Stem Cell Clinic

A 5th person is likely cured of HIV, and another is in long-term remission – NBC News

By Stem Cell Clinic

Two new cases presented Wednesday at the International AIDS Conference in Montreal have advanced the field of HIV cure science, demonstrating yet again that ridding the body of all copies of viable virus is indeed possible, and that prompting lasting viral remission also might be attainable.

In one case, scientists reported that a 66-year-old American man with HIV has possibly been cured of the virus through a stem cell transplant to treat blood cancer. The approach which has demonstrated success or apparent success in four other cases uses stem cells from a donor with a specific rare genetic abnormality that gives rise to immune cells naturally resistant to the virus.

In another case, Spanish researchers determined that a woman who received an immune-boosting regimen in 2006 is in a state of what they characterize as viral remission, meaning she still harbors viable HIV but her immune system has controlled the viruss replication for over 15 years.

Experts stress, however, that it is not ethical to attempt to cure HIV through a stem cell transplant a highly toxic and potentially fatal treatment in anyone who is not already facing a potentially fatal blood cancer or other health condition that would make them a candidate for such a treatment.

While a transplant is not an option for most people with HIV, these cases are still interesting, still inspiring and illuminate the search for a cure, Dr. Sharon Lewin, an infectious disease specialist at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity at the University of Melbourne, told reporters on a call last week ahead of the conference.

There are also no guarantees of success through the stem cell transplant method. Researchers have failed to cure HIV using this approach in a slew of other people with the virus.

Nor is it clear that the immune-enhancing approach used in the Spanish patient will work in additional people with HIV. The scientists involved in that case told NBC News that much more research is needed to understand why the therapy appears to have worked so well in the woman it failed in all participants in the clinical trial but her and how to identify others in whom it might have a similar impact. They are trying to determine, for example, if specific facets of her genetics might favor a viral remission from the treatment and whether they could identify such a genetic profile in other people.

The ultimate goal of the HIV cure research field is to develop safe, effective, tolerable and, importantly, scalable therapies that could be made available to wide swaths of the global HIV population of some 38 million people. Experts in the field tend to think in terms of decades rather than years when hoping to achieve such a goal against a foe as complex as this virus.

Diagnosed with HIV in 1988, the man who received the stem cell transplant is both the oldest person to date 63 years old at the time of the treatment and the one living with HIV for the longest to achieve an apparent success from a stem cell transplant cure treatment.

The white male dubbed the City of Hope patient after the Los Angeles cancer center where he received his transplant 3years ago has been off of antiretroviral treatment for HIV for 17 months.

We monitored him very closely, and to date we cannot find any evidence of HIV replicating in his system, said Dr. Jana Dickter, an associate clinical professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at City of Hope. Dickter is on the patients treatment team and presented his case at this weeks conference.

This means the man has experienced no viral rebound. And even through ultra-sensitive tests, including biopsies of the mans intestines, researchers couldnt find any signs of viable virus.

The man was at one time diagnosed with AIDS, meaning his immune system was critically suppressed. After taking some of the early antiretroviral therapies, such as AZT, that were once prescribed as individual agents and failed to treat HIV effectively, the man started a highly effective combination antiretroviral treatment in the 1990s.

In 2018, the man was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, or AML. Even when HIV is well treated, people with the virus are still at greater risk of a host of cancers that are associated with aging, including AML and other blood cancers. Thanks to effective HIV treatment, the population of people living with the virus in the U.S. is steadily aging; the majority of people diagnosed with HIV is now older than 50.

He was treated with chemotherapy to send his leukemia into remission prior to his transplant. Because of his older age, he received a reduced intensity chemotherapy to prepare him for his stem cell transplant a modified therapy that older people with blood cancers are better able to tolerate and that reduces the potential for transplant-related complications.

Next, the man received the stem cell transplant from the donor with an HIV-resistant genetic abnormality. This abnormality is seen largely among people with northern European ancestry, occurring at a rate of about 1% among those native to the region.

According to Dr. Joseph Alvarnas, a City of Hope hematologist and a co-author of the report, the new immune system from the donor gradually overtook the old one a typical phenomenon.

Some two years after the stem cell transplant, the man and his physicians decided to interrupt his antiretroviral treatment. He has remained apparently viable-virus free ever since. Nevertheless, the study authors intend to monitor him for longer and to conduct further tests before they are ready to declare that he is definitely cured.

A second report presented at the Montreal conference detailed the case of a 59-year-old woman in Spain who is considered to be in a state of viral remission.

The woman was enrolled in a clinical trial in Barcelona in 2006 of people receiving standard antiretroviral treatment. She was randomized to also receive 11 months of four therapies meant to prime the immune system to better fight the virus, according to Nria Climent, a biologist at the University of Barcelona Hospital Clinic, who presented the findings.

Then Climent and the research team decided to take the woman off her antiretrovirals, per the studys planned protocol. She has now maintained a fully suppressed viral load for over 15 years. Unlike the handful of people either cured or possibly cured by stem cell transplants, however, she still harbors virus that is capable of producing viable new copies of itself.

Her body has actually controlled the virus more efficiently with the passing years, according to Dr. Juan Ambrosioni, an HIV physician in the Barcelona clinic.

Ambrosioni, Climent and their collaborators said they waited so long to present this womans case because it wasnt until more recently that technological advances have allowed them to peer deeply into her immune system and determine how it is controlling HIV on its own.

Its great to have such a gaze, Ambrosioni said, noting that the point is to understand what is going on and to see if this can be replicated in other people.

In particular, it appears that what are known as her memory-like NK cells and CD8 gamma-delta T cells are leading this effective immunological army.

The research team noted that they do not believe that the woman would have controlled HIV on her own without the immune-boosting treatment, because the mechanisms by which her immune cells appear to control HIV are different from those seen in elite controllers, the approximately 1 in 200 people with HIV whose immune systems can greatly suppress the virus without treatment.

Lewin, of Australias Peter Doherty Institute, told reporters last week that it is still difficult to judge whether the immune-boosting treatment the woman received actually caused her state of remission. Much more research is needed to answer that question and to determine if others might also benefit from the therapy she received, she said.

Over four decades, just five people have been cured or possibly cured of HIV.

The virus remains so vexingly difficult to cure because shortly after entering the body it infects types of long-lived immune cells that enter a resting, or latent, state. Because antiretroviral treatment only attacks HIV when infected cells are actively churning out new viral copies, these resting cells, which are known collectively as the viral reservoir and can stay latent for years, remain under the radar of standard treatment. These cells can return to an active state at any time. So if antiretrovirals are interrupted, they can quickly repopulate the body with virus.

The first person cured of HIV was the American Timothy Ray Brown, who, like the City of Hope patient, was diagnosed with AML. His case was announced in 2008 and then published in 2009. Two subsequent cases were announced at a conference in 2019, known as the Dsseldorf and London patients, who had AML and Hodgkin lymphoma, respectively. The London patient, Adam Castillejo, went public in 2020.

Compared with the City of Hope patient, Brown nearly died after the two rounds of full-dose chemotherapy and the full-body radiation he received. Both he and Castillejo had a devastating inflammatory reaction to their treatment called graft-versus-host disease.

Dr. Bjrn Jensen, of Dsseldorf University Hospital, the author of the German case study one typically overlooked by HIV cure researchers and in media reports about cure science said that with 44 months passed since his patient has been viral rebound-free and off of antiretrovirals, the man is almost definitely cured.

We are very confident there will be no rebound of HIV in the future, said Jensen, who noted that he is in the process of getting the case study published in a peer-reviewed journal.

For the first time, University of Cambridges Ravindra Gupta, the author of the London case studystated, in an email to NBC News, that with nearly five years passed since Castillejo has been off of HIV treatment with no viral rebound, he is definitely cured.

In February, a research team announced the first case of a woman and the first in a person of mixed race possibly being cured of the virus through a stem cell transplant. The case of this woman, who had leukemia and is known as the New York patient, represented a substantial advance in the HIV cure field because she was treated with a cutting-edge technique that uses an additional transplant of umbilical cord blood prior to providing the transplant of adult stem cells.

The combination of the two transplants, the study authors told NBC News in February, helps compensate for both the adult and infant donors being less of a close genetic match with the recipient. Whats more, the infant donor pool is much easier than the adult pool to scan for the key HIV-resistance genetic abnormality. These factors, the authors of the womans case study said, likely expand the potential number of people with HIV who would qualify for this treatment to about 50 per year

Asked about the New York patients health status, Dr. Koen van Besien, of the stem cell transplant program at Weill Cornell Medicine and New York-Presbyterian in New York City, said, She continues to do well without detectable HIV.

