“Latest Stem Cells News”

In the decades-long war on cancer, as of late, researchers had been making little progress in comparison to colleagues treating other conditions, such as cardiac or infectious diseases. “Cancer research has really plateaued out,” William Matsui, an associate professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins University‘s School of Medicine, said at the 2009 World Stem Cell Summit here on Tuesday. But pushing cancer stem cell research “gives us a novel way to study cancer,” said Matsui, who also runs a lab at the university’s Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Cancer and stem cells have had a fraught relationship—not in the least because of early concern that stem cell treatments could in fact spur on cancer through their encouragement of undifferentiated cell growth. But cancer stem cells themselves have gained a more solid toe-hold in the past several years as a potential new target for cancer research.

Cancer stem cells—or CSCs—are presumed to have similar capabilities as healthy stem cells: they can regenerate and differentiate into any cell that makes up the cancer. Such cells are often blamed for relapses in patients who by all other measures appear to have been cured. One of the large problems, however, has been in finding these cells. In some cancers, such as some leukemias, they are suspected to be only one cell in a million.

Cancer stem cells’ persistence has given rise to the so-called dandelion theory of cancer treatment. Researchers and doctors have traditionally worked to obliterate the visible cancerous menace—the tumor, or dandelion weed, as it were. But as anyone with a lawn may be well aware, hacking off the flower does little to stop the root—that is, the stem cell—from regenerating another attack later. So, posits Richard Jones, also at the Sidney Kimmel Comparative Cancer Center, it’s possible that effective drugs may have been abandoned because they were not creating quick, visible responses. Eliminating the root stem cells will cause the tumors to stop growing, but not right away, he explained at the summit.

Neuralstem Inc. has received the green light to begin the first human stem cell trial to treat Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The company’s stock soared on the news.

Neuralstem has only received approval for the first stage of the trial that would consist of 12 patients who will receive stem cell injections in the lumbar area of the spinal cord.

Neuralstem said the trial will be under the direction of principal investigator Dr. Eva L. Feldman, Director of the University of Michigan Health System ALS Clinic and the Program for Neurology Research & Discovery. Feldman called the trial a major step forward in the treatment of ALS. “In work with animals, these spinal cord stem cells both protected at-risk motor neurons and made connections to the neurons controlling muscles. We don’t want to raise expectations unduly, but we believe these stem cells could produce similar results in patients with ALS,” Dr. Feldman said.

from

http://washington.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2009/09/21/daily7.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/americasRegulatoryNews/idUSBNG36053620090921

William H. Frey

Scientists have pioneered a unique delivery system to administer therapeutic stem cells to the brain, by way of a simple nasal spray. Once the droplets containing the stem cells are snorted through the nose, the solution breaks through the blood-brain barrier, seeding the brain with the stem cells (…)

Scientists from the University of Minnesota and the University Hospital of Tuebingen, Germany conducted the research. The researchers administered the nasal spray containing rat stem cells to mice and within an hour, the rat stem cells were visible in the mice brains. The researchers then repeated the experiment using human stem cells and they also penetrated the blood-brain barrier within an hour.

It’s believed the stem cells enter the brain through the olfactory nerves through small holes in the cribriform plate, which is a thin horizontal part of the skull at the base of the brain.

The researchers further found that administering an enzyme called hyaluronidase, to the mice before having them snort the stem cells, enabled greater amounts of stem cells to travel to the brain.
The nasal delivery system has obvious benefits over drilling into a patient’s skull to administer the stem cells, which can cause inflammation and infection.

Lead researcher William Frey, an adjunct professor of pharmaceutics at Minnesota noted, “When you cut into the brain, that leads to an inflammatory response,” says Frey. “We’re hoping this will help. We didn’t see evidence that intranasal stem cell treatment caused inflammation.” (…)

A SURGEON from Oxford who led a pioneering heart operation in Greece has demanded to be allowed to do it on the NHS.

Prof Stephen Westaby, who works at the John Radcliffe Hospital, spoke out after leading a surgical team in Greece who used a combination of an artificial heart and stem cells to save the life of a dying man.

‘I am very frustrated that all the work that I have done back home in the UK has to be translated into patient care in other countries’
Stephen Westaby

It is thought to be the the first time the combination has been used.

Greek patient Ioannis Manolopoulos was fitted with the mechanical pump in Thessaloloniki because his heart was too weak.

Surgeons then injected his heart with six million of his own stem cells to repair the damage.

Prof Westaby is professor of biomedical sciences at the John Radcliffe Hospital, and has pioneered the use of Jarvic pumps in patients suffering heart failure.

But the NHS does not routinely pay for the treatment, and Prof Westaby relies on charity funding, or travels abroad to implant pumps in countries where governments are prepared to fund the £60,000 devices.

He said: “I am very frustrated that all the work that I have done back home in the UK has to be translated into patient care in other countries.

“We have helped to develop programmes in France, Greece and Japan. It’s time we did it in the UK.”

He said heart pumps could save 12,000 lives each year.

Scripps Research Institute scientists have offered new hope for parents whose children suffer from the rare genetic disorder ‘cystinosis’ by showing through an experiment on mice that stem cell transplantation can successfully correct the defect (…)

In the study, the researchers used bone marrow stem cell transplantation to address symptoms of cystinosis in a mouse model (…)

In the new study, the researchers found that transplanted bone marrow stem cells carrying the normal lysosomal cystine transporter gene abundantly engrafted into every tissue of the experimental mice (…)

“The results really surprised and encouraged us. Because the defect is present in every cell of the body, we did not expect a bone marrow stem cell transplant to be so widespread and effective,” says Cherqui.
Cherqui said that adult bone marrow stem cell therapy is particularly well suited as a potential treatment for cystinosis because these cells target all types of tissues.

In addition, stem cells reside in the bone marrow for the duration of a patient”s life, becoming active as needed, a particular benefit for a progressive disease like cystinosis. The study has been published in the journal Blood.

from http://www.newkerala.com/nkfullnews-1-114380.html

Whitehead Institute researchers have developed a novel method of removing potential cancer-causing genes during the reprogramming of skin cells from Parkinson’s disease patients into an embryonic-stem-cell-like state. Scientists were then able to use the resulting induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to derive dopamine-producing neurons, the cell type that degenerates in Parkinson’s disease patients.

The work marks the first time researchers have generated human iPS cells that have maintained their embryonic stem-cell-like properties after the removal of reprogramming genes. The findings are published in the March 6 edition of the journal Cell.

Removing the reprogramming genes is also important because of those genes’ effect on an iPS cell‘s gene expression (a measure of which genes the cell is using and how much it’s using those genes). When the researchers compared the gene expressions of human embryonic stem cells to iPS cells with and without the reprogramming factors, iPS cells without the reprogramming genes had a gene expression closer to human embryonic stem cells than to the same iPS cells that still contained the reprogramming genes.

“The reprogramming factors are known to bind to and affect the expression of 3,000 genes in the entire genome, so having artificial expression of those genes will change the cell’s overall gene expression,” Dirk Hockemeyer, who is also a co-author of the Cell article. “That’s why the four reprogramming genes can mess up the system so much. From now on, it will be tough for researchers to leave the reprogramming genes in iPS cells.”

from http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/parkinsons-stem-0305.html