“Latest Stem Cells News”

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.

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 (…)