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Unveilling stem cells

Posted: June 16, 2012 at 6:16 am

Unveilling stem cells

LAWRENCE SERETSE Correspondent

Cryo-Save, the European company that intends to establish the first stem cell bank in Botswana says stem cells do not have just one function. They can themselves become or create other types of cells such as blood cells, brain cells, tissue cells, muscle cells and the like. Stem cells can be found in every person but they are much more numerous in the body of a foetus.

There are three types of stem cell banking namely, the baby stem cell banking which is the preservation and storage of cord blood and umbilical cord tissue. Adult stem cell banking is the preservation and storage of peripheral blood (from blood stream for bone marrow transplants) and fatty tissue stem cells.

The reproductive cell banking deals with the preservation and storage of eggs and sperm for future fertility treatments or artificial insemination purposes. Studying stem cells helped humans understand how they transform into the dazzling array of specialised cells that make us what we are. Some of the most serious medical conditions, such as cancer and birth defects, are caused by problems that occur somewhere in this process. A better understanding of normal cell development has allowed scientists to understand and perhaps correct the errors that cause these medical conditions. Many support stem cell research because it has the potential to provide solutions to a wide variety of medical conditions and diseases.

Stem cell research could even lead to a cure for some of the most traumatic injuries and diseases. Stem cell treatments cure over 70 diseases and disorders like Leukemia, Lymphoma, blood cancers, bone marrow disorders like Aplastic anaemia, sickle cell, Diabetes, Alzheimer's Disease, heart disease, stroke, birth defects, spinal cord injuries, ability to replace or repair organs and cancer.

This is just half of it. If one just looked at the benefits one might wonder why stem cell treatments are not in wide use. The shortcomings of stem cell research are often fears of what could result from such knowledge and the moral implications of using the stem cells. There are worries that humans should not try to play God. "Relating bodies have to pay extra caution and determine if we really need these banks. Again, some researchers may be coming to dig stem cells in Botswana, since there maybe restrictive laws in their countries.

"The unsuspecting citizens may end up giving up their stem cells for money," says Iqbal Chand, the CEO of Diagnofirm Medical Laboratories. He gave a scenario from recent publications that a patient in Berlin was cleared of HIV after stem cell treatment for leukemia.

"We do not even know how true it is and if it was the stem cells that cured his HIV. Even if it is, it is one person in a million so there is no assurance," Chand pointed out.

Another big issue with stem cells research is superstition. In most African communities, the umbilical cord must be buried after birth because it is believed that anyone with access to it could exert some spiritual influence on the child. This has led to uncertainty towards cord tissue and cord blood storage in most African societies. However, with the success of transplants making the headlines, more and more people are willing to donate adult stem cells to save lives.

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Unveilling stem cells

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Eastday-Researchers urge EU not to cut stem cell funding

Posted: June 16, 2012 at 6:16 am

LEADING scientists, biomedical research bodies and patient groups urged the European Parliament yesterday to maintain vital European Union funding for studies using embryonic stem cells.

Hailing the field as "one of the most exciting and promising" in modern biomedical research, the group said they feared research grants currently under review may be under threat from pro-life European parliamentarians who say public funds should not be spent on embryonic stem cell work.

"(EU) Commission funding must be available to continue to support scientists investigating all types of stem cells - including human embryonic stem cells - with potential to make advances in regenerative medicine," they wrote in an open letter released by the Wellcome Trust, a charitable health foundation.

The European Parliament is debating the future outline of Horizon 2020, the EU's program for research and innovation from 2014 to 2020.

Draft rules provide for stem cell research funding, including embryonic stem cells but some member states have been lobbying for embryonic stem cell research to be excluded.

Many scientists believe stem cell research has the potential to lead to the development of treatments for a whole host of diseases including incurable neurodegenerative illnesses such as Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis.

Europe, particularly Britain, is considered a world leader in stem cell research.

The letter was signed by the Association of Medical Research Charities, the British Heart Foundation, the European Genetic Alliances' Network, Britain's Medical Research Council, the charity Parkinson's UK and Wellcome Trust.

