“Latest Stem Cells News”

Some Steamboat Springs residents are forgoing the Tooth Fairy, hoping their teeth wind up being worth much more than a quarter.
Steamboat Springs oral surgeon Dr. John Lupori offers patients the chance to store the stem cells in the teeth he extracts. Lupori partners with StemSave, a New York-based company that freezes and stores stem cells found in the pulp at the base of teeth. Science is moving fast, those involved said, and the cells might someday save the patient’s life.

“Potentially, they’re incredibly miraculous,” said Dr. Bob Pensack, who had his daughter, Miriam, save her cells. “They’ve already been miraculous in the lab.”
Stem cells exist throughout the body and differentiate into organs and tissue. Stem cells that could be used to grow new organs, for example, are the type that haven’t differentiated. Dental stem cells fall into this category, StemSave CEO Art Greco said.

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Researchers said on Sunday they had found a safer way to transform ordinary skin cells into powerful stem cells in a move that could eventually remove the need to use human embryos.
It is the first time that scientists have turned skin cells into induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells — which look and act like embryonic stem cells — without having to use viruses in the process.
The new method also allows for genes that are inserted to trigger cell reprogramming to be removed afterwards.
Stem cells are the body’s master cells, producing all the body’s tissues and organs.

Embryonic stem cells are the most powerful kind, as they have the potential to give rise to any tissue type. However, many people object to their use, making iPS cells an attractive alternative, provided they can be made safely.
Researchers have known for some time that ordinary skin cells can be transformed into iPS cells using a handful of genes.
But to get these genes into the cells they have had to use viruses, which integrate their own genetic material into the cells they infect. This can cause cancer.

The alternative approach, described in the online edition of the journal Nature by two teams of researchers from Britain and Canada, appears to avoid the risk of such abnormalities.
The researchers harnessed a little piece of DNA called a transposon — sometimes known as a “jumping gene” because of its ability to move around inside the genetic code — to carry four genes.

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On any given day, an estimated 6000 Americans who need a bone marrow transplant are searching the country’s donor banks hoping to find the right match.
For many of those patients, especially minorities, the odds of finding an outside donor have been pretty low. But, that is starting to change. There is new research that suggests the donor pool may be widening.

Just shy of his second birthday, little Elmor Bonilla has overcome obstacles and odds most people don’t face over a lifetime.
Elmor was born with Krabbe disease; a rare and often fatal disorder that attacks the central nervous system.
His best shot at survival is a bone marrow transplant immediately.

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Spinal cord injuries, resulting in permanent disability or paralysis in most cases, account for around eleven thousand new cases in the US, annually. Due to the lack of effective treatment strategies, it is considered as the most devastating of all traumatic conditions. Now, a recent study published in the journal Stem Cells reports that activation of ependymal stem/progenitor cells from injured spinal cord (epSPCi), using endogenous stem cell-associated mechanisms, may aid in rescuing neurological function, thereby reversing paralysis associated with spinal cord injuries.

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Douglas A. Melton

Scientists have created stem cells from patients suffering from 10 incurable diseases, from Down syndrome to diabetes and Parkinson’s – immortal cells that might one day be turned into repair material for wasting muscles or damaged brains.
The Harvard University-led team has taken skin and bone marrow cells from diseased patients and re-programmed those cells to behave like cells from days-old embryos.

The feat allows scientists for the first time to watch muscular dystrophy and other diseases unfold in a petri dish, “that is, to watch what goes right or wrong,” said Doug Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. The cells will also allow researchers to screen new drugs to treat the diseases.
“In these complex genetic diseases, we’re so ignorant at the moment we don’t even know when a patient gets diabetes if they all get it the same way,” Melton said. “There could be 50 different ways to get Type 1 diabetes.” The stem cell lines could help researchers hone in on exactly which mutations are responsible and find “the weak point where you could try to prevent, or treat it.”
“We have good reason to believe that this will make it possible to find new treatments, and eventually drugs, to slow or even stop the course of a number of diseases,” Melton said.
The new cells are “pluripotent” cells that can be coaxed into making any tissue in the human body, and can grow forever.

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A new report brings bioengineered organs a step closer, as scientists from Stanford and New York University Langone Medical Center describe how they were able to use a “scaffolding” material extracted from the groin area of mice on which stem cells from blood, fat, and bone marrow grew. This advance clears two major hurdles to bioengineered replacement organs, namely a matrix on which stem cells can form a 3-dimensional organ and transplant rejection.

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