an international network of stem-cell and bone marrow donor registries, and the family of Katie has arranged for a cheek-swabbing clinic in Cambridge on Saturday, February 22 at the Cambridge Sports Park at 1001 Franklin Boulevard from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

The other option for people in Meaford is to register on their own as a donor on One Match by visiting http://www.onematch.ca or calling 1-888-236-6283 to fill out a health questionnaire and receive a swab kit in the mail.

About 70 per cent of stem-cell transplant patients receive donations from strangers and non-family members. So it's important to register as a donor on One Match. By registering at One Match, a donor can give stem cells to a patient anywhere in the world.

Ideal donors are between the ages of 17 and 35 and in good health.

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Family seeks stem cell donors in Meaford for child with leukemia

Acid bath turns cells from any tissue into stem cells

By Stem Cell Treatment

The development of human embryonic stem cells, which have the ability to form any cell in the body, may enable us to repair tissues damaged by injury or disease. Initially, these cells could only be obtained through methods that some deemed ethically unacceptable, but researchers eventually developed a combination of genes that could reprogram most cells into an embryonic-like state. That worked great for studies, but wasn't going to work for medical uses, since one of the genes involved has been associated with cancer.

Researchers have since been focusing on whittling down the requirements needed for getting a cell to behave like a stem cell. Now, researchers have figured out a radically simplified process: expose the cells to acidic conditions, then put them in conditions that stem cells grow well in. After a week, it's possible to direct these cells into a state that's even more flexible than embryonic stem cells.

The catalyst for this work is rather unusual. The researchers were motivated by something that works in plants: expose individual plant cells to acidic conditions, grow them in hormones that normally direct plant development, and you can get a whole plant back out. But we're talking about plants here, which evolved with multicellularity and with specialized tissues in a lineage that's completely separate from that of animals. So there's absolutely no reason to suspect that animal cells would react in a similar way to acid treatmentand a number of reasons to expect they wouldn't.

And yet the researchers went ahead and tried anyway. And, amazingly, it worked.

The treatments weren't especially harshonly a half-hour in a pH of 5.45.8. Afterward, the cells were placed in the same culture medium that stem cells are grown in. Many of the cells died, and the ones that were left didn't proliferate like stem cells do. But, over the course of a week, the surviving cells began to activate the genes that are normally expressed by stem cells. This was initially tried with precursors to blood cells, but it turned out to work with a huge variety of tissues: brain, skin, muscle, fat, bone marrow, lung, and liver (all of them obtained from micethis hasn't been tried with human cells yet).

While these cells didn't divide like stem cells, they did behave like them. Injecting them into embryos showed that they were incorporated into every tissue in the body, meaning they had the potential to form any cell. That suggests they are a distinct class of cell from the other ones we're aware of (the researchers call them STAP cells).

But, if they don't grow in culture, it's hard to use or study them. So, the authors tried various combinations of hormones and growth factors that stem cells like. One combination got some of the STAP cells to grow, after which they behaved very much like embryonic stem cells. But a second combination of growth factors got the cells to contribute to non-embryonic tissues, like the placenta, as well. So, in this sense, they seem to be even more flexible than embryonic stem cells, and seem more akin to one of the first cells formed after fertilization.

The people behind this development have done a tremendous amount of work, so much that it was spread across two papers. Still, like many good results, it raises lots of other questions. Many cells in our bodies get exposed to acidic conditions every daywhy do those manage to stably maintain their identity? A related question is what goes on at a molecular level inside the cell after acid treatment. Understanding that will help us learn more about the stem cell fate itself.

And then there are the practical questions. How close are these STAP cells to an actual embryonic cell, in terms of the state of its DNA and gene expression? And, if there are differences, are they significant enough to prevent these cells from being used in safe and efficient medical treatments?

January 30, 2014. DOI: 10.1038/nature12968, 10.1038/nature12969 (About DOIs).

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Acid bath turns cells from any tissue into stem cells

Groundbreaking: Embryonic Stem Cells Made With Acid

By Stem Cell Doctors

This is big.

Scientists have found a way to create embryonic stem cells without using an embryo or without introducing genetic material. The discovery could revolutionize medicine by giving doctors a way to repair diseased and damaged tissue think heart disease, blindness, skin burns with organs and tissue grown from the patients own cells.

Cloning Creates Human Embryonic Stem Cells

The researchers, led by Haruko Obokata from the Riken Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, found that by when they applied various stresses to white blood cells, such as bathing them in acid or putting them in a low-oxygen environment, nearly bringing them to the brink of death, some of the cells lost their blood identity and reverted to a state equivalent to an embryonic stem cell.

They call these cells STAP, for stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency.

When the scientists transferred the STAP cells to a special growth-promoting solution, they began to multiply and look like embryonic stem cells, which can grow into any type of cell skin, bone, organ depending on the environment into which they were placed.

And when the cells were injected into mice embryos, they contributed to the overall tissue of the baby mice, something that researchers didnt think would be possible.

Not only is the approach faster and far cheaper than current methods, but it eliminates the controversy surrounding embryonic stem cell research, which requires the destruction of an embryo, raising ethical concerns. The new approach also avoids the genetic risks associated with the alternative to the embryonic method, called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. That technique requires the introduction of genetic material into a cell, and has lead to tumor growth in some cases.

Stem Cell Treatment Cures Blindness

Inspiration for the research came from techniques already used in labs and in gardening, where a change in the physical environment can alter a cells identity. In the lab, for example, frog skin cells can be switched to brain cells if exposed to a solution with a low pH. And botanists can grow a new plant by creating a plant callus, a node of plant cells created from a physical injury to an existing plant.