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Vein grown from stem cells saves 10-yr-old girl

Posted: June 16, 2012 at 6:16 am

Vein grown from stem cells saves 10-yr-old girl

(Reuters) / 16 June 2012

Doctors in Sweden have replaced a vital blocked blood vessel in a 10-year-old girl using the first vein grown in a lab from a patients own stem cells.

The successful transplant operation, reported online in The Lancet medical journal, marks a further advance in the search for ways to make new body parts.

It could open the door to stem cell-based grafts for heart bypass and dialysis patients who lack suitable blood vessels for replacement surgery, and the Swedish team said it is now working with an undisclosed company to commercialise the process.

Im very optimistic that in the near future we will be able to get both arteries and veins transplanted on a large scale, said Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson, professor of transplantation biology at the University of Gothenburg, and a member of the team that performed the operation in March 2011. The advantage of using tissue grown from a patients own cells is that there is no risk of organ rejection and hence no need for lifelong immunosuppressive drugs.

Four years ago, a 30-year-old woman received the worlds first transplant of a tailor-made windpipe, grown in a similar way by seeding a stripped-down donor organ with her own stem cells. Other such trachea operations have followed since.

The latest case involved a young girl with an obstructed hepatic portal vein, which drains blood from the intestines and spleen to the liver. Its blockage can be fatal.

The team from the University of Gothenburg took a 9cm section of groin vein from a deceased donor and removed all the living cells, leaving just a protein scaffold tube. Stem cells extracted from the girls bone marrow were then injected onto the tube and two weeks later the graft was implanted. The new blood vessel immediately restored normal blood flow, the doctors said, although after a year it narrowed and a second stem cell-based graft was needed. Martin Birchall and George Hamilton of University College London said in a commentary in The Lancet that the Swedish doctors had spared the young girl the trauma of having veins harvested from deep in her neck or leg and avoided the need for a liver transplant.

But they cautioned the technique now needed to be tested in clinical trials and developed into a straightforward quality-controlled production process.

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Stem Cells from Corpses

Posted: June 16, 2012 at 6:16 am

Researchers pull viable cells from bodies that had been dead for more than 2 weeks.

By Bob Grant | June 15, 2012

Wikimedia Commons, Robert Lawton

Stem cells stay alive and in a dormant state for more than 2 weeks after a person passes away, according to researchers in France. A team of scientists at the Pasteur Institute in Paris have successfully recovered viable stem cells from muscle tissue in dead bodies that had been kept at 4 degrees Celsius for 17 days, later using the cells to generate new, functional muscle cells. They report their findings in this weeks issue of Nature Communications.

Previously, researchers thought that stem cells could only remain viable in corpses for 1 or 2 days. But Pasteur Institute histologist and neuropathologist Fabrice Chrtien, senior author on the paper, said that stem cells may even remain viable for more than 17 days. Maybe they can also resist longer, he told LiveScience.

The stem cells recovered from the human corpses were in a dormant state, characterized by reduced metabolic activity and elevated levels of reactive oxygen species. Chrtien and his collaborators suggested that the low oxygen environment in which the cells sat likely contributed to their quiescence and subsequent retention of viability.

This discovery could form the basis of a new source, and more importantly new methods of conservation, for stem cells used to treat a number of pathologies, according to a statement from the Pasteur Institute announcing the discovery.

By Jef Akst

New research finds that older men have children and grandchildren with longer telomeres, pointing to possible health benefits of delayed reproduction.

By Tia Ghose

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Stem Cells from Corpses

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Stem cells stay alive for 17 days in dead bodies

Posted: June 16, 2012 at 6:16 am

London, June 15 : Scientists have revealed that some stem cells can lay dormant for more than two weeks in a dead person and then be revived to divide into new, functioning cells.

The research unlocks further knowledge about the versatility of these cells, touted as a future source to replenish damaged tissue.

