“Latest Stem Cells News”

Cancer patients in remission at a Suffolk hospital can have their own cells transplanted back to them with the use of a new piece of equipment.

The stem-cell bath defrosts frozen cells taken from people recovering from blood cancers myeloma, leukaemia and lymphoma at Ipswich Hospital.

When transplanted back to the patient following treatment the cells can help their body create new bone marrow.

The bath cuts down on the need for patients to travel to other hospitals.

The stem cells are stored at -190C in liquid nitrogen and can be kept for several years at the national blood transfusion centre in Cambridge.

They are then brought up to body temperature in just two minutes using the bath, the hospital said.

Hermione Warner-Charlick, haematology clinical nurse specialist, said: “The new bath is important because it quickly defrosts the frozen cells to give them back to the patient safely.”

Hong Kong scientists say they have identified the cancer stem cells responsible for the spread of colorectal cancer to other organs and believe the find will revolutionise treatment.

Current treatments regard all cancer cells as alike, but the Hong Kong University researchers discovered that cancers contain a small number of stem cells responsible for starting and maintaining tumours.

“It will revolutionise the approach to cancer treatment in future,” one researcher, Ronnie Poon, told the South China Morning Post.

The King Abdulaziz Medical City in Riyadh is getting ready to open a stem cell bank harvested from the umbilical cord. The procedure will be done in laboratories and specially equipped rooms to draw the cells from umbilical cord blood and separate them using a special device.

Then they will be stored in labs for a period from 15 to 20 years after examining them and making sure they are free of contagious and genetic diseases. In addition, a team will be prepared for coordinating, marketing and research within this field.

Taming the bad cancer stem cells, genetically modifying them to arm them against disease and cancer-from defusing the bomb. Bet on cell girls ‘GM’, transformed into cancer killer bullets, one of five projects funded by AIRC (Italian Association for Cancer Research) with 60 million in five years thanks to the funds of 5 per thousand.

Studies of molecular oncology clinic, chosen by a jury of 18 super-foreign experts, who share one big final goal: to train a new generation of physicians, researchers are able to bridge the gap between the lab bench and the bedside. In five years’ covered ‘by AIRC, each team winning scientists will have to’ get to test on humans.

The project will be cancer stem cell ‘led by Alessandro Massimo Gianni Foundation IRCCS National Cancer Institute (INT) in Milan. Will involve ’16 research groups (9 area of preclinical and clinical 7), for a total of 89′ brains’ (68 preclinical and 21 clinical) distributed Int universities’ State, IRCCS-University ‘Vita Salute San Raffaele in Milan, Istituto Superiore di Sanita ‘Rome and Istituto Giannina Gaslini in Genoa.

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.

Scientists have developed a new tool that illuminates connections between stem cells and cancer.
Researchers have been successful in breaking apart human prostate tissue, extract the stem cells in the tissue, and alter those cells genetically so that they spur cancer.

Many tissues contain pools of stem cells that replenish the tissue when it’s damaged or when changes take place. For example, stem cells in the skin produce new cells to replace those irreparably damaged by the sun, and stem cells in the breast create milk-producing cells when a woman is pregnant.

A characteristic of these stem cells is that they self-renew. This means that in addition to making cells with a specific function, they also make many new stem cells.