Over the past two years, investigators have announced the cases of two women who are elite controllers of HIV and who have vanquished the virus entirely through natural immunity. They are considered likely cured.

Scientists have also reported several cases over the past decade of people who began antiretroviral treatment very soon after contracting HIV and after later discontinuing the medications have remained in a state of viral remission for years without experiencing viral rebound.

Speaking of the reaction of the City of Hope patient, who prefers to remain anonymous, to his new HIV status, Dickter said: Hes thrilled. Hes really excited to be in that situation where he doesnt have to take these medications. This has just been life-changing.

The man has lived through several dramatically different eras of the HIV epidemic, she noted.

In the early days of HIV, he saw many of his friends and loved ones get sick and ultimately die from the disease, Dickter said. He also experienced so much stigma at that time.

As for her own feelings about the case, Dickter said, As an infectious disease doctor, Id always hoped to be able to tell my HIV patients that theres no evidence of virus remaining in their system.

FollowNBC HEALTHonTwitter&Facebook.

See more here:
A 5th person is likely cured of HIV, and another is in long-term remission - NBC News

A new era: After winding path and safety scares, gene therapy enters the clinic – Sydney Morning Herald

By Stem Cell Clinic

What weve dreamed about for several decades now is becoming reality, says Professor Ian Alexander, head of the gene therapy research unit at the Childrens Medical Research Institute. We are about to see a big rush of these therapies coming into the clinic. Its really started screaming upwards in the last few years its exponential.

We stand on the very tip of the iceberg. The first gene therapy was approved in China in 2004; over the next 10 years, global regulators approved just four more. In just the past 18 months, regulators have approved five treatments with two more awaiting final approval and another 3633 therapies in the pipeline, according to tracking by the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy.

Were at the stage where there is a huge bulge coming down the clinical trial pipeline. Its almost exceeding capacity, says Dr Thomas Edwards, head of retinal gene therapy research at the Centre for Eye Research Australia. Its an exciting time for patients, it wasnt long ago we had nothing for them.

Many of the drugs we have, such as penicillin or Tamiflu, work by killing bacteria or viruses. Vaccination uses a dead virus to prime the immune system. Synthetic hormones like insulin treat the bodys own shortages. Chemicals in pill form, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, float through the bloodstream, enter our cells and change our chemistry.

Gene therapy is different. Rather than alter our chemistry, it treats us by changing our genotype, the way our DNA is expressed.

It is a new paradigm. It offers the first possibility of curing diseases at their root genetic cause and the possibility of a lifelong cure, says Rasko. And we are seeing that now in patients.

Loading

Understanding Zolgensma gives you an idea of how different this new medical era will be.

Every time you go to scroll an article or turn the page in a newspaper, your brain converts that thought to a signal. It runs down your spinal cord to motor neurons, cells that reside in the cord but project thin tendrils out into the flesh. These tendrils called axons carry commands from neuron to muscle.

Like every cell in your body, each motor neuron carries a full copy of your genome, separated across 23 pairs of chromosomes and locked tight in the cells nucleus.

On chromosome five is a short stretch of genetic code known as SMN1. This gene is a blueprint for a protein crucial to the motor neurons function.

SMN1 is in an unfortunate place. The stretch of chromosome it lies in is prone to errors. Make a coding error in SMN1 and you blur the blueprint. The motor neurons struggle to build their crucial protein and soon start dying.

Without motor neurons, the signals from the brain to eat, to move, even to breathe stop getting through. In about 1 in every 10,000 babies born in Australia every year, this gene has an error.

Zolgensma, marketed by Novartis, comes in a small syringe, just 50 milliltres. Inside the syringe, in fluid, is a genetically-modified adeno-associated virus, the organic machines that make the treatment possible.

As far as science can tell, AAVs are harmless to humans. They infect us without us ever knowing. Scientists slice out the part of the viruss genetic code and replace it with a copy of SMN1. Inside the body, it crosses from the blood to the spinal cord and quickly infects motor neuron cells. Its the perfect vehicle, says Associate Professor Michelle Farrar, a paediatric neurologist who led a clinical trial of the drug at Sydney Childrens Hospitals Network.

Loading

The virus enters the nucleus the vault where DNA is kept and releases its copy of the SMN1 gene. Unlike Gattaca-style genetic editing, the new gene is not incorporated into the patients DNA but floats nearby. Extra genetic code attached to the gene instructs the cell to activate it and start churning out copies of the key protein the motor neurons need.

Unlike most cells in the body, motor neurons dont divide; youre born with all you have. This is why losing them is so dangerous but it also means that if you can repair the faulty gene, you should have a therapy that works long-term. Some patients are now eight years post-treatment with no sign its wearing off, says Farrar.

Zolgensma does come with risks: serious liver injury or failure. Two patients on one of the drugs key clinical trials had signs of liver damage; a third had swelling on the brain requiring surgery.

Indeed, liver damage remains a problem with many gene treatments, with multiple deaths reported in clinical trials.

It remains unclear why. But the therapies rely on treating one disease by essentially infecting a patient with a benign virus, and when you put something in the blood a lot of it is going to end filtered out by the liver. One theory: in some people the immune system might spot and attack the build-up of virus in the liver, leading to extreme systemic inflammation and death.

Safety concerns have dogged gene therapy ever since the death of Jesse Gelsinger the young man who, in 1999, became the face of the treatments limitations after he died while participating in a clinical trial.

His death was a very sobering experience for the field, says Alexander from the Childrens Medical Research Institute a sign that scientists understood far less than they thought. There was a mismatch between the technology and the understanding.

Rasko is tougher on his colleagues. In 1999, when Jesse passed, essentially the whole field stunk. Everyone was accused of overhyping, and no one was delivering.

In response, the field curtailed its ambition and pivoted toward diseases that are a better match for the quickly developing technology.

Early treatments were held up because of the struggle to deliver enough of the gene without provoking a huge immune response. By switching to adeno-associated viruses small viruses that infect humans and some other primate species scientists found they could deliver more genetic code while reducing the immune response. And the field started hunting for conditions that seemed a better match for gene therapy.

Zolgensma and Spark Therapeutics Luxturna, approved for government subsidy in March, both use the same adeno-associated virus to target cells that are easy to access and do not divide.

Luxturna treats a genetic cause of blindness by supplying a replacement copy of a defective gene to cells in the retina, allowing them to make a protein crucial for sight.

The gene is small and easy to package in the virus. And the eye, you can get at it relatively easy surgically, says Eye Research Australias Edwards. And [the retina] has immune-privilege the virus does not cause a widespread immune reaction.

Both Zolgensma and Luxturna are extraordinarily expensive, raising the question of whether gene therapy will be a medicine of the rich. Experts are hopeful that wont be the case.

Some of the early therapies will be for small groups, but eventually a gene therapy that can be used by many people will come online, says Professor Robyn Jamieson, head of the eye genetics research unit at the Childrens Medical Research Institute. Those economies of scale will push the price down for everyone.

And now the technology has been proven to work, competition among biotechs to develop new therapies is fierce. They are jaw-droppingly expensive now, says Rasko, but over time that competition should pull costs down.

And new facilities to make the viral machines at the heart of the treatment will also come online. This year NSW invested $25 million in a pilot factory to make viral vectors in Westmead.

None of this can come quickly enough for the hundreds of thousands of families across Australia living with genetic illnesses.

Shes very stubborn, very strong-willed, Adriana Baron says of her daughter, Mariana. And that helped her.Credit:Simon Schluter

To get Mariana the treatment she needed, Adriana had to battle first to get a diagnosis, then get approved for the treatment, and then get government funding to bring it into the country. But shes a fighter, just like her daughter.

Shes very stubborn, very strong-willed. And that helped her, says Adriana. If she wants to do things on her own, she tells you, I dont need any help, she does it herself.

Liam Mannixs Examine newsletter explains and analyses science with a rigorous focus on the evidence. Sign up to get it each week.

More:
A new era: After winding path and safety scares, gene therapy enters the clinic - Sydney Morning Herald

Our voice here is a moral voice – Martha’s Vineyard Times

By Stem Cell Clinic

The Marthas Vineyard Hebrew Center recently held a forum to discuss how to mitigate the fallout from the recently overturned Roe v. Wade decision by the Supreme Court, and to highlight the chief notion of the discourse advocacy for reproductive justice.