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Groundbreaking: Embryonic Stem Cells Made With Acid

Stem cell breakthrough may be simple, fast, cheap

By Stem Cell Medicine

Researchers have developed a new method of making stem cells. Mouse cells were "stressed" in several ways, such as by being placed in an acidic environment. Researchers were then able to use those cells to generate various tissues in developing mice. This image shows a mouse fetus that has tissues that grew in part from the stem cells. (Photo: Haruko Obokata/NATURE)

We run too hard, we fall down, were sick all of this puts stress on the cells in our bodies. But in whats being called a breakthrough in regenerative medicine, researchers have found a way to make stem cells by purposely putting mature cells under stress.

Two new studies published Wednesday in the journal Nature describe a method of taking mature cells from mice and turning them into embryonic-like stem cells, which can be coaxed into becoming any other kind of cell possible. One method effectively boils down to this: Put the cells in an acidic environment.

I think the process weve described mimics Mother Nature, said Dr. Charles Vacanti, director of the laboratory for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine at Brigham & Womens Hospital in Boston and senior author on one of the studies. Its a natural process that cells normally respond to.

Both studies represent a new step in the thriving science of stem cell research, which seeks to develop therapies to repair bodily damage and cure disease by being able to insert cells that can grow into whatever tissues or organs are needed. If you take an organ thats functioning at 10% of normal and bring it up to 25% functionality, that could greatly reduce the likelihood of fatality in that particular disease, Vacanti said.

This method by Vacanti and his colleagues is truly the simplest, cheapest, fastest method ever achieved for reprogramming [cells], said Jeff Karp, associate professor of medicine at the Brigham & Womens Hospital and principal faculty member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. He was not involved in the study.

Before the technique described in Nature, the leading candidates for creating stem cells artificially were those derived from embryos and stem cells from adult cells that require the insertion of DNA to become reprogrammable.

Stem cells are created the natural way every time an egg that is fertilized begins to divide. During the first four to five days of cell division, so-called pluripotent stem cells develop. They have the ability to turn into any cell in the body. Removing stem cells from the embryo destroys it, which is why this type of research is controversial.

Researchers have also developed a method of producing embryonic-like stem cells by taking a skin cell from a patient, for example, and adding a few bits of foreign DNA to reprogram the skin cell to become like an embryo and produce pluripotent cells, too. However, these cells are usually used for research because researchers do not want to give patients cells with extra DNA.

The new method does not involve the destruction of embryos or inserting new genetic material into cells, Vacanti said. It also avoids the problem of rejection: The body may reject stem cells that came from other people, but this method uses an individuals own mature cells.

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Stem cell breakthrough may be simple, fast, cheap

Stanford stem cell genomics center funded

By Stem Cell Medicine

California's stem cell agency granted $40 million Wednesday to study how the use of stem cells for therapy is affected by variations in the human genome.

The Center of Excellence for Stem Cell Genomics will be located at Stanford University. Competing proposals, including one by DNA sequencing giant Illumina and The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, were rejected by the California Institution for Regenerative Medicine.

Backers of the San Diego proposal said CIRM staff reviews of the proposals contained errors, such as including financial considerations when scientific merit was supposed to be the sole consideration. Stanford's proposal was highest-rated in the reviews.

The Stanford proposal earned praise from reviewers for the breadth of its research initiatives, from basic research to disease applications, along with the deep expertise of its scientists. Reviewers also liked the affiliated data management center, which will be located at UC Santa Cruz.

A number of San Diego research institutions will collaborate with Stanford's center. While the center itself will be placed at Stanford, the Salk Institute will participate as a joint principal investigator. The Scripps Research Institute and Illumina will also contribute, along with UC San Diego,and the J. Craig Venter Institute.

The Stanford proposal treats Illumina like a contractor, which doesnt make the best use of its abilities, said Scripps Research stem cell scientist Jeanne Loring, who attended the meeting. She submitted letters to the board from herself and Illumina explaining the project's benefits.

I was trying to tap into Illuminas intellectual power, which is often overlooked because they make most of their money by selling instruments and providing services, Loring said. But the people Id be working with are the ones who invented these technologies.

Illumina would benefit as a business by creating new markets, Loring said. For example, a test that tells whether stem cells have potentially dangerous mutations would be highly sought after.

Illumina pledged in a letter to CIRM that any products it sells under the agreement would be accessible, both in price and support.

Loring said she hopes the Scripps/Illumina proposal can still be funded, but there is no obvious alternative.

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Stanford stem cell genomics center funded

Stem cell researchers heralding ‘major scientific discovery’

By Stem Cell Medicine

January 29, 2014 - 17:55 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - Stem cell researchers are heralding a "major scientific discovery", with the potential to start a new age of personalized medicine, BBC News reports.

Scientists in Japan showed stem cells can now be made quickly just by dipping blood cells into acid.

Stem cells can transform into any tissue and are already being trialled for healing the eye, heart and brain.

The latest development, published in the journal Nature, could make the technology cheaper, faster and safer, according to the BBC.

The human body is built of cells with a specific role - nerve cells, liver cells, muscle cells - and that role is fixed. However, stem cells can become any other type of cell, and they have become a major field of research in medicine for their potential to regenerate the body.

Embryos are one, ethically charged, source of stem cells. Nobel prize winning research also showed that skin cells could be "genetically reprogrammed" to become stem cells (termed induced pluripotent stem cells).

Now a study shows that shocking blood cells with acid could also trigger the transformation into stem cells - this time termed STAP (stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency) cells.

Dr Haruko Obokata, from the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology in Japan, said she was "really surprised" that cells could respond to their environment in this way.

She added: "It's exciting to think about the new possibilities these findings offer us, not only in regenerative medicine, but cancer as well."

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Stem cell researchers heralding ‘major scientific discovery’

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