Posted: November 21, 2014 at 9:44 am
Hands-free stem cell research: services to save you time
http://www.lifetechnologies.com/us/en/home/life-science/stem-cell-research/stem-cell-services.html To reprogram, expand, characterize, engineer, and differen...
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Hands-free stem cell research: services to save you time - Video
Posted: November 21, 2014 at 9:44 am
The Charlie Rose Science Series: The Latest on Stem Cell Research - 56:46 -...
This fifth episode of the Charlie Rose Science Series is an exploration of one of the most promising fields of science: stem cell research. Our panel discuss...
By: Davies Robinson
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The Charlie Rose Science Series: The Latest on Stem Cell Research - 56:46 -... - Video
Posted: November 21, 2014 at 7:49 am
CLEVELAND -
Our bodies contain 23 pairs of them, 46 total, but if chromosomes are damaged, they can cause birth defects, disabilities, growth problems, even death.
Case Western Reserve University scientist Anthony Wynshaw-Boris is studying how to repair damaged chromosomes with the help of a recent discovery. He's taking skin cells and reprogramming them to work like embryonic stem cells, which can grow into different cell types.
"You're taking adult or a child's skin cells. You're not causing any loss of an embryo, and you're taking those skin cells to make a stem cell," said Wynshaw-Boris.
Scientists studied patients with a specific defective chromosome that was shaped like a ring. They took the patients' skin cells and reprogrammed them into embryonic-like cells in the lab. They found this process caused the damaged "ring" chromosomes to be replaced by normal chromosomes.
"It at least raises the possibility that ring chromosomes will be lost in stem cells," said Wynshaw-Boris.
While this research was only conducted in lab cultures on the rare ring-shaped chromosomes, scientists hope it will work in patients with common abnormalities like Down syndrome.
"What we're hoping happens is we might be able to use, modify, what we did, to rescue cell lines from any patient that has any severe chromosome defect," Wynshaw-Boris explained.
It's research that could one day repair faulty chromosomes and stop genetic diseases in their tracks.
The reprogramming technique that transforms skin cells to stem cells was so groundbreaking that a Japanese physician won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 2012 for developing it.
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Health Beat: Stem cells to repair broken chromosomes
Posted: November 21, 2014 at 7:49 am
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
20-Nov-2014
Contact: Jessica Mikulski jmikulski@nyee.edu 212-979-4274 The Mount Sinai Hospital / Mount Sinai School of Medicine @mountsinainyc
The National Eye Institute (NEI), a division of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai a five-year grant totaling $1 million that will support an effort to re-create a patients' ocular stem cells and restore vision in those blinded by corneal disease.
About six million people worldwide have been blinded by burns, trauma, infection, genetic diseases, and chronic inflammation that result in corneal stem cell death and corneal scarring.
There are currently no treatments for related vision loss that are effective over the long term. Corneal stem cell transplantation is an option in the short term, but availability of donor corneas is limited, and patients must take medications that suppress their immune systems for the rest of their lives to prevent rejection of the transplanted tissue.
A newer proposed treatment option is the replacement of corneal stem cells to restore vision. The grant from the NEI will fund Mount Sinai research to re-create a patient's own stem cells and restore vision in those blinded by corneal disease. Technological advances in recent years have enabled researchers to take mature cells, in this case eyelid or oral skin cells, and coax them backward along the development pathways to become stem cells again. These eye-specific stem cells would then be redirected down pathways that become needed replacements for damaged cells in the cornea, in theory restoring vision.
"Our findings will allow the creation of transplantable eye tissue that can restore the ocular surface," said Albert Y. Wu, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Ophthalmology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and principle investigator for the grant-funded effort. "In the future, we will be able to re-create a patient's own corneal stem cells to restore vision after being blind," added Dr. Wu, also Director of the Ophthalmic Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory in the Department of Ophthalmology and a member of the Black Family Stem Cell Institute at Icahn School of Medicine. "Since the stem cells are their own, patient's will not require immunosuppressive drugs, which would greatly improve their quality of life."
Specifically, the grant will support efforts to discover new stem cell therapies for ocular surface disease and make regenerative medicine a reality for people who have lost their vision. The research team will investigate the most viable stem cell sources, seek to create ocular stem cells from eyelid or oral skin cells, explore the molecular pathways involved in ocular and orbital development, and develop cutting-edge biomaterials to engraft a patient's own stem cells and restore vision.
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Mount Sinai researchers awarded grant to find new stem cell therapies for vision recovery
Posted: November 21, 2014 at 7:49 am
Durham, NC (PRWEB) November 20, 2014
With more soldiers returning from combat suffering devastating injuries, doctors are turning to a reconstructive surgery that uses tissue transplantation along with immuno-suppression therapy. This approach has had encouraging results; however, rejection of transplanted tissue from an unmatched donor remains a critical complication. A new study found in the latest issue of STEM CELLS Translational Medicine reports that researchers may have found a way around that.
We demonstrated in mice that a single infusion of adipose-derived stromal cells (ASC) which are stem cells taken from fat in a minimally invasive procedure from an unmatched donor combined with an extremely low dose of bone marrow cells resulted in stable long-term tolerance of the skin graft without undo consequences such as graft versus host disease, said Thomas Davis, Ph.D., a contractor from the Henry M. Jackson Foundation who is working at the Naval Medical Research Centers Regenerative Medicine Department. Dr. Davis is lead author of the study.
He added, As we move forward, we are cautiously optimistic, appreciating that the transition from these laboratory models to proof-of-principle preclinical studies is challenging and not straightforward. If successful, the technology has diverse therapeutic applications in clinical transplantation in both military and civilian settings.
The research team wanted to try using ASCs because these cells have proven to be more potent than bone marrow and cord-blood derived stem cells when it comes to inhibiting the bodys rejection of transplantations from an unmatched donor. They conducted the study by doing skin grafts in mice. One group of grafted mice received no stem cell transfusions; one group received human-derived ASCs after the graft occurred; and another group received a combination of human ASCs and stem cells harvested from the mouses own bone marrow, also after placement of the graft.
More than 200 days later, the combination of human ASC and limited numbers of blood marrow stem cells effectively prevented rejection, with no evidence of graft versus host disease, Dr. Davis reported.
Navy Capt. Eric A. Elster, M.D., professor and chair of the surgery department at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, helped lead the study. ASC constitutively produced high levels of anti-inflammatory/immunoregulatory factors, he said. While further work is needed to validate this approach in other laboratory models before clinical trials can begin, the ability to use ASC, which are non-donor specific and clinically feasible, to induce tolerance opens a new horizon in transplantation.
The implications of this research are broad, said Anthony Atala, MD, editor of STEM CELLS Translational Medicine and director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. If these findings are duplicated in additional models and in human trials, there is potential to apply this strategy to many areas of transplantation.
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This article, Adipose-derived Stromal Cells Promote Allograft Tolerance Induction, and more can be accessed at http://www.stemcellsTM.com.
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Fat and Bone Marrow-Derived Stem Cells Combo Shows Promise in Preventing Transplant Rejection
Posted: November 21, 2014 at 7:42 am
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
20-Nov-2014
Contact: Scott LaFee slafee@ucsd.edu 619-543-5232 University of California - San Diego @UCSanDiego
While investigating a rare genetic disorder, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have discovered that a ubiquitous signaling molecule is crucial to cellular reprogramming, a finding with significant implications for stem cell-based regenerative medicine, wound repair therapies and potential cancer treatments.
The findings are published in the Nov. 20 online issue of Cell Reports.
Karl Willert, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, and colleagues were attempting to use induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) to create a "disease-in-a-dish" model for focal dermal hypoplasia (FDH), a rare inherited disorder caused by mutations in a gene called PORCN. Study co-authors V. Reid Sutton and Ignatia Van den Veyver at Baylor College of Medicine had published the observation that PORCN mutations underlie FDH in humans in 2007.