The Hebrew Center cares about this issue, and about pro choice, and abortion justice, began Rabbi Caryn Broitman, from a religious perspective.

Reaching far beyond the particulars of a decision to terminate a pregnancy, Broitman emphasized the need for women to be able to make their own choices concerning their own bodies, and stressed additional need to support the autonomy that comes with a person taking various socially and medically geared avenues.

The Hebrew Centers support for womens reproductive rights is not of political motivation, explained Broitman. Our voice here is a moral voice. It is a life voice. And its a spiritual, religious voice.

Broitman cited Israels ultra orthodox chief rabbi who said publicly in 1948 that theres no legal reason to prevent an abortion.

Jewish value of reproductive justice, said Broitman, is significant; for it is encompassed by the greater need to take care of ones body and ensure health and wellbeing. [Therefore,] women and pregnant people dont need to offer an excuse or reason to justify their abortion. Its our healthcare.

The Womens Centers, a leading organization for abortion care research work including stem cell research sees around 40,000 clients per year and has been a frequent target for anti-abortion terrorism, mainly as a response to its success in womens rights advocacy.

Elizabeth Barnes, former Chappy resident and president of the Womens Centers one of the largest abortioin providers nationwide spoke to the Hebrew Center crowd about her work. Barnes noted that current moment, women from Alabama and Tennessee where abortion has been deemed illegal have been provided access to the procedure through efforts by the organization to transport them to New Jerseys centers.

Barnes harkened back to her early days working for the cause, in a clinic in Pennsylvania, having started the job at the same time that two women, both of whom were her age, and also hailing from New England, were shot and killed in Brooklyn because of their association with a womens clinic.

Following the incident, Barnes said her family questioned her career path, expressing concerns over her safety; but Barnes could not be dissuaded because the work was too important.

Barnes made note that the shooting affirmed that importance, provoking women and supporters of reproductive justice to continue the efforts to maintain health equality. The directed violence, said Barnes, didnt work people persisted.

Barnes said through the evolution of the medicine of abortion, have, overtime, created an incredible community of brilliant thinkers who are saving peoples lives in complex abortion and materntity work, with the caveat of if given the opportunity.

Barnes relayed countless stories of women who have had to face numerous obstacles in their efforts to secure access to noninvasive medical abortions via oral pill, some traveling over 18 hours in order to terminate their five, six, or seven week pregnancy.

Some states, that have not banned abortion fully, still enact absurd waiting periods, in many cases resulting in doubling the amount of weeks a woman remains pregnant.

But, abortion is just part of the story, said Barnes, noting that Roe V. Wade was overturned in the midst of a nationwide diaper and baby formula shortage, further shedding light on the health access disparity women continuously endure.

The United States maternal mortality rate, Barnes said, is horrific, especially among women of color, and regardless of income.

Barnes said that despite abortion being legal in Massachusetts, theres a lot of progress yet to be made including on the Vineyard, which currently lacks access to even early, first trimester abortions. Barnes noted one particular instance, which left a few-weeks-pregnant woman who had already chosen to terminate, pregnant for longer, bringing with it all forms of distress. It begs the question of how a community can enhance its role as a womens health supporter, provider, and safe haven.

Marthas Vineyard is indeed a special place, said Barnes, but we are not special when advocating for abortion work. We need to get on it.

According to Talmudic texts written law and traditions of Judaism Broitman relayed that the essence of life is that which is after birth. Theres no question about it, she said.

Because of this understanding, it is the mothers life that takes precedence; not that of an unborn fetus. Life, explained Broitman, does not equate a fetus or potential life within a persons body to all of life.

Accentuating the traditional view of the importance of womens lives and health, Barnes offered a quote by well-known Rabbi Moses Sofer: No woman should have to save the world by destroying herself.

Continue reading here:
Our voice here is a moral voice - Martha's Vineyard Times

Scientists Unlock the Secrets of Cellular Aging: What Happens After You Turn 70? – SciTechDaily

By Somatic Stem Cells

Researchers have revealed the cellular mysteries behind aging.

A new explanation for aging has been developed by researchers who have shown that genetic abnormalities that develop gradually over a lifetime cause substantial alterations in how blood is generated beyond the age of 70.

According to recent research, the drastic reduction in blood production beyond the age of 70 is likely caused by genetic alterations that steadily accumulate in blood stem cells throughout life.

Researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the Wellcome-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, and others have published a study that offers a new theory of aging in the journal Nature.

Somatic mutations, or alterations to the genetic code, occur in all human cells during the course of a lifetime. Aging is most likely caused by the accumulation of numerous sorts of damage to our cells over time, with one hypothesis proposing that the accumulation of somatic mutations causes cells to gradually lose functional reserve. However, it is still unknown how such slow-building molecular damage may result in the rapid decline in organ performance around the age of 70.

The Wellcome Sanger Institute, the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, and collaborators examined the production of blood cells from the bone marrow in 10 people ranging in age from newborns to the elderly in order to better understand how the body ages.

3,579 blood stem cells had their whole genomes sequenced, allowing researchers to determine every somatic mutation present in each cell. Using this information, the team was able to create family trees of each persons blood stem cells, providing for the first time an impartial perspective of the connections between blood cells and how these ties develop over the course of a persons lifetime.

After the age of 70 years, the researchers discovered that these family trees underwent significant change. In adults under the age of 65, 20,000 to 200,000 stem cells contributed roughly equal amounts to the creation of blood cells. In contrast, blood production was exceedingly uneven in those above the age of 70.

In every elderly person investigated, a small number of enlarged stem cell clonesas few as 10 to 20contributed as much as half of the total blood output. Because of an uncommon class of somatic mutations known as driver mutations, these highly active stem cells have gradually increased in number during that persons life.

These findings led the team to propose a model in which age-associated changes in blood production come from somatic mutations causing selfish stem cells to dominate the bone marrow in the elderly. This model, with the steady introduction of driver mutations that cause the growth of functionally altered clones over decades, explains the dramatic and inevitable shift to reduced diversity of blood cell populations after the age of 70. Which clones become dominant varies from person to person, and so the model also explains the variation seen in disease risk and other characteristics in older adults. A second study, also published in Nature, explores how different individual driver mutations affect cell growth rates over time.

Dr. Emily Mitchell, Haematology Registrar at Addenbrookes Hospital, a Ph.D. student at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, and lead researcher on the study, said: Our findings show that the diversity of blood stem cells is lost in older age due to positive selection of faster-growing clones with driver mutations.

These clones outcompete the slower-growing ones. In many cases this increased fitness at the stem cell level likely comes at a cost their ability to produce functional mature blood cells is impaired, so explaining the observed age-related loss of function in the blood system.

Dr. Elisa Laurenti, Assistant Professor and Wellcome Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellow at the Wellcome-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute at the University of Cambridge, and joint senior researcher on this study, said: Factors such as chronic inflammation, smoking, infection, and chemotherapy cause earlier growth of clones with cancer-driving mutations. We predict that these factors also bring forward the decline in blood stem cell diversity associated with aging. It is possible that there are factors that might slow this process down, too. We now have the exciting task of figuring out how these newly discovered mutations affect blood function in the elderly, so we can learn how to minimize disease risk and promote healthy aging.

Dr. Peter Campbell, Head of the Cancer, Ageing and Somatic Mutation Programme at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, and senior researcher on the study said: Weve shown, for the first time, how steadily accumulating mutations throughout life lead to a catastrophic and inevitable change in blood cell populations after the age of 70. What is super exciting about this model is that it may well apply to other organ systems too. We see these selfish clones with driver mutations expanding with age in many other tissues of the body we know this can increase cancer risk, but it could also be contributing to other functional changes associated with aging.

