Stem Cell Therapy Treatment for Spastic Cerebral Palsy by Dr Alok Sharma, Mumbai, India.
Improvement seen in just 5 day after Stem Cell Therapy Treatment for Spastic Cerebral Palsy by Dr Alok Sharma, Mumbai, India. After Stem Cell Therapy 1. Droo...
By: Neurogen Brain and Spine Institute
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Stem Cell Therapy Treatment for Spastic Cerebral Palsy by Dr Alok Sharma, Mumbai, India. - Video
Hera Nalbandian - High School Stem Cell Research Intern - Summer 2013, Video Project 2
Visit our Through Their Lens page for photos and more videos from students and grantees: http://www.cirm.ca.gov/instagram-CIRMStemCellLab-feed Hera Nalbandia...
By: California Institute for Regenerative Medicine
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Hera Nalbandian - High School Stem Cell Research Intern - Summer 2013, Video Project 2 - Video
Capitol Pain Austin - Dr. Schocket - Stem Cell Treatment for Low Back Pain
Patient discussing her stem cell treatment for low back pain performed by Dr. Schocket at Capitol Pain Institute, your Austin Pain Management Specialists.
By: Matt Schocket
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Capitol Pain Austin - Dr. Schocket - Stem Cell Treatment for Low Back Pain - Video
Whoifwhat: Stem Cell Therapy- Knees, Hip, Back, etc.!
It works: Now in St. Louis, New York Phily: coming to your town soon ! Using stem cells from belly fat ( got any) platelets to mark area an injection is ...
By: whoifwhat
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Whoifwhat: Stem Cell Therapy- Knees, Hip, Back, etc.! - Video
Aug. 7, 2013 Researchers at the University of Southampton, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Cambridge, have developed a technique to help treat fatal diseases more effectively. Dr Sumeet Mahajan and his group at the Institute for Life Sciences at Southampton are using gold nanoprobes to identify different types of cells, so that they can use the right ones in stem cell therapies.
Stem cell therapy is in its infancy, but has the potential to change the way we treat cancer and other life-threatening diseases, by replacing damaged or diseased cells with healthy ones. One of the key limitations of stem cell therapy is identifying the right cells to use for different therapies. This fundamental problem with the treatment is being tackled by this new research.
Dr Mahajan, Senior Chemistry Lecturer in Life Science Interface, says: "Stem cells could hold the key to tackling many diseases. They develop into all the various kinds of cells needed in the body -- blood, nerves and organs -- but it is almost impossible to tell them apart during their initial development without complex techniques, even with the most advanced microscopes. Up to now, scientists have used intrusive fluorescent markers to tag molecules and track each cell, a process which can render them useless for therapeutic purposes anyway. By using a technique discovered at Southampton in the 1970s, known as Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS), we have been able to look at adult stem cells on a molecular scale to distinguish one from another, meaning we can still use the cells for therapeutic purposes."
The team who discovered SERS in the 1970s found that by roughening a metal surface upon which they had placed molecules to be examined, they could increase the signal by which they could detect these molecules, by a million times. This allowed them to detect molecules in far smaller quantities than ever before. SERS has been used in many different capacities around the world and across industries, but this new research marks the first time it has been used in the field of cell therapeutics. Dr Mahajan's research could mean that stem cell and other cell-based therapies could be advanced much further than the current most common uses, such as bone marrow transplants.
Dr Mahajan comments: "Scientists studying neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease believe replenishing a patient's depleted dopamine-generating cells, may be an effective treatment. However, in order to avoid fatal complications, we must be sure we are using the right type of replacement cells, which the work we are doing at Southampton is enabling us to do. In addition, the technique can also allow us to see if drugs are working effectively in cells, and can also be used to diagnose diseases as well as treat them."
The results of Dr Mahajan's work, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), have been published in the influential journal Nano Letters. He is collaborating with major pharmaceutical companies to further develop more effective drugs using this technique.
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Gold 'nanoprobes' hold the key to treating killer diseases
MANILA - Foreign doctors are now required to secure a permit to perform stem cell therapy in the country or face criminal liability.
The Professional Regulation Commission (PRC)s Board of Medicine (BOM) made the announcement yesterday, explaining that the requirement is part of government efforts to regulate the practice of stem cell therapy in the country to ensure the safety of patients.
In a statement, the BOM said foreign physicians who intend to practice stem cell therapy here must obtain special temporary permit from the PRC to avoid being charged with medical malpractice.
Even local doctors who have aided foreign physicians illegal practice of stem cell therapy shall be also held criminally liable, the BOM added.
To secure the special temporary permit, a foreign doctor must submit proof of education and actual practice in the field of stem cell therapy and current license authenticated by the Philippine embassy and the embassy in the country of origin.
The board said physicians should have acquired the necessary education, supervised training and extensive clinical experience prior to performing the treatment. It noted that the argument that stem cell therapy falls under the general practice of medicine since it only involves injection of stem cell solution is erroneous.