FDH is characterized by skin abnormalities such as streaks of very thin skin or different shades, clusters of visible veins and wartlike growths. Many individuals with FDH also suffer from hand and foot abnormalities and distinct facial features. The condition is also known as Goltz syndrome after Robert Goltz, who first described it in the 1960s. Goltz spent the last portion of his career as a professor at UC San Diego School of Medicine. He retired in 2004 and passed away earlier this year.
To their surprise, Willert and colleagues discovered that attempts to reprogram FDH fibroblasts or skin cells with the requisite PORCN mutation into iPSCs failed using standard methods, but succeeded when they added WNT proteins - a family of highly conserved signaling molecules that regulate cell-to-cell interactions during embryogenesis.
"WNT signaling is ubiquitous," said Willert. "Every cell expresses one or more WNT genes and every cell is able to receive WNT signals. Individual cells in a dish can grow and divide without WNT, but in an organism, WNT is critical for cell-cell communication so that cells distinguish themselves from neighbors and thus generate distinct tissues, organs and body parts."
WNT signaling is also critical in limb regeneration (in some organisms) and tissue repair.
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Signaling molecule crucial to stem cell reprogramming
Posted: November 21, 2014 at 7:42 am
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
20-Nov-2014
Contact: Krista Conger kristac@stanford.edu 650-725-5371 Stanford University Medical Center @sumedicine
Mouse cells and tissues created through nuclear transfer can be rejected by the body because of a previously unknown immune response to the cell's mitochondria, according to a study in mice by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and colleagues in Germany, England and at MIT.
The findings reveal a likely, but surmountable, hurdle if such therapies are ever used in humans, the researchers said.
Stem cell therapies hold vast potential for repairing organs and treating disease. The greatest hope rests on the potential of pluripotent stem cells, which can become nearly any kind of cell in the body. One method of creating pluripotent stem cells is called somatic cell nuclear transfer, and involves taking the nucleus of an adult cell and injecting it into an egg cell from which the nucleus has been removed.
The promise of the SCNT method is that the nucleus of a patient's skin cell, for example, could be used to create pluripotent cells that might be able to repair a part of that patient's body. "One attraction of SCNT has always been that the genetic identity of the new pluripotent cell would be the same as the patient's, since the transplanted nucleus carries the patient's DNA," said cardiothoracic surgeon Sonja Schrepfer, MD, PhD, a co-senior author of the study, which will be published online Nov. 20 in Cell Stem Cell.
"The hope has been that this would eliminate the problem of the patient's immune system attacking the pluripotent cells as foreign tissue, which is a problem with most organs and tissues when they are transplanted from one patient to another," added Schrepfer, who is a visiting scholar at Stanford's Cardiovascular Institute. She is also a Heisenberg Professor of the German Research Foundation at the University Heart Center in Hamburg, and at the German Center for Cardiovascular Research.
Possibility of rejection
A dozen years ago, when Irving Weissman, MD, professor of pathology and of developmental biology at Stanford, headed a National Academy of Sciences panel on stem cells, he raised the possibility that the immune system of a patient who received SCNT-derived cells might still react against the cells' mitochondria, which act as the energy factories for the cell and have their own DNA. This reaction could occur because cells created through SCNT contain mitochondria from the egg donor and not from the patient, and therefore could still look like foreign tissue to the recipient's immune system, said Weissman, the other co-senior author of the paper. Weissman is the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor for Clinical Investigation in Cancer Research and the director of the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine.
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Pluripotent cells created by nuclear transfer can prompt immune reaction, researchers find
Posted: November 20, 2014 at 5:57 pm
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Newswise NEW YORK November 20, 2014 The National Eye Institute (NEI), a division of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai a five-year grant that will support an effort to re-create a patients ocular stem cells and restore vision in those blinded by corneal disease.
About six million people worldwide have been blinded by burns, trauma, infection, genetic diseases, and chronic inflammation that result in corneal stem cell death and corneal scarring. There are currently no treatments for related vision loss that are effective over the long term. Corneal stem cell transplantation is an option in the short term, but availability of donor corneas is limited, and patients must take medications that suppress their immune systems for the rest of their lives to prevent rejection of the transplanted tissue.
A newer proposed treatment option is the replacement of corneal stem cells to restore vision. The grant from the NEI will fund Mount Sinai research to re-create a patients own stem cells and restore vision in those blinded by corneal disease. Technological advances in recent years have enabled researchers to take mature cells, in this case eyelid or oral skin cells, and coax them backward along the development pathways to become stem cells again. These eye-specific stem cells would then be redirected down pathways that become needed replacements for damaged cells in the cornea, in theory restoring vision.
Our findings will allow the creation of transplantable eye tissue that can restore the ocular surface, said Albert Y. Wu, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Ophthalmology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and principle investigator for the grant-funded effort. In the future, we will be able to re-create a patients own corneal stem cells to restore vision after being blind, added Dr. Wu, also Director of the Ophthalmic Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory in the Department of Ophthalmology and a member of the Black Family Stem Cell Institute at Icahn School of Medicine. Since the stem cells are their own, patients will not require immunosuppressive drugs, which would greatly improve their quality of life.
Specifically, the grant will support efforts to discover new stem cell therapies for ocular surface disease and make regenerative medicine a reality for people who have lost their vision. The research team will investigate the most viable stem cell sources, seek to create ocular stem cells from eyelid or oral skin cells, explore the molecular pathways involved in ocular and orbital development, and develop cutting-edge biomaterials to engraft a patients own stem cells and restore vision.
Other investigators from Mount Sinai include Ihor Lemischka, PhD, Director, Black Family Stem Cell Institute and J. Mario Wolosin, PhD, Professor of Ophthalmology. The research is supported by NEI grant EY023997.
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Mount Sinai Researchers Awarded $1 Million Grant to Find New Stem Cell Therapies for Vision Recovery
Posted: November 20, 2014 at 5:45 pm
A new treatment for children with "bubble baby" conditions means a pair of California twins can finally have their chubby cheeks kissed.
A team at the University of California Los Angeles has combined two techniques gene therapy and stem cell therapy to treat 18 children with a genetically inherited immune condition called ADA-deficient severe combined immunodeficiency or SCID. They think it may be a true cure, but will have to wait a few more years to be sure.
Its made all the difference for two-year-old Evangelina Padilla-Vaccaro, who was diagnosed just weeks after she and her twin sister Annabella were born.
Hearing that news, you just figure your kid is dead, said Alysia Padilla-Vaccaro. Youre supposed to be showing off your kids, not thinking youre going to be burying one, she added, wiping away tears.
A bone marrow transplant can cure the condition, but Annabella wasnt a match for Evangelina. That meant isolation, because with ADA-SCID, even a common cold can kill.
So there was no kissing of our babies, Padilla-Vaccaro said. You just want to bite those chubby cheeks and kiss that face and we didn't get that until they were about 18 months old, she added.
The UCLA medical team at UCLAs Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research, led by Dr. Donald Kohn, announced it has cured 18 children with severe combined immunodeficiency.
SCID is really rare and ADA-SCID even rarer affecting maybe one in a million children. Its caused by defective genes and in the case of ADA-SCID its the gene responsible for an immune system component called adenosine deaminase.
Courtesy Padilla-Vaccaro family
Evangelina Padilla-Vaccaro was diagnosed with a "bubble baby" condition just weeks after she and her twin sister Annabella were born.
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New 'bubble baby' treatment means kisses for 18 kids
Posted: November 20, 2014 at 5:44 pm
Kilian Before After Stemlogix Stem Cell Therapy
dog with arthritis treated with autologous stem cells.
By: mark Greenberg
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Kilian Before & After Stemlogix Stem Cell Therapy - Video
