“Latest Stem Cells News”

TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) -  More than 30 million Americans suffer from painful arthritis in their joints, Osteoarthritis.  The most common problem is knee pain caused by cartilage breaking down.  But some remarkable findings at the UA Arthritis Center could change the way doctors treat these patients.

Since our knees carry most of our body weight, it’s no surprise that the joints can wear out.  Too much wear-and-tear on the cartilage covering the bone can cause serious knee pain.  Right now, the only solution is replacing the entire joint with metal and plastic parts, even if the damage is just in one area.  Sometimes, patients lose the nerves in the area, the plastic can break down over time, and movement is limited.

UA Professor of Orthopedic Surgery Dr. John Szivek and his team knew there had to be a better way.  But getting cartilage cells to grow into tissue was tricky, until they discovered stem cells from a patient’s own fat can do the job.  “Those cells are very easy to collect from fat tissue,” says Dr. Szivek.  “We don’t need very much of the fat tissue.  A golf ball size piece of fat from the patient has tens of millions of cells in it.”

The fat is taken out using a procedure similar to liposuction.  The stem cells are then extracted, and put on a special scaffold that Dr. Szivek’s team developed.  It uses the 3D images from a CT Scan to create an exact match of the patient’s bone structure.  “If we place them near a cartilage surface, the cells that are nearby send them signals and those signals turn the stem cells into cartilage cells,” explains Dr. Szivek.

Doctors then put the tiny scaffold in the damaged part of the knee, and within a couple of months, tissue is formed and the cartilage is as good as new.  The recovery time is about the same as a total joint replacement, but the incision is significantly smaller.

It could be several more years before the procedure is available to patients.

from http://www.kgun9.com/Global/story.asp?S=13089492

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Mandi Schwartz ’11 completed a crucial step in her battle with leukemia Wednesday afternoon.

The women’s hockey player received a long-awaited stem cell transplant at about 3:30 p.m. local time at the inpatient transplant unit of the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance at the University of Washington Medical Center. The procedure took 32 minutes and there were no complications, said Dean Forbes, a spokesman for the cancer center.

Schwartz, a native of Saskatchewan, Canada has been in and out of chemotherapy for more than 20 months since first being diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in December 2008. After months of searching for an adequate bone marrow or stem cell donor, two “five-out-of-six” stem cell matches were located and Schwartz’s transplant was slated for Aug. 27, as she was declared in remission on June 9. But the timeline changed when Schwartz learned on Aug. 11 that her cancer had returned for a third time.

On Aug. 31, Schwartz entered remission once again after completing additional chemotherapy. She underwent a daily pair of hour-long radiation sessions between Sept. 15 and 17, and had another two days of chemotherapy on Sunday and Monday to prepare for the transplant.

Now, with the procedure completed at last, Schwartz will wait to see if the stem cells engraft. Forbes said it will take about three weeks to determine whether the transplant was successful. Schwartz will remain in the hospital during that stretch of time because her immune system is still weak.

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