“Latest Stem Cells News”

A 3-year-old South Dakota boy whose brain tumor treatment had been in question because of an insurance dispute is set to begin chemotherapy in Minnesota this week.
Cooper Urbaniak, who suffers from ependymoma, is to be admitted to the University of Minnesota Medical Center Tuesday to begin high-dose chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant.

The family’s insurance provider initially declared the procedure experimental and refused to pay for it. But under an agreement reached last month between Sanford Health Plan and the university, Sanford will pay for the chemotherapy and pay a discounted rate on the stem cell transplant.
Cooper’s father, Joe Urbaniak, said his son will undergo eight days of chemotherapy treatments followed by a day of rest. Doctors then will give him back the stem cells they harvested earlier this fall.

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A group of British doctors are preparing for human clinical trials that will take a person’s bone marrow stem cells, transform them into heart stem cells and inject them into the heart, where they can go to work repairing damage.

“Placing heart stem cells into the heart to repair has a very good chance of working; because the stem cells are the patient’s own there are no problems with rejection,” said Professor Sian Harding, of Imperial College London.

The British researchers plan to use a technique that was pioneered at the Mayo Clinic. They will remove 40 milliliters of bone marrow from a patient and then grow heart stem cells from them through the use of growth factors. Once injected back into the heart, doctors say they can expect a physical improvement in the patient in as little as two weeks.

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FREMONT, CA – The first human trials involving stem cell therapy were approved just weeks ago, but a growing number of other patients are already benefitting from stem cell treatments. Those patients are dogs and the results are reportedly encouraging.

Cris the police dog is a five-year-old German Shepherd who was a whisker away from retirement last year when he tore a muscle in his rear leg during training. “He was jumping and the next morning he came and he wouldn’t put any weight on his leg at all,” Fremont Police Officer Matt Snelson said.

Snelson is Cris’ partner at the Fremont Police Department, where the dogs are expected to do everything from sniff out drugs to chase down fleeing suspects. “They can run three times as fast as a human. So, if we have someone running, it’s easier to use the dog to apprehend them,” he said. Officer Snelson took Cris to Dr. Gary Brown, a veterinary surgeon who has treated dozens of injured police dogs. “A big red flag went up because that type of injury is often repetitive,” the doctor explained.

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According to Science magazine, reprogrammed adult stem cells that regress to an embryonic state and have the same ability to transform into all the different tissues in the human body just like embryonic stem cells are the most important discovery of 2008. The prestigious magazine awarded the so-called ethical stem cells for their possible efficiency in curing degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and muscular dystrophy without the ethical implications associated with embryonic stem cell use. The direct observation of extrasolar planets and the development of new superconductors were also in the ranking.

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In the near future, hearts that have just suffered a heart attack will be able to repair themselves, according to an incredible discovery of how to reeducate cardiac stem cells to repair damaged hearts. In fact, stem cells normally perform the delicate task of repairing cardiac muscle, but after a heart attack the cells no longer carry out this highly important self-repair.

Italian scholars at the ‘Sapienza’ University in Rome and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Monterotondo, have discovered why these cells stop functioning correctly, and now understand how to induce them to repair damage from heart attacks. The announcement was made during the 69th Congress of the Italian Society of Cardiologists in Rome by Professor Antonio Musaro’ of the ‘Sapienza’ University in Rome.

Musaro’ said, “With our studies conducted together with Doctor Nadia Rosenthal of the EMBL we have learned why stem cells present in the heart after damage from a heart attack or trauma, do not correctly function. In fact, instead of producing functional contractile tissue that allows the damage to be ‘repaired’, they stop functioning or even produce non-functional fibrous tissue. This occurs because the heart attack or damage creates an environment that is hostile to normal stem cells activity.”

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Bone marrow stem cells self transplant can reduce Multiple Sclerosis (MS) symptoms, and make the disease regress in some cases.
These are the hopeful results from a research on 21 patients diseased by MS, made by the Chicago Northwestern University School of Medicine and published on Lancet Neurology. “Since 3 years from self transplant all the patients watch their conditions better.”

Since these results, doctors decided to make a bigger research involving more MS diseased people and comparing new therapy’s results with olds’ ones.
The experiment is about taking marrow stem cells and then treating them to remove ill lymphocytes which attack nerve fibers and then causing MS.

Stem cells are ready to create a ‘correct’ immune system and transplant begins after this process. “Time factor” is the nodal point for stem effectiveness because “operating soon we can make the most of the body’s self-regeneration, which can be lost in the long run”. Anyway scientists say also “it’s not the final cure to MS”.

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