"Remarkably, skeletal muscle stem cells can survive for 17 days in humans and 16 days in mice post-mortem, well beyond the one to two days currently thought," the Daily Mail quoted the statement of scientists.

The researchers led by Fabrice Chretien of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, found that the stem cells retained their ability to differentiate into perfectly functioning muscle cells.

"This discovery could form the basis of a new source, and more importantly new methods of conservation, for stem cells used to treat a number of pathologies," the researchers said.

Stem cells are infant cells that develop into the specialised tissues of the body.

The latest findings have sparked great excitement as they offer hopes of rebuilding organs damaged by disease or accident.

The Pasteur Institute team found that to survive in adverse conditions, skeletal muscle stem cells lower their metabolism to enter a dormant state, using less energy.

The team then also looked at stem cells taken from bone marrow, where blood cells are produced.

These remained viable for four days after death in lab mice and retained their ability to reconstitute tissue after a bone marrow transplant.

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Human-Eye Precursor Grown from Stem Cell

Posted: June 16, 2012 at 6:16 am

News | Health

The achievement, with an 'optic cup' that contains multiple layers of photoreceptors, raises hopes for repairs of damaged eyes in the clinic

By David Cyranoski and Nature magazine | June 15, 2012|

The human eye is a complex structure but the cues to build it come from inside the growing cells. Image: Dougal Waters/Getty

From Nature magazine

A stem-cell biologist has had an eye-opening success in his latest effort to mimic mammalian organ development in vitro. Yoshiki Sasai of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology (CBD) in Kobe, Japan, has grown the precursor of a human eye in the lab.

The structure, called an optic cup, is 550 micrometres in diameter and contains multiple layers of retinal cells including photoreceptors. The achievement has raised hopes that doctors may one day be able to repair damaged eyes in the clinic. But for researchers at the annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research in Yokohama, Japan, where Sasai presented the findings this week, the most exciting thing is that the optic cup developed its structure without guidance from Sasai and his team.

The morphology is the truly extraordinary thing, says Austin Smith, director of the Centre for Stem Cell Research at the University of Cambridge, UK.

Until recently, stem-cell biologists had been able to grow embryonic stem-cells only into two-dimensional sheets. But over the past four years, Sasai has used mouse embryonic stem cells to grow well-organized, three-dimensional cerebral-cortex1, pituitary-gland2 and optic-cup3 tissue. His latest result marks the first time that anyone has managed a similar feat using human cells.

Familiar patterns The various parts of the human optic cup grew in mostly the same order as those in the mouse optic cup. This reconfirms a biological lesson: the cues for this complex formation come from inside the cell, rather than relying on external triggers.

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Cellerant to Present at the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) 10th Annual Meeting in Japan

Posted: June 16, 2012 at 6:16 am

SAN CARLOS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Cellerant Therapeutics Inc., a biotechnology company developing novel hematopoietic stem cell-based cellular and antibody therapies for blood disorders and cancer, announced today that Cellerants President and CEO, Ram Mandalam, Ph.D., will be presenting at the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) 10th Annual Meeting held June 13 16 in Yokohama, Japan.

Dr. Mandalam will be co-chairing a session Stem Cells and Cancer and will be giving a presentation, titled Antibodies Targeting Cancer Stem Cells in Hematological Malignancies, on Saturday, June 16 at 1:30 p.m. JST (Japan time). Dr. Mandalam will provide an overview of Cellerants cancer stem cell discovery approach and new data on its therapeutic antibodies demonstrating activity against acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) cancer stem cells.

Cellerant scientist, Anna Sedello, Ph.D. will also be presenting Poster #1144 titled Ex vivo-Generated Mouse Myeloid Progenitor Cells Mitigate Gastrointestinal Acute Radiation Syndrome when Administered up to 5 Days after Irradiation. These results demonstrate that cryopreserved, allogeneic myeloid progenitor cells from mice prevent death from lethal radiation doses known to cause death through hematopoietic and gastrointestinal injury. These results also show that myeloid progenitor cells are one of the most promising radiation countermeasures among all therapeutics currently under development with respect to efficacy, timing and practicality of administration. This work was carried out in collaboration with scientists at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFFRI).

About Cellerants Cancer Stem Cell Antibody Program

Cellerant has developed an antibody program focused on tumor initiating cells, also known as cancer stem cells (CSCs) in leukemia and other hematological malignancies. These cancer stem cells are likely to be responsible for the relapse and resistance to current therapies for hematologic malignancies. Initially focused in AML, Cellerant has discovered novel antibody therapeutics with potent in vitro and in vivo efficacy characteristics targeting unique cancer stem cell antigens.

About Cellerant Therapeutics

Cellerant Therapeutics is a clinical stage biotechnology company focused on the regulation of the hematopoietic (blood-forming) system. The Company is developing human stem cell and antibody therapies for oncology applications and blood-related disorders. Cellerants lead product, CLT-008, is currently in two Phase 1 clinical trials in patients with hematological malignancies. The Company also has a cancer stem cell (CSC) antibody discovery program focused on therapies for acute myelogenous leukemia, multiple myeloma and myelodysplastic syndrome.

For more information, visit: http://www.cellerant.com.

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Life Technologies Signs Licensing Agreement with iPS Academia Japan for Global Patent Portfolio Rights to Induced …

Posted: June 16, 2012 at 6:16 am

CARLSBAD, Calif., June 15, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --Life Technologies Corporation (LIFE) today announced that it has deepened its commitment to stem cell research and its customers by signing a non-exclusive agreement with iPS Academia Japan for its induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell patent portfolio. The worldwide license will enable Life Technologies, a leading provider of innovative life science solutions, to expand its range of products and services for the iPS cell research community.

By leveraging its expertise in stem cell tool manufacturing and its global distribution network, Life Technologies is now positioned to develop and commercialize products designed to create iPS cells and differentiate them into any cell type for use in drug discovery and pre-clinical research. In additional to directly selling iPS cells, the license enables the company to provide iPS cell creation, differentiation and screening services for scientists around the world.

"iPS Academia Japan is pleased to grant a non-exclusive license and build a relationship with Life Technologies Corporation. Because iPS cells are gaining greater attention for uses in drug discovery and disease research as well as other areas of biotechnology, distribution of iPS cell products or provision of services is important for gaining momentum in iPS cell research," said Shosaku Murayama, president and Chief Executive Officer of AJ. "We believe that Life Technologies' business will contribute to boost research and development for practical application of iPS cell technology. We hope for further advancement of the iPS cell technology and its practical use in the coming years and we continue to support expanding the iPS cell technology by licensing our patent portfolio."

Scientists use iPS cell technology to create iPS cells from patient-derived adult cells. The iPS cells can then be differentiated into many primary cell types, such as neurons and hepatocytes, to be studied in the lab. The ability to develop cells from people with particular conditions of interest gives researchers the ability to study the genetics behind patient-specific diseases in an effort to test or develop new potential treatments.

"I am very pleased that Life Technologies, a worldwide biotechnology company, has signed an agreement for Kyoto University Patent," said Professor Shinya Yamanaka, who led the team that was first to generate iPS cells in 2006. "I hope it will speed up the movement towards practical applications of iPS cell technology."

Mark Stevenson, President and COO of Life Technologies, added: "Life Technologies has a heritage of providing the science community with the most innovative solutions designed to accelerate research. With this license now in place, we are furthering our commitment to the stem cell field and to developing a full breadth of products and services for our customers whether they are in basic research, drug discovery and development, or moving toward clinical applications."

About Life TechnologiesLife Technologies Corporation (LIFE) is a global biotechnology company with customers in more than 160 countries using its innovative solutions to solve some of today's most difficult scientific challenges. Quality and innovation are accessible to every lab with its reliable and easy-to-use solutions spanning the biological spectrum with more than 50,000 products for translational research, molecular medicine and diagnostics, stem cell-based therapies, forensics, food safety and animal health. Its systems, reagents and consumables represent some of the most cited brands in scientific research including: Ion Torrent, Applied Biosystems, Invitrogen, GIBCO, Ambion, Molecular Probes, Novex, and TaqMan. Life Technologies employs approximately 10,400 people and upholds its ongoing commitment to innovation with more than 4,000 patents and exclusive licenses. LIFE had sales of $3.7 billion in 2011. Visit us at our website: http://www.lifetechnologies.com.

