“Latest Stem Cells News”

Cells grown in culture are not alone: They are constantly communicating with one another by sending signals through their culture media that are picked up and transmitted by other cells in the media. When thousands of cells are cultured together in a dish, there are hundreds of thousands of these signals present every minute, all competing to be heard.

Scientists trying to direct cells to do useful things — like causing stem cells to turn into neurons or heart cells — typically try to overcome these signals by adding their own exogenous factors. These exogenous factors are often added at saturating concentrations, blanketing the cells with a particular growth factor or cytokine to activate specific pathways to produce a desired outcome, such as controlling stem cell differentiation. However, the constant din of cell communications is still present, causing alternate and perhaps opposing pathways to be stimulated.

This unstoppable secretion by cells in culture makes it difficult to determine the exact “recipe” of exogenous factors needed to elicit a specific phenotype, particularly in fast-growing cells like embryonic stem cells. MIT researchers Laralynne Przybyla, a graduate student in biology, and Joel Voldman, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, report in a paper published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences how they were able to silence this din by using a microfluidic device to culture embryonic stem cells under continuous liquid flow (known as perfusion) such that factors secreted by the cells were removed before they could be transmitted to other cells. They used this device to investigate the influence of these factors on stem cells.

Incoming search terms:

OHSU research demonstrates not all embryonic stem cells are equal; produces the world’s first primate chimeric offspring

Newly published research by scientists at Oregon Health & Science University provides significant new information about how early embryonic stem cells develop and take part in formation of the primate species. The research, which took place at OHSU’s Oregon National Primate Research Center, has also resulted in the first successful birth of chimeric monkeys — monkeys developed from stem cells taken from two separate embryos. The research will be published this week in the online edition of the journal Cell and will be published in a future printed copy of the journal.

The research was conducted to gain a better understanding of the differences between natural stem cells residing in early embryos and their cultured counterparts called embryonic stem cells. This study also determined that stem cell functions and abilities are different between primates and rodents.

Incoming search terms:

The use of human embryos for therapeutic or diagnostic purposes which are applied to the human embryo and are useful to it is patentable, but their use for purposes of scientific research is not patentable

Mr Oliver Brüstle is the holder of a patent, filed on 19 December 1997, which concerns isolated and purified neural precursor1 cells produced from human embryonic stem cells used to treat neurological diseases. According to the information supplied by Mr Brüstle, there are already clinical applications, particularly for patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease.

On application by Greenpeace e.V., the Bundespatentgericht (Federal Patent Court, Germany) ruled that Mr Brüstle’s patent was invalid in so far as it covers processes for obtaining precursor cells from human embryonic stem cells.
The Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice, Germany), hearing Mr Brüstle’s appeal, decided to refer questions to the Court of Justice concerning the interpretation of, in particular, the concept of ‘human embryo’ which is not defined in Directive 98/44/EC on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions2.

Incoming search terms:

The U.S. government approved the first 13 batches of human embryonic stem cells on Wednesday, enabling researchers using them to get millions of dollars in federal funding as promised by President Barack Obama in March.

“Today we are announcing the approval of the first 13 stem cell lines,” Collins told reporters in a telephone briefing.

In March, Obama lifted restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research imposed by his predecessor, George W. Bush.

He could not lift a restriction set by Congress, called the Dickey-Wicker amendment, that forbids the use of federal money to make the stem cells, which require destruction of a human embryo. But the decision made it possible for researchers to use federal funds to work with cells that others have made.

Incoming search terms:

Patents offer the economic guarantees scientists and companies need to develop new treatments, Oliver Bruestle told Deutsche Welle. He’s at the center of a German court battle surrounding embryonic stem cell research

Oliver Bruestle, director of the Institute of Reconstructive Neurobiology at the University of Bonn, is pushing for Germany to recognize the right to patent procedures conducted on embryonic stem cells, saying patents are the right way to ensure that scientists and companies profit from their work.

