“Latest Stem Cells News”

Dr. Ewa Meyer-Blazejewska Photo: private

Journal STEM CELLS Awards Pioneering Research into Limbal Stem Cell Deficiency

A young scientist who led research into the use of stem cells from hair follicles to treat the ocular surface disease has been named the winner of the Young Investigator Award by the journal STEM CELLS.

Dr. Ewa Meyer-Blazejewska will be presented with her award at The Stem Cell Symposium, hosted by the University of Kragujevac in Serbia on October 15, 2011. The $10,000 prize is awarded annually to a young scientist whose paper has been judged to be of worldwide significance by a global jury.

Dr. Meyer-Blazejewska, from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) won the award for her research into Limbal stem cell deficiency (LSCD), a condition which causes the cornea to become cloudy and develop a rough surface causing pain and leading to blindness.

Currently, treatments focus on harvesting limbal cells from a patient’s healthy eye or from cadaveric tissue. In her pioneering research, Dr. Meyer-Blazejewska considered the potential use of stem cells harvested from hair follicles to reconstruct damaged tissue for patients who suffer from LSCD in both eyes.

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Baldness is an undesirable condition that afflicts both men and women, many of which have family members with significant hair loss. According to Health Day News, a new study of stem cells in mice shows promise for future treatments for people who battle hair loss.

The study was conducted on the fatty skin layers of mice by researchers at Yale University. Specifically, adipose precursor cells were found to spur new hair growth in mice, according to Health Day News.

Stem cells are present in hair follicles, which help generate hair growth. Health Day News explains that these cells are still present in people with baldness, but the follicles no longer receive signals to grow new hair. At the same time, hair loss causes a decrease in natural fat cells within the scalp.

“If we can get these fat cells in the skin to talk to the dormant stem cells at the base of the hair follicles, we might be able to get hair to grow again,” said senior study author Valerie Horsley, as quoted by Health Day News.

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Given the amount of angst over male pattern balding, surprisingly little is known about its cause at the cellular level. In a new study, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, a team led by George Cotsarelis, MD, chair of the Department of Dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, has found that stem cells play an unexpected role in explaining what happens in bald scalp.

Using cell samples from men undergoing hair transplants, the team compared follicles from bald scalp and non-bald scalp, and found that bald areas had the same number of stem cells as normal scalp in the same person. However, they did find that another, more mature cell type called a progenitor cell was markedly depleted in the follicles of bald scalp.

The researchers surmised that balding may arise from a problem with stem-cell activation rather than the numbers of stem cells in follicles. In male pattern balding, hair follicles actually shrink; they don’t disappear. The hairs are essentially microscopic on the bald part of the scalp compared to other spots.

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In a new stem cell research study presented at the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) annual meeting last week, a dermatologist presented a new clinical research study in which children with Alopecia Areata were treated for baldness with their own Adult Stem Cells.

Adult Stem Cells for Alopecia Areata

Dr. Marwa Fawzi, a dermatologist at the University of Cairo, treated 8 children who were suffering from Alopecia Areata and thus were balding. Alopecia Areata is a condition that causes hair loss and can happen at any age. People (children and adults alike) with this condition are often teased and shunned and many have low self esteem.

Process of Stem Cells for Baldness

1. Small amounts of skin were removed from the scalps of the children
2. The hair follicle stem cells that stimulate hair growth were isolated and then multiplied in a lab
3. After one month, the children’s own Adult Stem Cells were injected back into their scalps where the baldness was occurring.

Stem Cell Research Results

6 months after the stem cell treatment, 5 of the 8 children had at least a 50% increase in the amount of hair on their heads.
2 of the children had a small increase in the amount of hair and 1 child had no change.
Not bad for a simple procedure with no side effects or down side.

From the stem cell article:

She also took new skin samples and examined the hair follicles themselves and could see that the injected stem cells had migrated into the follicles. There, the stem cells stimulated the follicles to transition from a dormant phase to a hair-generating phase, Fawzi said.

In a poster that she presented at the meeting, she showed photographs of an 8-year-old boy named Mahmoud who was almost completely bald before the treatment and had a nearly full head of hair afterward.

Mahmoud was socially isolated before and always wore a hat to hide his baldness, she said. He now calls her almost every day to talk and thank her for the treatment.

Adult Stem Cells- improving more lives each day.

A similar stem cell research study for Alopecia Areata in adults is also going on in the United States now too.  Hopefully, we can expand this into treating male pattern baldness as well.  Why not?

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For some the stress of every day life can prove to be too much actually causing their hair to fall out. But now there’s an experimental treatment in the Bay area that may help your hair grow back regardless of why it fell out.

Russell Gibson is hoping it will work for him. Under the hot Florida sun each day he wears a black knit stocking cap pulled down low over his ears and his eyebrows. He spends hours working outside because he owns “Momma Gibbs Top Notch Boat Detail.” Seeing see him dressed in a t-shirt and shorts with a cap on his head makes most people look twice.

He says when customers or friends ask him why he’s wearing it he tries to quickly change the subject. In nearly three years hardly anyone has seen Gibson without a cap. “Nobody really knows that I have this problem except for two or three people I’ve actually told.”

In his garage in private when his roommate is gone and no one else is home is the only time he will remove it. He shaves away the short black clumps of hair so you won’t notice the circular areas of hair that have fallen out.

Gibson has alopecia areata which is an auto-immune disease where white blood cells attack the hair follicle which stops hair growth on the scalp and on the body. Gibson’s eyebrows and lashes have fallen out. There is no cure.

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Researchers at the University of Sheffield have created the complex hair cells and the neurons needed for hearing from human stem cells.
They found they could encourage stem cells from the inner ears of human foetuses to grow into these highly specialised hearing cells.
The scientists hope they will eventually be able to use the cells to perform cell transplants in deaf patients to replace the hair cells and neurons that are damaged in a form of deafness known as sensorineural hearing loss.
Sensorineural hearing loss one of the most common forms of deafness, accounting for 90 per cent of cases and affecting more than 6 million people.

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