“Latest Stem Cells News”

Stem cells are providing more than just hope against diabetes. The first patients treated with adult stem cells are no longer taking anti-diabetic drugs, while ‘extraordinary results have been obtained in mice with embryonic stem cells,’ said Senator Ignazio Marino yesterday in Rome at the Changing Diabetes Barometer forum.

‘Embryonic stem cells are something that we must keep in mind,’ said Marino referring to the first encouraging results obtained in the United States, where last year, the first data on the possibility of controlling diabetes in mice was published as well as the possibility of using embryonic stem cells to replace insulin producing cells. While this objective is still a long way away in humans, a therapy based on adult stem cells is much closer.

Results published two years ago in a magazine of American medical association, Jama, relative to the first 15 patients treated with adult stem cells, showed that some of the patients were able to stop insulin-based therapy. ‘Results like these,’ concluded Marino, ‘must stimulate further investments in this field.’

Incoming search terms:

Summit at Lake Como with 100 European stem cell experts.
At the summit, 16 research teams part of the Neurostemcell consortium that have been working for months on finding treatments for Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease met. The network, coordinated by Elena Cattaneo, Director of Unistem, the interdepartmental stem cell research centre of the University of Milan, met on April 1 in Bellagio, on the shores of Lake Como for their first annual meeting.

“The meeting is an opportunity to discuss the results obtained until now and to refine our methods,” explained Cattaneo, who pointed out the objective of the project, which is financed by the EU with 12 million euros: “Compares all stem cells and evaluates them as a potential tool for treatments for Huntington’s and Parkinson’s diseases.” The researchers, from various European laboratories, continued the specialist, “must work to institute stem cells to develop into neurons that die in individuals with Parkinson’s and Huntington’s. The strategy is to take immature stem cells and to push them in a specific direction, rebuilding the codes, or transcription factors of genes and proteins in the laboratory.

The stock of stem cells that we have available today is ample, observed Cattaneo. There are reprogrammed pluripotent stem cells (Ips), adult stem cells, and embryonic stem cells “which particularly fascinate me”. In Cattaneo’s view, for the two neurodegenerative diseases that are the focus of the project, “embryonic stem cells have a strong ability to produce neurons. We are not talking about treatment. These cells are exceptional because they mainly have the ability to receive messages that you send them. With adult stem cells, it does not exactly work in the same way, it seems that they do not have the same abilities to be manipulated.” Embryonic stem cells, concluded a smiling Cattaneo, “are wide awake. It is more satisfying working with them”.

Incoming search terms:

Artificial intestines could be created thanks to stem cells. Intestinal stem cells grown in the laboratory have been manipulated to differentiate in order to produce all of the different types of cells that form intestinal epithelium, said a Dutch study, published in ‘Nature’ magazine by Hans Clevers of the Hubrecht Institute in Utrecht.
The study also outlines a more precise link between stem cells and their microenvironment.

It also offers a practical technique to generate new intestinal epithelium in the laboratory. Stem cells, which express the Lgr5 protein, were discovered on several specific regions of the intestinal epithelium, called crypts.
Clevers and his colleagues describe a long-term method transform single stem cells in culture that express Lgr5 in structures simulating the environment of the organ, which contain all of the different types of differentiated cells present in the intestinal crypts.

Incoming search terms:

An ‘antenna’ molecule, which is capable of guiding blood stem cells to their natural ‘home’, the bone marrow, has been discovered. The discovery could improve the efficiency of umbilical cord stem cell transplants. This type of transplant is not efficient when there are not many umbilical cord stem cells present, since few of them are able to reach the bone marrow from the blood.
Reported by Nature magazine, the discovery was made by David Scadden of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Boston. The stem cells, which normally renew the population of blood cells in the body (red and white blood cells and platelets), are found in the bone marrow, but continuously move throughout blood in circulation, and eventually end up back in the bone marrow.