Greenpeace, however, is opposed to the patents. The organization filed suit against a patent granted to Bruestle in 1999, saying that the patenting of embryonic stem cell research could lead to an “embryo industry.” (…)

There is obviously a lot of hope and hype attached to embryonic stem cell research. Some people imagine a world full of bionic limbs and clones. Is that where the research is headed?

Stem cell research has huge potential for biomedicine mainly because there’s an opportunity to generate essentially every single type of body cell and every single type of tissue artificially in a cell culture lab. This is particularly relevant for organs which have lost their capacity for regeneration. That’s true for the nervous system and the heart as well as for insulin-producing cells. For these tissues, embryonic stem cell lines, which are really the entry point of the patent and procedure, provide a limitless source of cells. We can use these cells to generate insulin-producing cells, heart cells and brain cells in limitless numbers in a cell culture dish (…)

There’s also a lot of fear for people who envision a world full of bionic limbs and organs and clones. Is there potential for this to get out of hand?

There are quite a few misconceptions in the field. For example, we get confronted with accusations that we do research on embryos. This is, in fact, not true. The way the research is done is that there is a possibility to derive what we call embryonic stem cell lines from oocytes, which have been fertilized during artificial insemination or during fertility treatments which are left over and frozen and which are otherwise thrown away in large numbers.

There is an opportunity to use these cells with consent of the parents to derive embryonic stem cell lines and the very special things about these stem cell lines is once they are derived they can be multiplied indefinitely. We can grow them for years, we can freeze them, we can thaw them and they have the remarkable potential that they can be turned into any type of cell in our body.

This field needs a very clear and tight regulation. We certainly have such a situation in Germany. We have one of the toughest embryo protection acts in the world, which essentially prohibits any procedure which is not to the benefit of the embryo. That’s the reason why in Germany we cannot derive embryonic stem cells from fertilized oocytes, which can be done in many other countries (…)

What other possibilities does stem cell research offer that could improve people’s lives?

The prime candidates for stem cell therapies in the nervous system are diseases which lead to a loss of nerve cells or other cells in defined areas. For example, Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease are diseases where we see the loss of very specific types of nerve cells in very specific areas. For replacement therapy, we know where to go and which cell type to put in (…)

from http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4898622,00.html

Incoming search terms:

The latest developments in molecular biology in the prenatal diagnostic field, particularly regarding preserving stem cells extracted from amniotic liquid, were the focus of the latest S.I.Di.P conference (Italian Society of Prenatal Diagnosis and Maternal Fetal Medicine).

After a greeting from S.I.Di.P President Claudio Giorlandino and President of the Italian Gynecology and Obstetrics Society Giorgio Vittori, Professor Giuseppe Simone, the head of the Biocell Center in Busto Arsizio (VA), the first Italian center able to treat and store stem cells extracted from the amniotic liquid in liquid nitrogen, opened the conference.

“In the next five to ten years,” explained Professor Simoni, “scientific research will have developed therapy based on amniotic stem cells. They are very similar to embryonic stem cells, they are multipotent and young, and this means that they are preferable to embryonic stem cells.

Preserving them creates no risk and the embryo is not sacrificed. Investing into research in this field is an obligation to humanity. There are so many possibilities and the research into amniotic stem cells to treat diseases represents the new frontier for research in the third millennium.

Researchers hope that they can be used to combat many terrible diseases, as well as in reconstructive surgery, and to treat nerve system diseases.”

Stem cells derived from the amniotic liquid are able to differentiate into various tissues, including bone, fat, nerve, cartilage, muscle, hematopoietic tissue, and offer a wide range of clinical applications.

“The future,” continued Simoni, “is research into these types of stem cells, which many research groups, including research teams from Italy, are studying. Preserving them, from anyone who has already decided to undergo amniocentesis is a golden opportunity to donate a precious gift to the future: the gift of life itself. Cryoconservation will allow us to be ready when scientific progress achieves further developments, which will come soon.”

Incoming search terms: