“Latest Stem Cells News”

Two critical programs funded by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state stem cell agency, got a $11 million increase today when the agency’s 29-member Governing Board voted to approve funding for two additional grants in the Training II program and five additional grants in the Bridges program.

The grants voted in today had been recommended by the Scientific and Medical Research Funding Working Group for funding if funds permit. In January 2009, when the Board considered those applications, they voted to fund only the top tier due to uncertainty in the bond market. With improvements in the state’s bond situation, the Board chose to reconsider the second tier of grants in order to further bolster successful programs training the next generation of stem cell scientists and laboratory staff.

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Chinese researchers have become the world’s fifth most prolific contributors to peer-reviewed scientific literature on Regenerative Medicine (RM), according to an international study published on Friday (…)
Regenerative Medicine is an emerging interdisciplinary field of research and clinical applications focused on the repair, replacement or regeneration of cells, tissues, or organs, which uses a combination of approaches including gene therapy, stem cell transplantation, tissue engineering, and the reprogramming of cell and tissue types.

But as the stem cell research develops fast in recent years, RM becomes more and more dependent on this side, and shared some ethic criticism against stem cell research since it involves the usage of human embryos.

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Dr. Karen Aboody estimates that she has cured several hundred mice of a cancer of the central nervous system called neuroblastoma.
First she injected them with specialized neural stem cells that naturally zero in on the tumors and surround them. Then she administered an anti-cancer agent that the cells converted into a highly toxic drug (…)

For 3 1/2 years, the agency focused on the basic groundwork needed to someday use human embryonic stem cells to replace body parts damaged by injury or disease. Such cures are still far in the future.
Now the institute has a more immediate goal: boosting therapies that are much further along in development and more often rely on less glamorous adult stem cells. It is concentrating its vast financial resources on projects that could cure conditions such as age-related macular degeneration, AIDS, sickle cell disease and various types of cancer (…)

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UC San Diego scientists have dramatically improved the success rate of genetically modifying human embryonic stem cells. This advance brings the promise of better treatment of genetic diseases.
The new approach works in 20 percent of embryonic stem cells, compared to less than 1 percent treated with standard methods, said Yang Xu, a UCSD professor of biology, who led the study, assisted by Hoseok Song and Sun-Ku Chung, postdoctoral fellows in his lab.

The study was published Thursday in the journal Cell Stem Cell.
Some genetic diseases can’t be studied adequately in animals, Xu said, so the ability to produce human cells with the diseases will be of great help. For example, drugs to treat the diseases can be tested in the genetically modified cells, he said.

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BioTime Inc.announced today that it has initiated shipments of stem cell research products to its worldwide distributor, Millipore Corporation, according to the terms of the co-marketing agreement between the two companies that was announced on July 9, 2009. BioTime has shipped inventory of six ACTCellerate™ progenitor cell lines to Millipore and plans to begin shipments of additional cell lines and ESpan™ cell growth media in the next several weeks. Derived from human embryonic stem cells but not fully differentiated into specific cell types, each ACTCellerate™ line provides a convenient, highly purified source of progenitor cells that may have applications in drug discovery, research, and the development of therapeutic products.

BioTime’s research products will soon be available to be ordered by researchers through Millipore’s stem cell homepage, www.millipore.com/stemcells. Millipore, which is already a leading supplier of stem cell research reagents, plans a full launch for BioTime’s progenitor cell lines and growth media during the first quarter of 2010.

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A team of researchers from UCL has won a £500,000 grant to develop a synthetic artery that mimics a natural artery – and could revolutionise the treatment of coronary heart disease.

Professor Alexander Seifalian (UCL Surgery and Interventional Science) and Professor George Hamilton (UCL Surgery and Interventional Science & Royal Free Hospital) and their team will use the Wellcome Trust grant to take their work from the laboratory to a pre-clinical trial.

The team has been developing a new nanomaterial with mechanical properties similar to that of human arteries.

The nanomaterial’s inner surface has been modified to attract stem cells from blood circulating inside the body.

It converts these primary cells to endothelial cells, a type of cell that covers the interior of the natural blood vessel and protects it from blockage.

The breakthrough offers hope for sufferers of heart disease who are unable to donate suitable substitute blood vessels for bypass surgery.

Professors Seifalian and Hamilton, experts in nanotechnology, regenerative medicine and vascular surgery, explained: “Coronary heart disease is a condition where one or more blood vessels of the heart become narrowed or blocked. This causes the heart muscle to be starved of oxygen causing damage often leading to a heart attack and muscle death. This interferes with the heart’s ability to pump blood around the body, leading to infirmity and possibly death.

“The current treatment of the disease is to create a new route for blood to circulate, most often by balloon dilatation and stent (stent angioplasty). In many patients however this intervention cannot be performed and in this situation an operation called bypass surgery is needed which can either use substitute blood vessels from another part of the patient or made from a plastic material.

read more: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0908/09081101

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