References: Clonal dynamics of haematopoiesis across the human lifespan by Emily Mitchell, Michael Spencer Chapman, Nicholas Williams, Kevin J. Dawson, Nicole Mende, Emily F. Calderbank, Hyunchul Jung, Thomas Mitchell, Tim H. H. Coorens, David H. Spencer, Heather Machado, Henry Lee-Six, Megan Davies, Daniel Hayler, Margarete A. Fabre, Krishnaa Mahbubani, Federico Abascal, Alex Cagan, George S. Vassiliou, Joanna Baxter, Inigo Martincorena, Michael R. Stratton, David G. Kent, Krishna Chatterjee, Kourosh Saeb Parsy, Anthony R. Green, Jyoti Nangalia, Elisa Laurenti, and Peter J. Campbell, 1 June 2022, Nature. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04786-y

The longitudinal dynamics and natural history of clonal haematopoiesis by Margarete A. Fabre, Jos Guilherme de Almeida, Edoardo Fiorillo, Emily Mitchell, Aristi Damaskou, Justyna Rak, Valeria Orr, Michele Marongiu, Michael Spencer Chapman, M. S. Vijayabaskar, Joanna Baxter, Claire Hardy, Federico Abascal, Nicholas Williams, Jyoti Nangalia, Iigo Martincorena, Peter J. Campbell, Eoin F. McKinney, Francesco Cucca, Moritz Gerstung, and George S. Vassiliou, 1 June 2022, Nature. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04785-z

The study was funded by Wellcome and the William B Harrison Foundation.

Excerpt from:
Scientists Unlock the Secrets of Cellular Aging: What Happens After You Turn 70? - SciTechDaily

Researchers revive abandoned technique in effort to make artificial human eggs in a test tube – STAT

By Somatic Stem Cells

In a little-noticed study published earlier this year, scientists from Oregon Health & Science University reported the birth of three mouse pups that had been created with a never-before-used recipe for reproduction. Using a common cloning technique, researchers removed the genetic material from one females eggs and replaced them with nuclear DNA from the skin cells of another. Then with a novel chemical cocktail, they nudged the eggs to lose half their new sets of chromosomes and fertilized them with mouse sperm.

In a big step toward achieving in vitro gametogenesis one of reproductive medicines more ambitious moonshots the group led by pioneering fertility researcher Shoukrat Mitalipov now intends to use the same method to make artificial human embryos in a test tube.

If successful, the research holds enormous potential for treating infertility, preventing heritable diseases, and opening up the possibility for same-sex couples to have genetically related children.

advertisement

Its one of those high-risk, high reward type of projects, said Paula Amato, an OB-GYN and infertility specialist at OHSU who collects the human eggs used in Mitalipovs experiments. We have no idea yet if it will work, but age-related fertility decline remains an intractable problem in our field, so were eternally grateful to these private funders who are filling a real need here.

Mitalipov directs the Center for Embryonic Cell and Gene Therapy at OHSU. Established in 2013, the center focuses on combining assisted reproductive technologies with genetic correction techniques, with the goal of one day preventing inherited disease.

advertisement

Related:

The groups work on in vitro gametogenesis (IVG) in human cells is being made possible by an award from Open Philanthropy a grant-making organization primarily funded by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna which will supply the researchers with $4 million over the next three years. The infusion of funds and the involvement of a scientist as storied as Mitalipov makes the ethical and legal questions surrounding mass egg and sperm production more urgent, experts told STAT.

In the U.S., there are no federal laws that prohibit this type of IVG work. However, Congress has barred any research that creates, destroys, or knowingly harms human embryos from receiving federal funding. At the state level, laws governing human embryo research vary widely with 11 states banning it entirely, five states expressly permitting it, and a lot of gray areas in between.

For IVG to move from the research lab to a fertility clinic would require permission from the Food and Drug Administration. Its still unclear if thats something the agency would be able to consider a spending bill rider currently prevents the FDA from receiving any requests to pursue clinical trials involving starting pregnancies with embryos that have been genetically manipulated. In 2019, Congress considered modifying the ban, following a push from scientists and advocates of mitochondrial replacement therapy, also known as three-person IVF, but ultimately renewed it. Mitochondrial replacement therapy is a procedure that combines genetic material from an egg and sperm with mitochondria from a female donor.

Somatic cell nuclear transfer for IVG could fall under the same provision, if the somatic DNA and the egg came from different people. But if they came from the same person, that might represent a loophole.

Related:

Some bioethicists worry that the easy availability of IVG could usher in a new era of eugenics, scenarios where prospective parents could create large numbers of embryos and use genetic tools to select the best one. IVG also raises the specter of nonconsensual parenthood something most state laws are currently ill-equipped to handle.

Should this become clinically available, there will be legitimate questions about whose cells can be used and under what conditions that will need regulatory answers, said Hank Greely, director of the Stanford Center for Law and Bioscience, whose book, The End of Sex, examines the future of in vitro gametogenesis. Will that happen? We dont know. But Mitalipov has certainly proven himself a bold and creative scientist, and from my perspective, having his group join the effort to help people who want to have genetic babies but cant is a good thing, provided they can do it safely and effectively.

Mitalipovs lab has long been an incubator for envelope-pushing science. In 2009, he and his colleagues figured out a way to swap out glitchy mitochondrial DNA for healthy versions in the egg cells of monkeys a groundbreaking advance that paved the way for mitochondrial replacement therapy in humans. In 2013, they created lines of embryonic stem cells from cloned human embryos for the first time. A few years later, they became the first team in the U.S. to attempt to correct a genetic mutation in viable human embryos using CRISPR.

But until recently, in vitro gametogenesis, or IVG, wasnt on his to-do list.

Gametes are the cells capable of giving rise to future generations: sperm and eggs. The idea behind IVG is to produce those kinds of cells in test tubes, rather than inside a developing animals body.

In recent years, scientists have made headlines producing artificial gametes from induced pluripotent stem cells. But Mitalipovs group plans to revive a much older technology, which saw some early success in IVG before being abandoned: somatic cell nuclear transfer.

Somatic cell nuclear transfer was pioneered by researchers at the Roslin Institute in Scotland. After they succeeded in using the technique to clone the first mammal a sheep named Dolly scientists realized it might be used to generate artificial gametes, if they could overcome a few additional hurdles.

In cloning, the emptied egg receives a full set of chromosomes from the somatic cell donor and is stimulated in the lab to make it start dividing. Any offspring that result will be genetically identical to that somatic cell.

The procedure for making an artificial oocyte is technically similar to cloning, but would generate unique individuals after fertilization with sperm. However, in order for any resulting embryos to have the right number of chromosomes, the donor DNA has to be cut in half, a process known as haploidization. Oocytes are equipped with the machinery to make that adjustment, if the somatic DNA is introduced at the right phase of their cell cycle.

In 2000, four years after Dolly was born, researchers in Spain generated the first human artificial oocytes using this method. They fertilized three of them, and froze the resulting embryos at the two-cell stage. The plan was to transfer the frozen embryos to the uterus of a woman who had been unable to conceive, and consented to having her somatic DNA slipped into donor eggs as a last-ditch attempt to have genetically related children with her husband.

Related:

But when the same protocol was tested in mice where its effects could be examined more closely the chromosomes didnt separate as intended. Shortly thereafter, somatic cell nuclear transfer for human reproduction was banned in many countries, including Spain.

The IVG field moved on, buoyed by the discovery a few years later of a method for taking any kind of cell and rewinding its developmental clock to a more primitive state. With the right chemical cues, a team of Japanese scientists nudged these pluripotent stem cells to produce functional gametes in mice; first sperm in 2011, then eggs, five years later. But they struggled to generate similar results in humans.

In 2018, the group succeeded for the first time in making immature human eggs from scratch. But the process wasnt very efficient and it involved incubating the human stem cells in mini-ovaries theyd created in the lab from mouse embryonic cells a resource-intensive process not exactly suited to mass manufacturing.

So when a post-doc at OHSU named Eunju Kang proposed revisiting the idea of somatic cell nuclear transfer for IVG, Mitalipov was initially skeptical. But data from her initial mouse experiments proved persuasive. Mitalipov threw his support behind the project, and teamed up with a group at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, including reproductive endocrinologist Gianpiero Palermo, who had successfully generated artificial human oocytes using cloning technology back in 2002. They published the results of their mice experiments in Nature Communications Biology in January.

Related:

The OHSU team is now adapting those methods to see if they can generate artificial human eggs with properly separated chromosomes. If successful, they plan to then fertilize those eggs with sperm and grow the resulting embryos in the lab for five or six days to see if they develop normally.

They are betting that this method, while older, will prove better than the induced pluripotent stem cell technologies currently being advanced by artificial egg-making start-up outfits like Conception, Ivy Natal and Gameto.

