“Latest Stem Cells News”

A new therapy based on embryonic stem cells will give a new hope to people who did lose their ability to move in some accident. But that’s not all, because this therapy, developed by the Geron Corp., is the demonstration that in USA, since a few days from Obama‘s election, a new course in research – above all in stem cells research – has begun.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) frees the medics to inject spinal stem cells extracted from embryonic tissue in legs paralysed patients since a short time. The treatment in on experimental phase, but stem cells should stimulate damaged nerves to grow.
The goal is to re-activate the spinal marrow normal functions. Unfortunately it’s not so operative for patients paralysed sinc more than 1 or 2 weeks.

Geron’s whole work is funded by private; at present no public funding are planned in this field due to Bush‘s 2006 veto, despite the United States Congress gives the go-ahead.
The fact that FDA did not oppose to this, although it’s an indipendent organization, suggests that something is changing.

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An extraordinary operation was performed in Pisa when a 5 year old boy from Tuscany with acute lymphoblastic leukemia underwent a bone marrow transplant last night with stem cells explanted from a patient in Japan where the only donor with virological and histological compatibility was found after a 6-7 month worldwide search. The stem cell infusion was performed at the Pediatric Oncohematology Unit at the University of Pisa Hospital directed by Claudio Favre, one of the seven internationally accredited centers collaborating with the national Italian Bone Marrow Donor Registry (IBMDR).

The infusion procedure, reported the hospital in Pisa, lasted about 7 hours and the child is well. Doctors hope that intensive chemotherapy along with total body irradiation last week and the newly implanted stem cells will repopulate the boy’s bone marrow and allow him to fight the disease.

The hospital underlined that what took place between Italy and Japan was a true marathon of solidarity including, in addition to both hospitals and medical teams in both Pisa and Tenri (Southeast Japan), the Italian Civil Protection Service, which provided the airplane that flew from Osaka to Pisa allowing the stem cells to be transported by the only compatible donor found out of 12 million in the entire world.

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Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have converted stem cells from the human endometrium into insulin-producing cells and transplanted them into mice to control the animals’ diabetes.

The endometrium, or uterine lining, is a source of adult stem cells. Normally, these cells generate uterine tissue each month as part of the menstrual cycle. Like other stem cells, however, they can divide to form other kinds of cells.

The study’s findings suggest the possibility that endometrial stem cells could be used to develop insulin-producing islet cells. These islet cells could then be used to advance the study of islet cells transplantation as a treatment for people with diabetes. If the transplantation of islet cells derived from endometrial cells is perfected, the study authors write that women with diabetes could provide their own endometrial tissue for such a transplant, sidestepping the chance of rejection posed by tissue from another person. Endometrial stem cells are readily available and can be collected easily during a simple outpatient procedure. Endometrial tissue could also be collected after hysterectomy, the surgical removal of the uterus.

“The study findings are encouraging,” said Louis V. DePaolo, Ph.D., chief of the Reproductive Sciences Branch at the NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), which funded the study. “Research to transplant insulin-producing cells into patients with diabetes could proceed at a much faster pace with a relatively accessible source of donor tissue.”

The study authors note that such a treatment would be more useful for people with Type 1 diabetes, in which no insulin is produced. The treatment would be less useful for Type 2 diabetes, in which insulin is usually produced, but in which cells have difficulty using the insulin that is available.

The findings appear in Molecular Therapy. The study was conducted by Xavier Santamaria, Efi E. Massasa, Yuzhe Feng, Erin Wolff and Hugh Taylor, M.D., all of Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

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Storing your children’s umbilical stem cells in private banks for autologous use is a growing trend. But is it an evil marketing ploy, a useless precaution, or a winning strategy? The debate rages on, but perhaps a report in Newsweek could shift the balance in favor of this practice.

When he was 9 months old, Dallas Hextall was diagnosed with cerebral paralysis, a serious neural disorder caused by oxygen deprivation in the uterus or at birth. His parents consulted many neurologists, but according to them, he boy’s chances for a recovery were almost non-existant.

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An experiment successfully performed by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Missouri in Colombia, described in Nature magazine shows that cells removed from a patient’s skin and transformed into cells similar to embryonic stem cells have become a laboratory model for diseases and can be observed in real time and studied to find new cures. The researchers recreated spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) pluripotent stem cells removed from the skin of a child affected by the neurodegenerative genetic disease. In the laboratory, the cells behaved exactly as they do in a human being, giving the researchers an opportunity to observe the progression of the disease. This is an entirely new opportunity, made possible by a discovery by a Japanese research group, which less than a year ago was able to reprogram adult embryonic-like stem cells.

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Physicians at the University of Minnesota and University of Minnesota Children’s Hospital, Fairview have set the path to a cure for a young boy’s fatal genetic skin disease, recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (RDEB), by using a cord blood and bone marrow transplant. Nate Liao, a 25-month-old from Clarksburg, N.J., underwent the experimental therapy in October 2007.

“We have established a new standard of care for these EB patients, beginning with Nate,” said John Wagner, M.D., the lead University of Minnesota Medical School physician who developed the clinical trial. “Nate’s quality of life is forever changed.”

Because they lack collagen type VII, children with RDEB have skin that is exquisitely delicate. The skin and lining of their gastrointestinal (GI) tract is fragile; tearing and blistering occur with minimal friction. Coughing and vomiting often result in tears in the lining of the esophagus and stomach. Those affected must have their entire body continuously wrapped in bandages. Those who do not succumb from malnutrition and infection in childhood will acquire a uniformly fatal, aggressive cancer of the skin in young adulthood.

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