“Latest Stem Cells News”

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

Incoming search terms:

“You can make liver. You can make pancreas. You can make bone. Therefore you can make neuro cells. You can make heart cells,” said Dr. Robert Carpenter
Yes, he said make a liver make a heart. From what? Stem cells from your teeth.

“We recently discovered that adult stem cells that don’t have the controversy related to it like embryonic cells have the ability to regenerate and treat a number of illnesses and injuries,” Carpenter said.
Stem cells are being studied to affect other disease like diabetes, kidney problems; liver problems even Parkinson’s disease. It’s in human clinical trials, and it is expected to be available within the next decade. Stem cells from teeth are proving much better than those from even bone marrow.

“With dental stem cells, since they are closely linked to bone and cartilage. It is easy to manipulate these immature cells into cartilage. They’ve actually in the laboratory, have made an exact human ACL,” said Carpenter.Baby teeth have the most viable cells.

“Stem cells in teeth particularly deciduous teeth or wisdom teeth and the follicles the surround wisdom teeth are very immature very plastic stem cells, plastic being the key word that are manipulable into a number of different tissue types,” the doctor said.
Wisdom teeth are also a great source of stem cells and that is why Abby DelGiacco is sending wisdom teeth to a lab to have them preserved with a program called Stemsave. Once her teeth are extracted, they are placed in a container, sealed in a temperature-controlled thermos and overnighted to a cryolab where her cells are preserved if she needs them.

“You never really know what is going to happen and never want to think about it but something you could awful disease and that is what this is for it is not only for degenerative neurological diseases. It is for tissue, bone muscle, tendons if I tear my ACL,” said DelGiacco.
Insurance doesn’t pay to store your stem cells there is a $590 set up laboratory fee and each year thereafter Abby will pay $100.

The cells are there if and when she needs them and studies are showing they maintain viability at least fifty years, probably more. And if you don’t have wisdom teeth left, don’t worry. All you need is one healthy tooth.

Incoming search terms:

TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) -  More than 30 million Americans suffer from painful arthritis in their joints, Osteoarthritis.  The most common problem is knee pain caused by cartilage breaking down.  But some remarkable findings at the UA Arthritis Center could change the way doctors treat these patients.

Since our knees carry most of our body weight, it’s no surprise that the joints can wear out.  Too much wear-and-tear on the cartilage covering the bone can cause serious knee pain.  Right now, the only solution is replacing the entire joint with metal and plastic parts, even if the damage is just in one area.  Sometimes, patients lose the nerves in the area, the plastic can break down over time, and movement is limited.

UA Professor of Orthopedic Surgery Dr. John Szivek and his team knew there had to be a better way.  But getting cartilage cells to grow into tissue was tricky, until they discovered stem cells from a patient’s own fat can do the job.  “Those cells are very easy to collect from fat tissue,” says Dr. Szivek.  “We don’t need very much of the fat tissue.  A golf ball size piece of fat from the patient has tens of millions of cells in it.”

The fat is taken out using a procedure similar to liposuction.  The stem cells are then extracted, and put on a special scaffold that Dr. Szivek’s team developed.  It uses the 3D images from a CT Scan to create an exact match of the patient’s bone structure.  “If we place them near a cartilage surface, the cells that are nearby send them signals and those signals turn the stem cells into cartilage cells,” explains Dr. Szivek.

Doctors then put the tiny scaffold in the damaged part of the knee, and within a couple of months, tissue is formed and the cartilage is as good as new.  The recovery time is about the same as a total joint replacement, but the incision is significantly smaller.

It could be several more years before the procedure is available to patients.

from http://www.kgun9.com/Global/story.asp?S=13089492

Incoming search terms: