“Latest Stem Cells News”

Historic Hurd Hall on Johns Hopkins’ East Baltimore campus was filled to capacity on Jan. 13 with students, faculty and staff waiting to hear five scientists—all in the early part of their careers—describe their novel ideas on how to cure metastatic cancer.

The five were finalists, chosen from among 44 entrants, in a competition on creative thinking named for John Rangos Sr., chairman of the Rangos Family Foundation, who funded the awards. Each scientist had 10 minutes to present his or her idea and answer questions from a panel of faculty judges, who would select the winners based on the novelty and scientific merit of their ideas, as well as the feasibility of future clinical applications of their proposals (…)

First up to the podium was medical oncology fellow and eventual fifth-place winner Kevin Cheung, who proposes turning back the clock on cancer cells by reprogramming them into germ cells. He suggests that the reason testicular and other germ cell tumors have high cure rates is because of their undifferentiated state. Just as scientists have created immature pluripotent stem cells from adult cells, Cheung says that the same could be done with cancer cells. By age reversing resistant cancer cells, he proposes to make them sensitive to conventional chemotherapy (…)

The overall prize went to radiation oncology resident Sharabi for his idea titled “Specific Immune Response Against Testicular Cancer: A Proposed Mechanism for Long-Term Remission.”

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Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale Tumori di Milano

Methods to provide safer stem cell transplants to individuals who are not completely compatible with the donor are being developed. Encouraging results have come from a post-transplant cellular therapy, which strengthens the immune system against viral infections and tumors, developed for the first time at the National Tumor Institute (INT) in Milan. The INT conducted the first phase I-II study in the world, published in ‘Blood’, whose main objective was to assess the use of a low dose radiochemotherapy, followed by low dose post-transplant infusions CD8-depleted donor lymphocytes after a 50% compatible hematopoietic stem cell transplant.

The objective of the study was to reduce transplant toxicity and improve immune system function after the transplant to reduce mortality due to infections and relapses. Stem cell transplants from fully compatible donors (HLA-identical) are an option for many individuals with blood-borne cancers. However, only 50-60% of these patients are able to find a fully compatible donor in their families or on the international donor registry. For leukemia and lymphoma patients with a high risk for early relapse who are not able to find an identical donor, the only concrete alternative is a transplant from a 50% compatible family donor (haploidentical donor) or umbilical cord stem cell transplants for child or low weight patients.

In the past, the use of partially compatible donors was prevented by severe side effects. New strategies to improve results are increasingly necessary. Twenty-eight adult patients affected by advanced hematological neoplasias who had no other alternative treatment in order to survive took part in the study. Twenty-four of the patients were suffering from lymphoma and four from acute leukemia.

Transplant-related mortality after two years was reduced from 40-50% to 25%. The two-year global survival rate was 44% with a better result for patients with chemosensitive diseases (2-year survival rate of 75%).
On the whole, 54 CD8 depleted donor lymphocyte infusions were performed on 23 patients, using three different doses of cells with the objective of defining which dose favored an efficient reconstitution of immunity against infective agents and residual tumor cells, reducing the probability of inducing aggressive immune responses against the recipient. The infusions were well tolerated by the patients and did not reduce the transplant from taking root and did not induce acute toxicity.

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A DRUG said to cure diabetes could mean that sufferers will no longer need to take daily insulin injections.
The treatment uses stem cells made from human bone marrow and has been tested on patients suffering from Type 1 diabetes – which affects about 900,000 people in Britain.

Diabetes causes the immune system to attack the pancreas, the organ that makes insulin, which then controls blood-sugar levels.
Sufferers must take insulin injections to stay alive because if blood-sugar levels are allowed to rise too high or get too low, they could fall into a coma and die.
But early trials by American scientists have shown that the drug Prochymal can stop the immune system destroying the pancreas.
It is hoped the drug could be on the market in less than two years.

Professor Aaron Vinik, a hormone specialist in Norfolk, Virginia, said the cure could change diabetes sufferers’ lives.
He said: “This is a very exciting discovery.
Shock “When people get told they have diabetes, it comes as a tremendous shock.
“They have to live with having to take insulin injections for the rest of their lives.

“In future, we will have a cure that will stop the disease in its tracks.”
Prochymal has proved effective because stem cells in the drug form a barrier to protect the pancreas from attack. This allows the organ to recover and to continue making insulin.
The stem cells are taken from volunteers and then multiplied in the lab to produce hundreds of millions of cells.
In early tests, patients have been given three infusions of the cells into their bloodstream over 60 days.

It has been tested on 60 patients with early diabetes.
Those already on insulin were able to reduce the amount as the stem cells started saving the pancreas.
Prof Vinik said most patients would still need insulin at first but would probably be off it “in a matter of months”.

from Daily record

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Transplanting stem cells from one’s own bone marrow (autologous stem cell transplants) improves the symptoms of muscular sclerosis (MS), and in some cases the neurological disease actually regressed. These are the encouraging results obtained from a small study performed on 21 remittent MS patients by a group from the Northwestern University School of Medicine in Chicago and published in Lancet Neurology. “All of the patients,” said the neurologists, “witnessed an improvement in their conditions three years after the stem cell transplants were performed. Of these, 81pct benefited from visible progress, measured in terms of the scale of their disability.”

With these “encouraging” results, the researchers decided to perform another study involving more patients, and compared their results with traditional treatments. The experiment involved the removal and freezing of bone marrow after treating the marrow with drugs to remove the lymphocytes of the immune system which are responsible for attacking nerve system fibers in MS patients.

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The symptoms of multiple sclerosis could be reversed thanks to stem cell transplants from the patient’s own bone marrow, according to a study that will be published in March in Lancet Neurology by researchers from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, who say that stem cell transplants could restore the immune system of patients suffering from the disease, stopping its evolution, and even causing its regression.

Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease characterized by a defective immune system, which attacks the body’s own tissues in the central nervous system, and effects 57 thousand Italians. The disease develops through a process called “demyelinization”, which causes the deterioration of myelin – sheaths composed of fatty acids that cover nerve fibers – slowing or completely stopping the transmission of nerve impulses along the fibers in the brain and the spinal cord.

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Promising results from a small study may offer hope for the treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS).

Researchers from the University of California – San Diego report dramatic improvement after treating MS patients with stromal vascular fraction (SVF) stem cells from a patient’s own body fat. They say the SVF therapy can limit the body’s immune system reaction and promote the growth of new myelin – the fatty “insulation” on axons in the brain, which breaks down in patients with MS.

“None of the presently available MS treatments selectively inhibit the immune attack against the nervous system, nor do they stimulate regeneration of previously damaged tissue,” Boris Minev, M.D., from the Division of Neurosurgery at UCSD, was quoted as saying. “We’ve shown that SVF cells may fill this therapeutic gap”.

Only three patients were treated in the study, but all three showed dramatic results following treatment, including improved balance and coordination and increased energy. They also say their frequent, painful seizures had stopped.

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