“Latest Stem Cells News”

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Researchers at Queen Mary, University of London, studied equivalent cells taken from mouse brains. Principal investigator Silvia Marino, Professor of Neuropathology at Queen Mary, University of London, and her team showed that medulloblastomas can grow from a type of brain stem cell and that these cancers are a distinct form of the disease which may require a completely different approach to treatment.

Like a Hole in the Head: Living with a Brain Tumour

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Cultured stem cells from eyes helped improve the sight of eight patients with Limbal Stem Cell Deficiency, a painful, blinding disease, British doctors said.

The patients’ own corneal cells were cultured and used to reduce corneal cloudiness from the disease, The North East England Stem Cell Institute, Newcastle, England, reported in a release Thursday.

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Dr Foteini Hassiotou has discovered stem cells can be obtained from breast milk

Serious and fatal diseases such as pancreatic cancer, Parkinson‘s disease and diabetes may eventually be treated using stem cells from breast milk following a remarkable discovery at the University of Western Australia.

UWA PhD student Foteini Hassiotou has potentially broken through the greatest hurdle in stem cell research – the ability to ethically obtain stem cells in a non-invasive manner.

Her finding that stem cells from breast milk can be directed to become other body cell types such as bone, fat, liver and brain cells, could reduce the need to use embryonic stem cells and therefore fast-track future therapies.

Dr Hassiotou’s research follows the 2008 discovery by a team of UWA scientists that breast milk contained embryonic-like stem cells.

Her work was boosted on Sunday when she won the AusBiotech-GlaxoSmithKline national student excellence award. She will now present her findings at an international conference.

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StemCells, Inc. announced today that the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has approved the Company’s application for a “Disease Team Therapy Development Planning Award.”

The grant, totaling approximately $100,000, will help fund the Company’s plans to develop its proprietary human neural stem cell product, HuCNS-SC(R) cells, in Alzheimer’s disease by enabling the Company and its collaborators at the University of California, Irvine, to prepare and submit an application for a “Disease Team Therapy Development Research Award.”

The CIRM has indicated that each Research Award will be up to $20 million, payable over four years, to fund preclinical and IND-enabling activities with the aim of starting human clinical trials within the four-year window. The CIRM has also indicated it plans to approve and fund Research Awards in the summer of 2012. StemCells, Inc. was one of only four companies awarded a disease team planning grant.

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A revolutionary stem cell procedure may be able to stop ALS, or Lou Gehrig‘s disease, in its tracks.

HealthFirst reporter Leslie Toldo shares the story of one of the few people who have had it done.
ALS is a deadly disease, with a quick and devastating decline. This could be the hope thousands of people have been waiting for.

Fifty-five-year-old Tom Elliott is not a quitter. He has ALS and fights to keep up with the daily routines of his life, even as the disease makes everything harder. “Brushing the teeth has become a real chore. Turning and rolling in bed to get comfortable has become an impossibility. This disease is about having to give up and sacrifice a lot.”

As ALS progresses, it destroys the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control muscle movement until people “cease to be able to move, they become essentially locked in their bodies,” Dr. Nicholas Boulis said.

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