“Latest Stem Cells News”

If you have done any research on stem cell treatments abroad, you will undoubtedly read negative articles like this one on CNN from the mainstream media saying these companies are promising cures and are preying on the desperate, that these companies are selling “snake oil”   Nothing could be further from the truth.

The stem cell companies and stem cell doctors that are part of the Repair Stem Cell Institute offer patients a good chance at an improvement in the patient’s quality of life- they don’t offer nor promise cures.  Patients going to these stem cell therapy treatment centers abroad know this.

Unfortunately, the United States and their FDA don’t give these patients any other options.  Are they able to use their own stem cells to help their multiple sclerosis or heart disease-  Stem Cells that have been proven safe in thousands of studies? No.  What is one to do then?  These patients must go abroad for the only treatment that can help their disease or condition.

Here is a sampling of what some of these companies  affiliated with the Repair Stem Cell Institute tell their patients:

From Stem Cells China:

It’s not a cure. It’s about quality of life. Every day I see inquiries begin like this: “Can stem cells cure…?” Everyone should know the answer to that one right away. No. No known therapy utilizing stem cells can cure any medical condition. Not one.

A cure would rewrite the broken code of your genome. A cure would rewind the debilitating progression of a neuro-degenerative disease to the moment before onset. A cure would fix all the wrongs of a baby’s challenged birth. We eagerly await the development of cures and their accessibility to patients in need.

So why are people receiving stem cell therapy today? Therapies involving adult stem cells today are providing quality of life improvements for many patients. It’s no cure. Just as painkillers are not a cure for pain. They improve our quality of life if we feel pain.

But who would deny that painkillers are still worthwhile for extreme pain? Many doctors in the West are saying that they don’t have enough proof that stem cells are improving quality of life for patients. In the meantime, patients are busy coming to China and China’s stem cell clinics are busy offering the chance for quality of life improvements where none else would exist. We encourage you to explore the therapies being offered today.

From Dr. Shimon Slavin, Israel, helping people like Louis Zylstra and Arndt Roehlig

However, we have some positive and most encouraging evidence that the cells we inject may be of benefit, especially as evidenced in some patients with multiple sclerosis as well as based on the first patient we treated with spinal injury that seemed to have somewhat improved. The good news is that there are no side effects at all so there is no risk and nothing to lose (except money…). I would like to stress that since we are in very early stages of our research, nothing can be said about the clinical efficacy of our approach.  However, on the other hand, I do understand that patients in need cannot wait for all the answers to be solved and this is why we agree to offer experimental procedures for patients that understand the experimental nature of our program and consent to try and explore new treatment options.

From Dr. Roberto Fernandez Vina– For doctors who say that current stem cell therapies are “unproven,” Dr. Fernandez Viña has the following response:

“How many patients must to be treated to say this is a cure? How many patients must die waiting for the word “cure?”

A lot of diseases are not totally cured with drugs but the laboratories talk about curing (HIV, Tuberculosis and a lot of malignant deseases). They say that the drugs “cure” but in reality the drugs improve the quality of life. Stem cells “cure” in the same sense. If a person is dying of diabetes and we improve the prognosis and he no longer needs insulin injections, we increase the C peptide, decrease the HbA1c, decrease protein in the urine, decrease the risk of amputation or kidney failure, in my book that is a “cure.”

From Richard Humphries, with multiple sclerosis and a stem cell recipient from Cell Medicine in Costa Rica:

I’m case study #1 in the paper (Multiple Sclerosis Study) just released and have had two stem cell treatments in Costa Rica where they promise nothing but deliver wonderful results. Secondary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis patients can’t wait on historical data. Time is not on our side but stem cells improved my quality of life and the follow up MRI looks excellent.

From the X cell Center in Germany:

Even if not all of the interactions have been conclusively researched to date, the status of the current medical insights has indeed reached a level that allows the non- hazardous treatment with adult stem cells and puts medical professionals in a position to assume responsibility for its use.

Given the proven treatment success of regenerative medicine, the question of whether more research is needed prior to therapeutic use has already been answered.

Those who nevertheless demand stem cell therapy be postponed until we know more about it are taking away patients’ rights to make their own decisions as they search for medical solutions – for the kind of help stem cell therapy does offer.

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The latest developments in molecular biology in the prenatal diagnostic field, particularly regarding preserving stem cells extracted from amniotic liquid, were the focus of the latest S.I.Di.P conference (Italian Society of Prenatal Diagnosis and Maternal Fetal Medicine).