That approach requires the cells to be cultured for months rather than days, which can lead to epigenetic programming errors and chromosomal instability. Mitalipov also believes that starting with natural eggs will make it easier to strip the donor DNA of its cellular memory and return it to the primitive state known as totipotency a critical step in enabling the embryo to eventually develop all the specialized tissues that make up a human body.

Science Writer

Megan Molteni is a science writer for STAT, covering genomic medicine, neuroscience, and reproductive tech.

This name will appear with your comment

Link:
Researchers revive abandoned technique in effort to make artificial human eggs in a test tube - STAT

Global Stem Cells Group Expands Its Stem Cell Therapy and Regenerative Medicine Centers to Indonesia – GlobeNewswire

By Stem Cell Clinics

LAS VEGAS, NV, Aug. 01, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NewMediaWire Meso Numismatics, Inc. (Meso Numismatics or the Company) (MSSV), a technology company specializing in Biotech and Numismatics, is pleased to announce additional global expansion by opening stem cell therapy and regenerative medicine facilities in Indonesia. The new facilities emphasize Global Stem Cells Group's objective of introducing its therapies and technology to meet market demands in populous parts of the world.

In partnership with the Dr. Yanti Aesthetic Clinics, which currently has 6 branches across Indonesia, this latest GSCG expansion will promote high standards of service in regenerative medicine across the country. As part of this effort, through GSCG the International Society for Stem Cells Applications (ISSCA) has granted Dr. Yanti Aesthetic Clinics membership and use of its brand, products, therapies, and training on how to apply stem cell therapies.

This new partnership seeks to expand the Global Stem Cells Group (GSCG) brand and create centers of excellence in cell therapy to meet the high demand within the vast Asian markets, said David Christensen, CEO of MSSV. GSCG is rapidly expanding its global operations as it seeks to become a significant player in the lucrative regenerative medicine industry. To achieve our expansion plans, our organization is partnering with healthcare providers specializing in regenerative medicine with at least five years of experience in the healthcare sector.

Video: https://youtu.be/T2CFjsps9qk

The vision behind the effort.

The Indonesia addition is the latest part of an expanding medical network of partners, and it will formalize and strengthen ties, establishing a global center of excellence to guarantee that we effectively use the underlying basic stem cell technology for medical conditions, where traditional therapeutic approaches seem to have failed. This is consistent with GSCG's overall strategy for developing regenerative medicine through data-driven studies, disease modeling, and cell-based therapeutics.

The Dr. Yanti Aesthetic Clinic is a key partnership because it provides the organizational and physical infrastructure needed to disseminate need-based stem cell locally. And Global Stem Cells Group's outstanding cell and stem cell biology and disease pathophysiology give an edge to patients for which they are prescribed.

The opening in Indonesia also presents the perfect opportunity to translate breakthrough therapies from basic discoveries to useful products by drawing upon the skills and local knowledge promoted within Dr. Yanti Aesthetic Clinics.

GSCG group managing director, Benito Novas, provided a clear description of the new strategic direction and objectives. "Our goal is to make regenerative medicine benefits a reality for both doctors and patients all around the world. We recently launched a very similar effort in Pakistan. Additional announcements are planned in the near future as we attempt to expand our presence." Meso Numismatics and Global Stem Cells Group Expand its Global Footprint

The current market outlook.

Stem cell therapy is striving to become an increasingly effective clinical solution to treat conditions that traditional or mainstream medicine offers only within palliative care and pain management. Patients all over the world are searching for a natural regenerative alternative without the potential risks and side effects sometimes associated with mainstream pharmaceuticals. With the opening of each new treatment center in populous regions such as Indonesia, GSCG is working to help stem cell therapy and regenerative medicine to eventually move from alternative and elective procedures to mainstream protocols.

This new clinic effort will play a significant role in the development of regenerative medicine in Indonesia and indeed the rest of the world by adding yet another opportunity for continuous improvement through research and development, Christensen continued. By adding busy clinics in population centers, we plan to consistently generate high volumes of reliable clinical data to assist us with the development and refinement of even more medicines and treatments.

About Dr. Yanti Aesthetic Clinics

Dr. Yanti Aesthetic Clinics is a premier cosmetic and aesthetics clinic based in Kelapa Gading, Jakarta Utara. Since its inception in 2004 in Surabaya by Dr. Khoe Yanti Khusmiran, the clinic has expanded to over 6 branches throughout Indonesia. Dr. Yanti clinics provide a range of skin and body enhancement treatments through minimally invasive and non-invasive procedures the expertise of which are a natural fit for the addition of a variety of stem cell therapies.

"Indonesians have a growing need for the latest medical technology that is reliable, potent, has reduced side effects, and leverages the bodys own healing biochemistry to resolve injury and aging, said Dr. Yanti. We are honored to be a part of GSCG, which has a proven 10-year track record in the market with a strong and growing international reputation. This new partnership is expected to create a wide variety of custom treatment options we can offer our patients and treat injury and illness in ways we could not before.

The newly formed partnership will deliver revolutionary medicines through Dr. Yanti clinics to assist patients in avoiding permanent harm and live a healthier life, while changing the paradigm from asymptomatic treatments to cures that may improve and restore quality of life.

More about Global Stem Cells Group

GSCG delivers leadership in regenerative medicine research, patient applications, and training through our strategic global networks. We endeavor to enable physicians to treat otherwise incurable diseases using stem cell therapy and to improve the quality of life and care across the world.

For this reason, GSCG works with innovative, next-generation therapy providers like Dr. Yanti Aesthetic Clinics to give access to one-of-a-kind holistic and safe treatment options.

More information regarding this transaction and the Global Stem Cells Group may be found at GSCG.

This press release should be read in conjunction with all other filings on http://www.sec.gov

For more information on Global Stem Cells Group please visit: http://www.stemcellsgroup.com

About Meso Numismatics: Meso Numismatics, Corp is an emerging Biotechnology and numismatic technology company. The Company has quickly become the central hub for rare, exquisite, and valuable inventory for not only the Meso region, but for exceptional items from around the world.

Meso has now added Biotechnology to its portfolio and will continue to grow the company in this new direction. With the Company's breadth of business experience and technology team, the Company will continue to help companies grow.

Forward-Looking Statements

Some information in this document constitutes forward-looking statements or statements which may be deemed or construed to be forward-looking statements, such as the closing of the share exchange agreement. The words plan, "forecast", "anticipates", "estimate", "project", "intend", "expect", "should", "believe", and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve, and are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which could cause the Company's actual results, performance (financial or operating) or achievements to differ from the future results, performance (financial or operating) or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The risks, uncertainties and other factors are more fully discussed in the Company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements attributable to Meso Numismatics, Inc., herein are expressly qualified in their entirety by the above-mentioned cautionary statement. Meso Numismatics, Inc. disclaims any obligation to update forward-looking statements contained in this estimate, except as may be required by law.

For further information, please contact: investor.relations@mssvinc.com Telephone: (800) 956-3935

Read more:
Global Stem Cells Group Expands Its Stem Cell Therapy and Regenerative Medicine Centers to Indonesia - GlobeNewswire

Cell Therapy Bioprocessing Market is anticipated to accumulate USD 30052.6 million by 2028, says The Insight Partners – Digital Journal

By Stem Cell Clinics

According to The Insight Partners research, the cell therapy bioprocessing market was assessed at US$ 11,192.50 million in 2020 and is projected to be worth US$ 30,052.61 million by 2028, growing at a 13.5% CAGR between 2021 and 2028. Increasing investments for cell and gene therapy manufacturing and growing approvals for cell therapies are expected to be the prime drivers for the cell therapy bioprocessing market.

Cell and gene therapy is still in an early stage of development in the biotechnology sector. Despite being a niche domain of the biotechnology sector, cell and gene therapy has paved investments by contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMO)/contract manufacturing organizations (CMO). Companies are investing in enhancing their manufacturing capabilities and offering world-class therapies to treat chronic conditions. In February 2020, Catalent, Inc. and MaSTherCell Global, Inc. signed an agreement in which Catalent, Inc. agreed to acquire MaSTherCell Global, Inc. for an amount of US$ 135 million. According to the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM), investments in cell and gene therapy doubled in 2020 compared to 2019 and were considerably higher than in 2018. Thus, owing to the heavy investments, the market is expected to flourish in the coming years.