Life Technologies' Safe Harbor Statement This press release includes forward-looking statements about our anticipated results that involve risks and uncertainties. Some of the information contained in this press release, including, but not limited to, statements as to industry trends and Life Technologies' plans, objectives, expectations and strategy for its business, contains forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Any statements that are not statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. When used, the words "believe," "plan," "intend," "anticipate," "target," "estimate," "expect" and the like, and/or future tense or conditional constructions ("will," "may," "could," "should," etc.), or similar expressions, identify certain of these forward-looking statements. Important factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements are detailed in filings made byLife Technologies with the Securities and Exchange Commission.Life Technologies undertakes no obligation to update or revise any such forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

ABOUT iPS ACADEMIA JAPAN, INC.iPS Academia Japan, Inc. (AJ) is an affiliate of Kyoto University, and its main role is, among other activities, to manage and utilize the patents and other intellectual properties held/controlled by Kyoto University and other universities in the field of iPSC technologies so that the research results contribute to health and welfare worldwide.

AJ was established in Kyoto in June 2008. AJ's patent portfolio consists of more than 60 patent families (the total number of patent applications is about 220 cases) in the iPSC technology as of April 2012, and about 50 license arrangements have been executed with domestic or international enterprises. For more information, visit http://www.ips-cell.net.

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Researchers urge EU not to cut stem cell funding

Posted: June 16, 2012 at 6:16 am

* European Parliament debating funding for 2014 to 2020

* Scientists fear cuts to embryonic stem cell research

* Experts say cutting funds would hold back entire field

LONDON, June 15 (Reuters) - Leading scientists, biomedical research bodies and patient groups urged the European Parliament on Friday to maintain vital European Union funding for studies using embryonic stem cells.

Hailing the field as "one of the most exciting and promising" in modern biomedical research, the group said they feared research grants currently under review may be under threat from pro-life European parliamentarians who say public funds should not be spent on embryonic stem cell work.

"(EU) Commission funding must be available to continue to support scientists investigating all types of stem cells - including human embryonic stem cells - with potential to make advances in regenerative medicine," they wrote in an open letter released by the Wellcome Trust, a charitable health foundation.

The European Parliament is currently debating the future outline of Horizon (Euronext: HOR.NX - news) 2020, the EU's programme for research and innovation which will run from 2014 to 2020.

Draft rules provide for stem cell research funding, including embryonic stem cells but some member states have been lobbying for embryonic stem cell research to be excluded.

Many scientists believe stem cell research has the potential to lead to the development of treatments for a whole host of diseases including incurable neurodegenerative illnesses such as Parkinson's, motor neurone disease and multiple sclerosis, as well as type 1 diabetes, various serious heart conditions, liver damage, spinal cord damage and blindness.

Europe (Chicago Options: ^REURUSD - news) , and particularly Britain, is considered a world leader in stem cell research. The experts, from charities, funding bodies and patient groups, said if Europe is to hold on to this competitive edge, it is crucial to maintain funding for all stem cell research.

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Neil Riordan PhD – Stem Cell Therapy for Spinal Cord Injury (Part 4 of 5) || Stem Cell Treatments – Video

Posted: June 16, 2012 at 4:21 am

14-06-2012 10:32 Dr. Riordan shows a video documenting the progress of a T-12 spinal cord injury patient after her combined bone marrow and umbilical cord stem cell treatment in Panama. He shows another video of a 65 year-old man (T-9) who was treated 13 years after his injury. This case illustrates the potential of treating older people whose injuries occurred many years prior to treatment. Treatment information at More information on Dr. Riordan at

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