After a greeting from S.I.Di.P President Claudio Giorlandino and President of the Italian Gynecology and Obstetrics Society Giorgio Vittori, Professor Giuseppe Simone, the head of the Biocell Center in Busto Arsizio (VA), the first Italian center able to treat and store stem cells extracted from the amniotic liquid in liquid nitrogen, opened the conference.

“In the next five to ten years,” explained Professor Simoni, “scientific research will have developed therapy based on amniotic stem cells. They are very similar to embryonic stem cells, they are multipotent and young, and this means that they are preferable to embryonic stem cells.

Preserving them creates no risk and the embryo is not sacrificed. Investing into research in this field is an obligation to humanity. There are so many possibilities and the research into amniotic stem cells to treat diseases represents the new frontier for research in the third millennium.

Researchers hope that they can be used to combat many terrible diseases, as well as in reconstructive surgery, and to treat nerve system diseases.”

Stem cells derived from the amniotic liquid are able to differentiate into various tissues, including bone, fat, nerve, cartilage, muscle, hematopoietic tissue, and offer a wide range of clinical applications.

“The future,” continued Simoni, “is research into these types of stem cells, which many research groups, including research teams from Italy, are studying. Preserving them, from anyone who has already decided to undergo amniocentesis is a golden opportunity to donate a precious gift to the future: the gift of life itself. Cryoconservation will allow us to be ready when scientific progress achieves further developments, which will come soon.”

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Russian scientists started clinical trials of treating false joints by means of demineralized bone matrix with introduced mesenchymal stem cells of a patient.

False joints often occur as a complication during fractures of long bones, when splinters do not adhere, and cartilage layer forms between them. This layer is called false joint, and in this case, additional surgery is required to help a bone to heal.

Modern surgeons fight this problem with bone transplants, but bone recovery takes about one year. Possible solution is transplantation of mesenchymal stem cells of bone marrow, which can turn into various cells, including osteocytes. However, before differentiating cells require a substrate to attach to, and false joint has neither appropriate surface, nor nutrients for stem cells. In this case, the majority of stem cells dies or migrates away the desired place.

Russian scientists suggest putting stem cells on demineralized bone transplants, made of human long bones. Cell were extracted from patient’s bone marrow, cultivated in nutrient medium, and then inhabited bone matrix.

from Russia IC

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It has long been thought that damage to the heart is irreversible, but new research is challenging that assumption.
Investigators from Children’s Hospital Boston were able to reverse heart damage in mice by stimulating the growth of new heart muscle cells.

They did this by injecting the mice with the growth factor neuregulin1, which is a key player in heart cell growth.
Until recently, most experts believed that the heart muscle could not repair itself, in part because the cells responsible for its development stop proliferating after birth.

But recent studies have shown that these heart muscle cells, known as cardiomyocytes, do have a limited ability to replace themselves.
The hope is that neuroregulin1 can one day be used to ramp up this process in humans and help heal damaged hearts, as it seems to do in mice, study co-author Bernhard Kuhn, MD, tells WebMD.

“Contemporary heart failure treatment is directed at making the remaining cardiomyocytes function better, and improvements in outcomes are harder and harder to achieve because these therapies have become so good,” he says. “But despite this, heart failure is still a fatal disease. Therapies that replace lost heart muscle cells have the potential to greatly advance the field.”
Injections Reversed Heart Attack Damage

Many other research teams are looking for ways to repair damaged heart muscle, but most of these efforts have focused on coaxing stem cells to become new heart cells.

The research by Kuhn and colleagues shows that stimulating heart muscle cells to proliferate in other ways may prove to be a viable alternative to stem cells, Duke cardiologist Richard C. Becker, MD, tells WebMD.
Becker, who is a spokesman for the American Heart Association, called the new research compelling.

“This is something that I suspect people in the field of cardiology will be very excited about, and I suspect this interest will stimulate additional research,” he says.
The mice in the study were treated with daily injections of neuregulin1 starting a week after experiencing laboratory-induced heart attacks.

Twelve weeks later, they showed evidence of better heart function, reductions in heart muscle scar size, and an increase in heart muscle cells, Kuhn says.
And unlike untreated controls, the treated mice showed no evidence of heart failure.

“Most of the [heart attack] related cell death had already occurred,” he says. “When we began the injections we saw replacement of a significant number of cardiomyocytes resulting in significant structural and functional improvements in the heart muscle.”
Researchers Studying Other Compounds
Neuregulin1 is not the first substance identified by the authors that promotes heart muscle cell growth.

In 2007, they reported that the protein periostin, found in the developing fetal heart and injured skeletal muscles, also induced cardiomyocyte production and improved heart function in rats.
Periostin cannot be injected, so the researchers developed patches infused with the compound, which were placed directly on the damaged area of the heart.

Kuhn says the two therapies may one day prove useful in the treatment of heart attack patients.
“During initial treatment patients might receive neuregulin injections, and once they are stable and out of the ICU they might be taken to the cath lab for a periostin patch,” Kuhn says.

But before that happens, the two treatments must be proven safe and effective in large animal and human studies.
The researchers recently completed a study of periostin in pigs, but the findings have not been published.

from webMD

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Sheng Ding, the leader of a group of researchers at the Scripps Research Institute of the La Jolla University in California, spoke about using chemistry-related techniques to obtain pluripotent stem cells from a miniscule section of skin at Milan University in a conference on stem cells.

Experts were able to cause some skin cells in mice to regress to their embryonic state by injecting four proteins into an adult mouse without performing any sort of DNA manipulation. A technique that, according to their idea, could be safer than techniques based on genetic manipulation. The cells obtained by intervening directly on DNA have proven to be potentially dangerous since in the long term, they have caused tumors in mice. Acting through proteins (and not through the genes that produce them) should allow this risk to be avoided.

The technique was described in a study published recently in ‘Cell Stem Cell’. Sheng Ding, dressed in a pink shirt, wearing a backpack, and looking like a student, spoke about his research. “Recent discoveries about the biology of stem cells can help us to find new approaches to treat various diseases,” he explained in his speech. “In order to reach these objectives a better comprehension of the mechanisms that control the destiny of stem cells is fundamental, as well as further studies into more efficient methods to manipulate them,” he reflected.

This is the path that Ding and his colleagues have followed in their lab in California: “Our most recent discovery represents a step towards controlling cells and the ‘self restoration’, survival, differentiation, and reprogramming mechanisms of pluripotent stem cells”.

Currently, scientists are faced with “just a promising path to explore. Clinical applications are far from a reality,” specified Fulvio Gandolfi, head of Unistem’s biomedical embryology lab (the stem cell research center of the university of Milan).

Certainly, if initial results are confirmed, he continued “Ding’s discovery would have important repercussions since they would solve a series of difficult ethical questions”. First of all, explained the expert, “we would be able to obtain pluripotent cells without using embryos”. It would suffice to have an adult cell and induce it to regress by using chemical techniques. There is another advantage though: any somatic cell that can regress into an embryonic state can be reprogrammed to replicate into any other human tissue, from heart to nerve cells. “Think about an elderly person who has just suffered a heart attack. We could obtain heart cells just by scraping away a little bit of skin,” observed Gandolfi, “without being forced to remove any damaged heart tissue. The same goes for nerve cells, which are difficult to obtain and subject to the effects of age”

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Culturing stem cells to use to treat certain illnesses is already a reality. In Spain, two labs have received authorization from the Agencia Espanola de Medicamento y Productos Sanitarios to produce stem cells, and there are others waiting to be certified.

Currently, just one public health center, the Gregorio Maranon Hospital in Madrid (HGM) and one private center, the Clinica Universitaria in Navarra (CUN) have undergone the rigid system of quality certification to become “Good Manufacturing Regulations” (GMR) laboratories and are developing stem cell products to be administered and transplanted into patients.

Cardiology, urology, hematology, oncology, and dermatology are some of the areas that will benefit from this research. Manufacturing cells for treatment is extremely rare and there is currently no commercial development in this area. The cells are basically used in small “wise, independent clinics” on a few subjects.

There are two cellular production processes based on how the cells are manipulated: the first method extracts stem cells, selects them, and purifies them for a future transplant into a patient; the other, which requires greater manipulation and infrastructure with a GMP quality system for cellular production to use the products to treat sick individuals.

Each manipulation that alters a cells basic characteristics cause it to be considered a medicinal product. Therefore, “the same regulations are applied that are required by the pharmaceutical industry to produce pharmaceuticals,” explained Javier Perez Calvo, the head of CUN’s GMP lab. The criterion that needs to be followed is complex and a clean room alone is not sufficient.

“The entire cell production process is subject to precise biological and cytogenic inspections to verify the safety of the samples in compliance with manufacturing regulations, guaranteeing that the patient is receiving cells that are cultivated and multiplied under optimal conditions,” explained Maria Eugenia Fernandez Santos, the head of the Gregorio Maranon unit. The cells come from the patient. The process involves “directing” the cells with enzymes or breaking down the tissue until, once the cells are obtained, the proper conditions of humidity, carbon dioxide, and temperature are supplied.

Then, the cells divide and multiply to obtain a sufficient number of stem cells to perform the treatment according to the needs of the specific clinical experiment and transplant strategy. The cells are made available to the researcher on the requested medium, syringe or sac, so they can be implanted into the patient.

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