As professionals, physicians should be able to conduct self-assessment and self-evaluation regarding what they can and what they should not do, they added.
The BOM also noted that stem cell therapy should be practiced only in hospitals and clinics licensed by the Department of Heath for assurance that these medical facilities have the necessary manpower and equipment to prevent risks and hazards to patients.
The board also warned patients desiring to undergo stem cell therapy abroad to first verify the status of clinics and hospitals as well as practitioners from regulatory authorities.
Earlier, the Food and Drug Administration and the Philippine Medical Association (PMA) reported receiving numerous complaints of foreign doctors performing stem cell therapy in hotels and other non-medical facilities. The PMA said foreign doctors injected patients with animal-based stem cells at P1 million per shot, but these foreigners are not even licensed to practice medicine in the country.
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Foreign doctors need permit for stem cell therapy
Dr. Larry Goldstein
By Joe Tash
When Larry Goldstein imagines the potential of modern stem cell science, he is reminded of a scene from the 1967 Academy Award-winning film The Graduate, starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft.
Hoffmans character, a recent college graduate named Benjamin Braddock, is chatting with an older man at a cocktail party. I just want to say one word to youjust one word plastics, the man tells Benjamin.
Goldstein, 57, a Carmel Valley resident and head of one of the nations premier stem cell research labs, sees a vast upside to his chosen field of research in terms of scientific advancement, treatment of devastating diseases, and economic prosperity, similar to the characters prediction for plastics.
Were at the beginning of a revolution in science and medicine, said Goldstein. Whats the hot business going forward? Man, its biological plastics. They can replenish themselves, you can make them do things, you can build stuff. Its incredible.
Its not unrealistic to think that over the course of the next several decades, that artificial organs will be built of materials made from stem cells, either fully or in part, he said.
Goldstein wears two official hats director of the UC San Diego stem cell program, and scientific director of the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine. As Goldstein explained it, his role with UCSD is to facilitate and remove barriers for investigators working on a number of different stem cell-related projects, while his work with the Sanford Consortium involves coordination with scientists from a number of different research institutions on Torrey Pines Mesa.
He also co-founded a biotech company, Cytokinetics, which is developing drugs based on stem cell science.
In an interview in his Sanford Consortium office, a glass-walled rectangle overlooking the Torrey Pines Gliderport, Goldstein talked about his work, advancements in stem cell research, and his views on higher education.
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Carmel Valley stem cell expert says research field is at the ‘beginning of a revolution in science and medicine’
THE Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) stressed Tuesday that the emerging stem cell treatment cannot be practiced just by any kind of medical doctor but only by specialists.
In its position paper on Stem Cell Medicine, the Professional Regulatory Board of Medicine (PRBOM) pointed that local physicians looking to practice stem cell treatment cannot just perform it sans the necessary education, structured/supervised training and extensive clinical experience.
"Not anyone who can inject a chemotherapeutic drug qualifies to be a medical oncologist," said the PRBOM.
The board said it is unacceptable to claim that stem cell medicine falls already under general practice since anybody can do it "as it only entails the injection of stem cell solution."
The PRBOM said that while injection can be performed by any general medical practitioner, it cannot be the same for the desired result of the treatment such as cancer, autism, diabetes, stroke, liver disease, spinal cord injury, Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson's disease, among others.
"Physicians, who claim to be specialists and experts in stem cell therapy, should have had extensive training in the treatment of the mentioned diseases and disorders," said PRBOM.
It added that the training program should include quality assurance mechanisms, such as evaluation during and at the end of rotations, as well as training with documentation of clinical experience in the diagnosis and treatment of the concerned medical conditions.
Also, the PRBOM said the training should be conducted in accredited institutions, with the presence of faculty members that have been recognized as experts in the field due to their education, extensive training, and clinical experience.
As for foreign doctors looking to practice stem cell in the country, the PRC reminded them to secure the necessary permits first.
"Foreign physicians who wish to practice stem cell therapy in the country are required to apply for and obtain special temporary permits (STP) from the Professional Regulation Commission," said the PRBOM.
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PRC: Stem cell not for general practitioners
Durham, NC (PRWEB) August 07, 2013
A new type of treatment that pairs neural stem cells with conventional cancer fighting therapies is showing promise in animal studies for the most common and deadliest form of adult brain cancer glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). The details are revealed in a groundbreaking study led by Maciej Lesniak, M.D., that appears today in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine.
In this work, we describe a highly innovative gene therapy approach, which is being developed along with the NIH and the FDA. Specifically, our group has developed an allogeneic neural stem cell line that is a carrier for a virus that can selectively infect and break down cancer cells, explained Dr. Lesniak, the University of Chicagos director of neurosurgical oncology and neuro-oncology research at the Brain Tumor Center.