This is the reason why blood stem cells transplants are never highly efficient. In fact, the injected stem cells are not always able to make it back to the bone marrow, where they need to be present in order to function. These researchers have discovered a guide molecule, a protein called ‘GSA’, which is like an antenna placed on the surface of the cells, which guides them back to the marrow. Researchers have demonstrated in mice that have received stem cell transplants, that with drugs that activate GSA, the injected stem cells easily find their way to the bone marrow and the transplant functions more efficiently.

Incoming search terms:

‘Yet again the Lazio region risks missing a chance to be at the cutting edge in the country for the therapeutic use of hematopoietic stem cells, a technique that is scientifically tested and proven in terms of its efficiency,’ said Luigi Canai, the President of the Lazio Health Commission, in a statement.

‘For days the media has been reporting important progress achieved in this field of research both abroad and in Italy. Regarding this subject, a year ago on February 19 2009, the commission chaired by me approved a unified text for a law that was later approved by the budget commission to promote the use in our region of this revolutionary therapeutic tool, which is particularly important in treating various rare infant diseases. The proposal, which calls for the creation of a regional bank to preserve hematopoietic stem cells taken from the placenta and umbilical cord of women in labour, was unanimously approved, but from that time on, we are awaiting the final vote of the council, a step that is necessary to implement the plan in the interest of the health of the citizens of our region.’

‘I must firmly ask the presidents of the council groups and the president of the assembly to honor this debt as soon as possible, which we all have towards our constituents, and we must hold a debate immediately. I do not want to believe,’ concluded Canali, ‘that the unanimity that was witnessed earlier has already dissolved for other considerations, such as the permanent electoral campaign in our country.’

Incoming search terms:

The subject of producing artificial blood from stem cells has become a hot topic in Italy. “Italy is close to reaching the same objective announced by British researchers, on a similar timeframe,” therefore possibly in three years, “but using adult stem cells. Certainly, it is one thing to say that in three years we will begin the experimental phase, it’s another thing to speak about industrial production. It needs to be specified that the procedure to produce artificial blood is very expensive. Therefore this would be a complementary solution, which will not replace donations,” Said Welfare Undersecretary Ferruccio Fazio, shortly after an announcement of a British study, during a meeting on blood transfusion by the Health Observatory in Rome.

“I would like to calm the enthusiasm after the announcement of the British study,” said Fazio. “There are Italian research groups that are doing very advanced projects on adult stem cells to produce artificial blood. The Italian way was also chosen by the US Armed Forces,” he specified. “We are working on adult stem cells also for long-term sustainability. There is also a collaboration in place between the Mayo Clinic in America and researchers of the Superior Institute of Health (ISS),” he added. “Therefore Italy is not behind in this sector. “This is a very expensive procedure though, which will never substitute donation,” confirmed Fazio.

Furthermore, the upcoming conference of the federal government and the regions should examine a provision “that proposes financing in all of the Italian regions for umbilical cord biobanks starting in 2009. This is something,” pointed out Fazio, “that will aid in research on blood from adult stem cells”. While labs in Italy have worked for years, Giuliano Graziani, the director of the national blood centre pointed out that “the production of artificial plasma will be extremely expensive. We are not disputing the importance of donating blood. Research like the British study is ongoing throughout the world. There are important studies,” he said, “whose results are not right around the corner, and which will never replace the key role of donations”.

“In addition to unacceptable ethical implications, this research has not demonstrated anything yet,” commented geneticist Bruno Dallapiccola regarding the announcement of several British researchers, published recently on the online edition of the Independent regarding the possibility of producing blood by using embryonic stem cells.

“There are no official results yet,” said the scientist in an interview with Vatican Radio, “and none of this research has been transferred to patients. Then,” he added, “rather than reading these results in the Independent, it would be appropriate to see them published in a scientific journal with critical revisers able to judge their basis.”

In the meanwhile, the geneticists said that embryonic stem cell research aimed at curing diseases like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s “have not given any results yet”. A group of British researchers said that they will be able to obtain, within three years, an unlimited quantity of red blood cells from unused human embryos.

Incoming search terms: