“Latest Stem Cells News”

In a world first in children, British and Italian doctors have transplanted a new airway (trachea) into a child and used the child’s own stem cells, in the body, to rebuild it.

The donated trachea was stripped of the donor’s old cells, down to the inert collagen. The child recipient’s bone marrow stem cells were collected, and applied to the graft in situ in the body, to rebuild the cellular component of the trachea. Thus the child’s own cells will be used to make the new airway sealed and effective.

This is the first time that this has been performed in a child. It is also the first time the entire length of the trachea has been transplanted.

The application of this technology should reduce greatly the risk of rejection of the new trachea, as the child’s stem cells will not generate any immune response.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) scientists have discovered that endothelial cells, the building blocks of the vascular system, keep blood stem cells dividing healthily in a lab dish much longer and more effectively than previous methods of growing the cells. The new advance dramatically improves scientists’ ability to manufacture large quantities of authentic adult blood stem cells, which may help revolutionize the field of bone marrow transplantation.

Shahin Rafii, an HHMI investigator at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, and his colleagues report on the development of an endothelial cell platform that supports self-renewal of the blood stem cells, known as long-term hematopoietic stem cells (LT-HSCs), in the March 2010 issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell. Their study also describes a novel mechanism by which endothelial cells support propagation of LT-HSCs in adult mice.

The team at Children’s Hospital Boston and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute were working with a new type of cell called induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells, which closely resemble embryonic stem cells but are made from ordinary skin cells.

In this case, they wanted to study a rare, inherited premature aging disorder called dyskeratosis congenita. The blood marrow disorder resembles the better-known aging disease progeria and causes premature graying, warped fingernails and other symptoms as well as a high risk of cancer.

One of the benefits of stem cells and iPS cells is that researchers can make them from a person with a disease and study that disease in the lab. Harvard’s Dr. George Daley and colleagues were making iPS cells from dyskeratosis congenita patients to do this (…)

Dr. Robert Johnson, MD, of Neurosurgical Associates of San Antonio, is presenting at the 5th Annual Stem Cell Summit in New York on February 16, 2010. Dr. Johnson will be presenting his most recent data proving the efficacy of point of care adult stem cell therapies in spine surgery. Point of care technology utilizes the patient’s own cells derived from bone marrow to inhibit bone growth in spinal fusion procedures. Dr. Johnson believes promoting cell therapy utilizing the patient’s own cells will change the future landscape of medicine.

“The use of autologous stem cells is revolutionizing medical care in both the prevention and treatment of spinal disorders,” said Johnson.

In a ray of hope for millions of leukaemia patients, American scientists have claimed to have developed a technique which multiplies the small number of stem cells in the donor blood, making it much more potent for the treatment of the fatal disease.

It also eliminates the need for a matching donor, whose bone marrow is usually transplanted to the patient, according to a study which appeared in the journal Nature Medicine. Traditionally, there was always a risk that the patient’s body may reject the new cells from a donor.

A study published this week reinforces the potential value of stem cells in repairing major injuries involving the loss of bone structure.
The study shows that delivering stem cells on a polymer scaffold to treat large areas of missing bone leads to improved bone formation and better mechanical properties compared to treatment with the scaffold alone. This type of therapeutic treatment could be a potential alternative to bone grafting operations.

“Massive bone injuries are among the most challenging problems that orthopedic surgeons face, and they are commonly seen as a result of accidents as well as in soldiers returning from war,” said the study’s lead author Robert Guldberg, a professor in Georgia Tech’s Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. “This study shows that there is promise in treating these injuries by delivering stem cells to the injury site. These are injuries that would not heal without significant medical intervention.” (…)