Get Sample PDF Copy of Cell Therapy Bioprocessing Market Size, Share, Growth- COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis with Strategic Developments at: https://www.theinsightpartners.com/sample/TIPRE00021550/

Leading players profiled in the cell therapy bioprocessing market report are Fresenius Kabi AG, Asahi Kasei Corporation, Sartorius AG, Merck KGaA, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc, Corning Incorporated, Cytiva (GE Healthcare), Lonza, Repligen, and Catalent Inc.

Based on end user, the cell therapy bioprocessing market is segmented into hospitals and clinics, diagnostic centers, regenerative medicine centers, and academic and research institutes. The academic and research institute segment held the largest share of the market in 2020. The segment is estimated to register the highest CAGR of 14.1% in the market during the forecast period. It was valued at US$ 4,331.72 million in 2020 and is projected to reach US$ 12,141.53 million by 2028.

From the regional frame of reference, North America held a significant share in the cell therapy bioprocessing market in 2020. The regional market was assessed at US$ 5,031.03 million in 2020 and is slated to amass US$ 13,700.98 million by 2028, growing at a CAGR 13.7% during the forecast period. Meanwhile, APAC is predicted to register a stellar growth rate of 14.0% over the analysis period to garner US$ 5,872.28 million by 2028.

Avail Lucrative DISCOUNTS on Cell Therapy Bioprocessing Market Research Study: https://www.theinsightpartners.com/discount/TIPRE00021550/

Cell therapy involves the production of cartilage repair products, tissue-engineered skin, personalized medicines, and cellular immunotherapy to treat chronic diseases. The increasing need to treat chronic diseases has pushed the research and development activities resulting in growing cell therapy production and product approvals. Growing product developments have resulted in various product approvals that reflect the increase in cell therapies. Therefore, it is expected that the growing approvals for cell therapies are enormously increasing the cell therapy bioprocessing, which, in turn, is likely to drive the markets growth over the coming years.

On the other hand, cell therapy bioprocessing challenges hinder cell therapy bioprocessing augmentation.

Based on technology, the cell therapy bioprocessing market is divided into a bioreactor, lyophilization, electrospinning, control-flow centrifugation, ultrasonic lysis, genome editing technology, cell immortalization technology, and viral vector technology. Of these, the bioreactor segment held 31.47% of the market share in 2020. The segment was assessed at US$ 3,521.94 million in 2020 and is projected to reach US$ 9,977.79 million by 2028, growing at a 14.2% CAGR during the forecast period.

As per cell type, the market is divided into stem cells, immune cells, human embryonic stem cells, pluripotent stem cells, and hematopoietic stem cells. Of these, the stem cell segment registered 48.53% of the market share in 2020. The segment was evaluated at US$ 5,431.23 million in 2020 and is slated to amass US$ 15,171.69 million by 2028, expanding at a 14% CAGR between 2021 and 2028.

Moving on to indication, the cell therapy bioprocessing market is divided into cardiovascular disease (CVD), oncology, wound healing, orthopedic, and others. Among these, the oncology segment accounted for 37.11% of the market share in 2020. The segment was evaluated at US$ 4,154.07 million in 2020 and is slated to garner US$ 11,530.16 million by 2028, augmenting at a 13.9% CAGR between 2021 and 2028.

Directly Purchase Premium Copy of cell therapy bioprocessing Market Growth Report at: https://www.theinsightpartners.com/buy/TIPRE00021550/

About Us:

The Insight Partners is a one stop industry research provider of actionable intelligence. We help our clients in getting solutions to their research requirements through our syndicated and consulting research services. We specialize in industries such as Semiconductor and Electronics, Aerospace and Defense, Automotive and Transportation, Biotechnology, Healthcare IT, Manufacturing and Construction, Medical Device, Technology, Media and Telecommunications, Chemicals and Materials.

Contact Us:

If you have any queries about this report or if you would like further information, please contact us:

Contact Person: Sameer Joshi

E-mail: [emailprotected]

Phone: +1-646-491-9876

More:
Cell Therapy Bioprocessing Market is anticipated to accumulate USD 30052.6 million by 2028, says The Insight Partners - Digital Journal

Uncovering New Approaches to a Common Inherited Heart Disorder – Yale School of Medicine

By Stem Cell Clinics

Research led by Muhammad Riaz, PhD, Jinkyu Park, PhD, and Lorenzo Sewanan, MD, PhD, from the Qyang and Campbell laboratories at Yale, provides a mechanism to identify abnormalities linked with a hereditary cardiac condition, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), in which walls of the left ventricle become abnormally thick and often stiff. The findings appear in the journal Circulation.

Patients with familial HCM have an increased risk of sudden death, heart failure, and arrhythmias. HCM is the most common inherited cardiac disease, affecting one in 500 people. The disease is thought to be caused by mutations that regulate cardiac muscle contraction, compromising the hearts ability to pump blood. However, the mechanisms behind the disease are poorly understood.

For this multi-model study, the researchers used stem cell approaches to understand the mechanisms that drive inherited HCM. The technology, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), can accelerate insights into the genetic causes of disease and the development of new treatments using the patients own cells.

This is a humbling experience that a patients disease phenotypes teach researchers fundamental basic knowledge that sets the stage for innovative new therapies. Furthermore, our research has established a great model to assist many physicians at Yale School of Medicine and Yale New Haven Hospital to unravel mechanistic insights into disease progression using the patients own iPSCs and engineered tissues, said Yibing Qyang, PhD, associate professor of medicine (cardiology) and of pathology.

We wanted to understand the disease mechanism and find a new therapeutic strategy, Park said.

The concept originated with an 18-month-old patient who suffered from familial HCM. Through a collaboration with Daniel Jacoby, MD, adjunct associate professor of cardiovascular medicine and an expert on HCM, who provided medical care for this patient, Park and the team used stem cell technologies to address a fundamental question, the disease mechanisms behind HCM. They collected 10 cc of the patients blood and introduced stem cell factors into the blood cells to generate self-renewable iPSCs. By applying cardiac knowledge, they coaxed iPSCs into patients own cardiomyocytes (heart cells) for cardiac disease studies. We discovered a general mechanism which explains the disease progression, said Park.

Next, they engineered heart tissues that resembled the early-onset disease scenario of the young patient. The disease was a severe presentation at the age of 18 months, which suggested that the disease started at the fetal/neonatal stage.

The next phase of the study was to recreate a 3-D model that was used to mimic the progression of the disease, including mechanical properties such as contraction and force production of that muscle, to understand how much force is compromised if the mutation is present. This was performed in collaboration with Stuart Campbell, PhD, and Sewanan from Yales Department of Biomedical Engineering. Coupled with computational modeling for muscle contraction, the authors developed robust systems that allowed them to examine the biomechanical properties of the tissue at three-dimensional levels.

Finally, using advanced gene editing technologies, the research team modified these mutations. They discovered that after the mutations were corrected, the disease was reversed. These insights about sarcomeric protein mutations could lead to novel therapeutics for HCM and other diseases. The interaction between mutations could also suggest that the same biomechanical mechanism exists in other conditions such as ischemic heart disease.

We can apply these findings to cardiac conditions associated with hypertension, diabetes, or aging, said Riaz.

One of the fundamental challenges was that we needed to generate iPSCs from the patients family, Riaz added. Using this technology, Park was able to recreate primary cells from the cells of a patient with HCM, a process which takes over a month. Riaz and Park used stem cells to identify the vital role of pathological tissue remodeling, which is caused by sarcomeric hypertrophic cardiomyopathy mutations.

We are hopeful that our findings will be replicated in the scientific community, said Riaz. This is an example of bed to bench research, where scientists extract materials from clinics and conduct the experiment in the laboratory and then discover new methods to treat patients.

The authors also noted that RNA sequencing could be used as a guide to characterize the disease at a molecular level. Scientists may be able to identify more targeted drugs by examining the biomechanical properties of the tissue. We can now screen multiple drugs to see whether any of those drugs are able to rescue the phenotype, they said.

Riaz, now an associate research scientist in the Qyang lab, began as a cancer researcher. He earned a PhD from the Erasmus University Medical Center, based in Rotterdam, Netherlands. He later studied genetic disorders in skeletal muscle disease before joining the lab in 2017.

Park, also from the Qyang lab, graduated from Seoul National University, South Korea in 2013. He completed postdoctoral research at the University of Missouri where he focused on vascular biology and emerging areas in stem cell technology.

Yales Lorenzo R. Sewanan, MD, PhD, Yongming Ren, PhD, Jonas Schwan, PhD, Subhash K. Das, PhD, Pawel T. Pomianowski, MD, Yan Huang, PhD, Matthew W. Ellis, BS, Jiesi Luo, PhD, Caihong Qiu, PhD, George Tellides, MD, PhD, John Hwa, MD, PhD, Lawrence H. Young, MD, Daniel L. Jacoby, MD, and Yibing Qyang contributed to this study. Additional coauthors are Indiana Universitys Juli Liu, PhD and Lei Yang, PhD; Columbia Universitys Loujin Song, PhD, Masayuki Yazawa, PhD, and I-Ping Chen, DDS, PhD.

Funding for the research came, in part, from the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, and the American Heart Association.

Link:
Uncovering New Approaches to a Common Inherited Heart Disorder - Yale School of Medicine

NK Cell Therapy and Stem Cell Therapy Market Investment Analysis Shanghaiist – Shanghaiist

By Stem Cell Clinics

Published By Marketreports.info

NK Cell Therapy and Stem Cell Therapy Market research report including customer preference analysis, market dynamics (drivers, restraints, opportunities) segmentations like Types, Applications, Regions (United States, Europe, China, Japan, India, Southeast Asia, Latin America, Middle East and Africa) and Manufactures.

Final Report will add the analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on this industry.

Global NK Cell Therapy and Stem Cell Therapy Market 2022-2030 research report focuses on the product overview, scope, market upstream and downstream analysis, players profiles, market landscape by player, sales, revenue, price trend, market forecast, market drivers analysis, restraints and challenges, opportunities analysis, size, segmentations (mainly covering product type, application, and geography), competitor landscape, recent status, and development trends. Furthermore, the report provides strategies for companies to overcome threats posed by COVID-19 containing 150 numbers of pages, tables, figures and charts.

Get a Sample PDF of the Report marketreports.info/sample/81636/NK-Cell-Therapy-and-Stem-Cell-Therapy

Market Analysis and Insights: Global NK Cell Therapy and Stem Cell Therapy Market

The NK Cell Therapy and Stem Cell Therapy market has witnessed a growth from xx USD million to xx USD million from 2014 to 2022. With a CAGR of xx%, this market is estimated to reach xx USD million in 2030.

The major players covered in the NK Cell Therapy and Stem Cell Therapy market report are: Chipscreen Biosciences, Affimed NV, Altor BioScience Corporation, Innate Pharma SA, Takeda Pharmaceutical, Osiris Therapeutics, NuVasive, Chiesi Pharmaceuticals, JCR Pharmaceutical, Pharmicell, Medi-post, Anterogen, Molmed

Get a Sample Copy of the NK Cell Therapy and Stem Cell Therapy Market Report 2022 : marketreports.info/sample/81636/NK-Cell-Therapy-and-Stem-Cell-Therapy

By Type NK Cell Therapy Stem Cell Therapy

By Application Hospital & clinics Regenerative medicine centers Diagnostic centers Research institutes Others

Major Regions or countries covered in this report:

United States Europe China Japan India Southeast Asia Latin America Middle East and Africa Others Years considered for this report:

Historical Years: 2014-2021 Base Year: 2021 Estimated Year: 2022 Forecast Period: 2022-2030

The Study Objectives of this report are:

To analysis the worldwide NK Cell Therapy and Stem Cell Therapy market size by product types, applications and regions. To comprehend the design of NK Cell Therapy and Stem Cell Therapy market by recognizing its different sub-fragments. To study NK Cell Therapy and Stem Cell Therapy by individual manufactures growth, future trends. To study Product Overview and Scope of NK Cell Therapy and Stem Cell Therapy market segment, Revenue Sales Status and Outlook To study Manufacturing Cost Structure of NK Cell Therapy and Stem Cell Therapy market To understand market Upstream and Downstream analysis To understand Market Competitive Situation and Trends To understand market Drivers, Restraints, Opportunities, Challenges faced by NK Cell Therapy and Stem Cell Therapy market To analysis new product and new technology release Analysis of Industry Development Trends under COVID-19 Outbreak

Purchase this Report marketreports.info/checkout?buynow=81636/NK-Cell-Therapy-and-Stem-Cell-Therapy

About Us:

Marketreports.info is the Credible Source for Gaining the Market Reports that will provide you with the Lead Your Business Needs. The market is changing rapidly with the ongoing expansion of the industry. Advancement in technology has provided todays businesses with multifaceted advantages resulting in daily economic shifts. Thus, it is very important for a company to comprehend the patterns of the market movements in order to strategize better. An efficient strategy offers the companies a head start in planning and an edge over the competitors.

Contact Us

Market Reports

Phone (UK): +44 141 628 5998

Email: sales@marketreports.info

Web: https://www.marketreports.info

Go here to see the original:
NK Cell Therapy and Stem Cell Therapy Market Investment Analysis Shanghaiist - Shanghaiist

Buffalo center fuels research that can save your life from heart disease and stroke – Buffalo News

By Stem Cell Clinics

Dr. Jennifer Lang splits most of her work life treating patients at Gates Vascular Institute and conducting research in her lab several floors up in the same building.

UB medical physics students Simon Wu and Emily Vanderbelt work with flow-through 3D-printed aneurysm models using X-rays in the Canon Stroke & Vascular Research Center, part of the University at BuffaloClinical and Translational Research Center on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

The arrangement suits her well as she continues promising research to learn if a stem cell-derived treatment can repair damaged heart tissue.

Lang, a cardiologist, and her University at Buffalo team, face a dilemma: The immune system revs into high gear when the heart suffers a serious setback, limiting the power of stem cells to heal.

The daunting task seems more surmountable these days because she works in a building filled with researchers of all stripes.

I do collaborations with groups that I otherwise wouldn't have. Its led to some really new, interesting results, said Lang, assistant professor in the UB Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences who practices with UBMD Internal Medicine and at the Buffalo VA Medical Center.

This day, a surgical team worked seamlessly to monitor her vital signs and feather a medical device through a catheter into the left side of her damaged heart. The procedure slowed her heartrate so her organs could take a couple of days to re-collect themselves and give her a fighting chance to recover.

UB-fueled research unfolds on floors five through eight of the building at 875 Ellicott St., alongside Buffalo General Medical Center.

Ten years ago, the university invested $118 million into its Clinical and Translational Research Center, and about $25 million for equipment came from industry partners who wanted to join forces with physicians, engineers and others in the science fields.

The center became the first major pieceof the UB medical school to move onto the downtown Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, followed in late 2017 by the $375 million Jacobs School teaching and research complex, around the corner at Main and High streets.

Both foster translational medicine, which combines disciplines, resources and techniques to move benchtop research to the patient bedside, eventually strengthening community health.

Langs work symbolizes the approach.

The Buffalo native can see her high school alma mater, City Honors, from her workplace. She went to Cornell University as an undergraduate and returned to Buffalo to go to medical school. Buoyed by fellow UB students, faculty and mentors, she chose to stay in the city for her internal medicine residency and cardiology fellowship.

Lang did her classroom work and research on the UB South Campus and most of her clinical work 8 miles away, on the downtown Medical Campus.

Stairs and elevators are the only things that separate her from most of her collaborators and patients today.

I moved into this building when it opened 10 years ago, she said. At the time, I was completing my cardiology fellowship. There was a physical divide, so I was thrilled with the new arrangement. Things can happen in parallel now.

Dr. Timothy Murphy, left, director of theUB Clinical and Translational Research Center in Buffalo, works with research technician Charmaine Kirkham in their lab, which focuses on potential treatments forchronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

That was the plan, said Dr. Timothy Murphy, director of the UB Clinical and Translational Research Center.

Clinical research and health care have become more and more seamlessly integrated, he said. The building contributed to that.

Murphy, another regional native, was among those who shared and helped carry out the vision of Gates Vascular Institute founder Dr. L. Nelson Nick Hopkins III, who chaired the UB Department of Neurosurgery from 1989 to 2013 and wanted to create a more innovative vascular center.

Murphy moved his lab in 2006 from the VA Medical Center near South Campus to the UB Center for Bioinformatics and Life Sciences on the Medical Campus, so he could be involved in the design of the UB research center, on floors above Gates Vascular, as well as at the Jacobs School particularly its labs.

They always talked about physicians and researchers bumping into each other, talking to each other, and having graduate students and postdocs and technicians talk to each other, Murphy said. Having done it now for all these years, I see it really does work.