The stem cell line, called HB1.F3 NSC, was recently approved by the FDA for use in a phase I human clinical trial.
GBM remains fatal despite intensive treatment with surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. And while cancer-killing viruses have been used in clinical trials to treat therapeutically resistant and infiltrative tumor burdens throughout the brain, there were major drawbacks, Dr. Lesniak explained.
When you inject a virus into a tumor alone (without a carrier, like NSC), the virus stays at the site of the injection, and does not spread. Moreover, our immune system clears it. By using NSCs, we can achieve a widespread distribution of the virus throughout the tumor mass, since the NSC travel. Also, they act like a stealth fighter, hiding the virus from the immune system. By using NSC loaded with a novel oncolytic adenovirus that selectively targets GBM, along with standard of care that includes chemo-radiotherapy, the team was able to overcome these limitations.
Using mice that had GBM, the research team showed how their neural stem cell line, which is derived from human fetal cells, could significantly increase the median survival time of the mice beyond conventional treatments alone. The addition of chemo-radiotherapy further enhanced the benefits of this novel stem cell-based gene therapy approach.
Our study argues in favor of using stem cells for delivery of oncolytic viruses along with multimodal chemo-radiotherapy for the treatment of patients with GBM, and this is something that we believe warrants further clinical investigation, Dr. Lesniak concluded.
The team is completing final FDA-directed studies and expects to start a human clinical trial, in which a novel oncolytic virus will be delivered via NSCs to patients with newly diagnosed GBM, early in 2014.
Treatment of GMB depends on novel therapies, said Anthony Atala, M.D., Editor of STEM CELLS Translational Medicine and director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. This study establishes that a combination of conventional and gene therapies may be most effective and suggests a protocol for a future clinical investigation.
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Stem Cell-Conventional Treatment Combo Offers New Hope in Fighting Deadly Brain Cancer
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Scientist Dr. Mark Post poses with samples of in-vitro meat in a laboratory, at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands on November 9, 2011. (Francois Lenoir/Reuters)
As long weekend revelers across Canada throw steaks and sausages on the grill, Dr. Mark Post was cooking up something different: a hamburger made of animal stem cells, grown in his lab at Maastricht University in the Netherlands.
The one little five-ounce patty took him years to perfect, at a cost of 300,000 euros, or more than $409,500 (donated by an anonymous investor), making it what must be the most expensive and labour-intensive sandwich patty in history. Some doubted it could be done. As the burger was unveiled in Londonthen bitten, chewed, swallowed and consumed, for all the world to seePosts burger was redefining meat as we know it. This is the food of the future.
Post, a medical doctor, has been attempting to create tissues in the lab for almost a decade. The applications are huge: engineered human tissues could be used to test drugs, for example, or to treat many diseases where the body wastes away.
To Post, the food application started out as an interesting side project, one that soon stole the spotlight from his other work. Meat for consumption is in theory, much easier to grow, he told Macleans in an interview in 2012. The tissue does not need to physically integrate into the body. I considered it a closer goal to reach, he says, and a very important one.
Indeed, the global appetite for meat is growing.
Livestock production already takes up 30 per cent of the land surface on our planet, says a 2006 United Nations report, producing more greenhouse gas emissions than all our cars and trucks, combined. According to Patrick O. Brown of Stanford University, eating one four-ounce hamburger is the equivalent of leaving a bathroom faucet running round-the-clock for a week. Developing nations are increasingly emulating the meat-heavy Western diet, and it isnt sustainable. We are heading towards a meat shortage worldwide, Post says. Instead of producing beef, pork and poultry on massive industrial farms, in the near future, he predicts, well be growing it in factories. And while this first hamburger was incredibly expensive to make, as techniques are perfected and lab-grown stem-cell burgers can be mass-produced, the cost will go down; one day it could be lower than the price of traditionally raised meat, which is expected to rise.
Of course, growing a minced hamburger pattylet alone a dense, fat-marbled steakisnt a simple task. Post and his team harvested stem cells from a cows muscle tissue, and bathed them in a special formula of nutrients. As these cells start to differentiate into muscle cells, theyre hooked to attachment points (Post has used Velcro) to create tiny strips of tissue, like a tendon. Eventually, they start to contract on their own. The downside for animal lovers is that you still need animals, a donor herd to provide stem cells, Post says. But compared to factory farming today, the number would be very small. If we grew all our meat in a lab, Post believes, the number of livestock worldwide could be reduced by a factor of one millionthe equivalent of reducing 10 billion livestock animals on the planet to 10,000. This would free up land, water, and other resources, while making sure remaining livestock didnt suffer a death fraught with the issues of large-scale slaughter.
Other than Post, only a handful of scientists are working on lab-grown meat; others believe the future lies in plant-based substitutes, ones so good they could fool even the most discerning palate, although Post maintains that we humans will always have an appetite for the real thing.
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The most expensive burger in history — and what it means for future ...