He and his research team continue a 20-year study on the bacterial infection that causes COPD in hopes it will help lead to vaccines that prevent the infection and new treatments to clear the bacteria from the lower airway.

As senior associate dean forclinical and translational researchat the Jacobs School, he is also the point person for coordinating UB-related clinical trials and encouraging collisions between health care researchers on the Medical Campus and around the world.

There were 70 such trials on the Medical Campus in 2015, when the building where he works was in its infancy. Today, there are more than 200.

"Things can happen in parallel now," says Dr. Jennifer Lang, a cardiologist, researcher and University at Buffalo assistant professor who splits her research and clinical time in the same building on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

Labs focused on obstetric and gynecological advances and keys to healthy aging occupy space near his seventh-floor lab.

The Clinical and Translational Research Center was established in 2012. UB added a biobank in 2019 to store medical specimens for ongoing clinical studies.

Its collaborative framework helped UB land a $15 million Clinical and Translational Science Awardin 2015 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to encourage research efforts across university departments and specialties to boost innovation, speed development of medical treatments, and reduce health disparities in poor, rural and minority communities.

The five-year grant was renewed in 2020 with nearly $22 million more, encouraging Buffalo-based researchers to work with others who got awards, including researchers with Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Stanford and Yale universities.

A printer creates a 3D model, slice by slice, at the Canon Stroke & Vascular Research Center in the University at Buffalo Clinical and Translational Research Center. Lab researchers experiment with different mixtures of six polymers to make the most malleable and useful models for medical research.

Throughout the building, the goal is to improve medical devices and treatments that make an impact in the clinics and catheter suites in the Gates Vascular Institute on the floors below the research center and provide data and education that informs others, including patients.

The eighth-floor Canon Stroke & Vascular Research Center, which tops the UB research center, is a case in point.

Ciprian Chip Ionita, its director, came to UB from Romania in 1999 and worked his first dozen years on the South Campus.

We were the first ones to move in, said Ionita, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and member of the medical school's Department of Neurosurgery.

The lab was designed to help innovate and improve medical devices and neurovascular procedures.

Part of its work involves using MRIs, CT scans and other radiological images of Gates Vascular patients to create 3D-printed models of the circulatory system and heart.

3D printing created this replica of part of a patient's spinal column at the Canon Stroke & Vascular Research Center. Researchers there push the boundaries until their findings are refined to the point where they can be applied to model-making on two highly calibrated 3D printers in the Jacobs Institute downstairs from the lab that meet FDA standards. We fail up here about 90% of the time, says Ciprian Chip Ionita, lab director. They fail maybe 1%, so were testing everything that's possible.

Medical school and other lab researchers use the models produced here to better understand how anatomy and disease of former and current patients led to poor health and, in some cases, poor surgical outcomes.

Gates Vascular surgeons also can use 3D models that replicate the anatomy of patients awaiting surgery to practice feathering catheters and medical devices through bends, nooks and crannies of the blood vessels, and deploy medical devices in spines and the circulatory system as they maneuver past muscles, bones, blockages and other obstructions that might come into play.

During practice interventions, we analyze everything, Ionita said, because we can go into these models with sensors to measure blood flow, blood pressure and more.

You can create a model that says, Here's somebody who has a carotid artery that's 50% (blocked) and he's 50 years old, Ionita said. Or we can say, 'Here is a young person in their 20s, and is fully compliant, no stenosis or whatever.' And those mechanical properties are translated by the printer.

Even cadaver donors cant do that.

The goal is to lower the rate of complications and be successful in one shot during a procedure, said Ionita, who supervises up to 10 graduate biomedical engineering students, and roughly 20 undergraduate, graduate and medical school students.

Those who pay close attention to 3D models and other medical research based on data from patients treated in the building include Dr. Elad Levy, co-director of the Gates Vascular Stroke Center; Dr. Adnan Siddiqui, director of neurological and stroke services at Kaleida Health; and Dr. Vijay Iyer, medical director of cardiology and the Structural Heart Program at Kaleida. All three have ties to UB.

Even here, Ionita said, physician-scientists and other researchers see the damage that smoking, high blood pressure and living in ZIP codes where poverty is rampant can create complications that lead to worse health and surgical outcomes.

Eric Wozniak, a senior research and development technician in the Idea to Reality lab at the Jacobs Institute, uses a microscope as he works to improve catheter technology.

Doctors and staff improve treatment protocols and surgical prowess with help from those who work on the top half of the building for UB and the Jacobs Institute. The latter is named for Dr. Lawrence D. Jacobs, a Buffalo neurosurgeon whose research led to the first treatments for multiple sclerosis.

Four years after Jacobs died in 2001, his brother Jeremy, chair of the Delaware North Cos. and the UB Council, approached the university about creating a lasting memorial for the respected physician. He later signed on to the concept of creating a multidisciplinary vascular center, starting with a $10 million donation for the institute that bears the family name.

The institute includes an atrium, caf and glass-walled spaces that overlook procedure rooms on the floor below. It has 50 employees, including more than 30 biomedical and electrical engineers, who seek company-sponsored research funding, help collect data and make prototypes for clinical trials, and work with researchers to publish their work in medical journals.

In 2016, the institute was designated a 3D Printing Center of Excellence in Health Care by Israeli-based Stratasys Ltd., a leading 3D printing-maker. In early 2018, it created a proof-of-concept Idea to Reality Center, known as i2R, to further improve medical devices and surgical techniques in the vascular space.

This is our secret sauce lab, said Siddiqui, Jacobs Institute CEO. There's nothing we do downstairs that we could not do better.

This is a device designed and built in the Idea 2 Reality lab at the Jacobs Institute in Buffalo. The lab improves medical devices and technology used in vascular procedures and treatments.

Dr. Carlos Pena, who ran the FDA Neurologic Devices Division for 15 years, joined the institute staff last year to improve the chances technology conceived and designed with help from the institute gets to market.

Every company wants to talk to him, Siddiqui said. He tells them what testing needs to be done. Some of that gets done in-house. A lot of it goes to the university or, when they have a clinical trial, that gets done downstairs so the entire ecosystem is functioning, I think better than Nick Hopkins ever imagined.

Lang, the cardiologist, doesnt miss her former workday commutes. She loves the design and location of the building that sets the standard for vascular care.

Most of her days mix benchtop research in her lab and patient visits and procedures on the floors below. When there is time, she can visit her husband, Fraser Sim, neuroscience director and associate professor at the medical school.

Because we're in such close proximity to the Jacobs School now, we're also really able to engage the medical students earlier in their careers and encourage more research, Lang said. And because we're so close to the hospital, we're able to involve medical residents and fellows in our research projects much more than ever before.

University at Buffalo medical school postdoctoral research associateToubaTarvirdizadeh focuses on cardiac research in the lab of Dr. Jennifer Lang at the UB Clinical and Translational Research Center in Buffalo.

She has spent a decade trying to find better ways for a stem cell derivative that can withstand an immune response and rejuvenate heart tissue without major complications, a result that could help patients recover from a heart attack and lessen the strain of heart failure.

Four years ago, Lang and her doctoral student researcher, Kyle Mentkowski, discovered a way that lowered the immune response in mice that received the derivative.

Mentkowski, now a post-doctorate researcher at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital, was talking with another group of student researchers in the building when they thought it might be a good idea to bring Dr. Jessica Reynolds, an immunologist and UB medical school associate professor, into the research.

The collaboration created robust, reproducible results in mice models, Lang said, and the start of testing in human immune cells she and her colleagues hope can benefit patients within the next decade.

Collaborators now regularly get together to chat at the Jacobs Institute.

The NIH seems very interested in this as a potential clinical therapy, Lang said, but the field as a whole is still in the beginning stages of understanding where we need to go next.

Dr. Aaron Hoffman, left, University at Buffalo medical school associate professor of surgery, and Dr. Kenneth Snyder, UB associate professor of neurosurgery, chat during a break in the Jacobs Institute atrium.

UB researchers have shared some of their findings with researchers making similar inroads elsewhere, she said, and the work spawned other collaborations with Reynolds, her research team and scientists in the UB Department of Biomedical Engineering.

This type of unplanned interaction is not a unique occurrence in this building, Lang said. Our story is just one of many.

The smart way to start your day. We sift through all the news to give you a concise, informative look at the top headlines and must-read stories every weekday.

More:
Buffalo center fuels research that can save your life from heart disease and stroke - Buffalo News

→←