“Latest Stem Cells News”

Apparently it looks like a simple tea bag but in reality it’s a genetically engineered concentrate able to completely revolutionize treatments for stroke patients. A special little bag called ‘CellBeads’ contains tiny capsules, each containing about 1 million stem cells. Thanks to genetic engineering techniques, stem cells taken from the bone marrow are transformed into a drug that protects brain cells from dying. This allows the cells to be rejuvenated and repair damage caused by the stroke. The stem cells are encapsulated to ‘fool’ the immune system, avoiding a rejection by the body. ‘CellBeads’ were developed by a group of British scientists from the Biocompatibles International Company, and are about 2cm, which allows them to be easily removed.

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Bone marrow stem cells self transplant can reduce Multiple Sclerosis (MS) symptoms, and make the disease regress in some cases.
These are the hopeful results from a research on 21 patients diseased by MS, made by the Chicago Northwestern University School of Medicine and published on Lancet Neurology. “Since 3 years from self transplant all the patients watch their conditions better.”

Since these results, doctors decided to make a bigger research involving more MS diseased people and comparing new therapy’s results with olds’ ones.
The experiment is about taking marrow stem cells and then treating them to remove ill lymphocytes which attack nerve fibers and then causing MS.

Stem cells are ready to create a ‘correct’ immune system and transplant begins after this process. “Time factor” is the nodal point for stem effectiveness because “operating soon we can make the most of the body’s self-regeneration, which can be lost in the long run”. Anyway scientists say also “it’s not the final cure to MS”.

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Drs. Scott Kitchen, Zoran Galic, Jerry Zack of the UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center and AIDS Institute and their colleagues demonstrated for the first time that human blood stem cells can be engineered into cells that can target and kill HIV-infected cells. The process could potentially be used against a range of chronic viral diseases.

The study, published Dec. 7 in the-peer reviewed online journal PLoS ONE, provides proof-of-principle, a demonstration of feasibility, that human stem cells can be engineered into the equivalent of a genetic vaccine.

“We have demonstrated in this proof-of-principle study that this type of approach can be used to engineer the human immune system, particularly the T-cell response, to specifically target HIV-infected cells,” said lead investigator Scott G. Kitchen, assistant professor of medicine in the division of hematology and oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a member of the UCLA AIDS Institute. “These studies lay the foundation for further therapeutic development that involves restoring damaged or defective immune responses toward a variety of viruses that cause chronic disease, or even different types of tumors.”

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Breast milk, long revered for the nutritional advantages it gives a newborn, could be just as vital in terms of infant development, a leading scientist will claim this week. Up to three different types of stem cells have been discovered in breast milk, according to revolutionary new research.

Dr Mark Cregan, medical director at the Swiss healthcare and baby equipment company Medela, believes the existence of stem cells means breast milk could help a child “fulfil its genetic destiny”, with a mother’s mammary glands taking over from her placenta to guide infant development once her child is born.

“Breast milk is the only adult tissue where more than one type of stem cell has been discovered. That is very unique and implies a lot about the impressive bioactivity of breast milk and the consequential benefits to the breastfed infant,” said Dr Cregan, who is speaking at Unicef’s Baby Friendly Initiative conference this week. His research has isolated adult stem cells of epithelial (mammary) and immune origin, with “very preliminary evidence” that breast milk also contains stem cells that promotes the growth of muscle and bone tissue.

For children born with immunodeficiencies, researchers may have found a better way for them to get the help they need from stem-cell transplants (…)

Children with primary immunodeficiencies have genetic defects in their immune system that leave them open to infection and other complications. Stem-cell transplants can replace the defective immune system with one derived from healthy donor bone marrow, but without a stem-cell transplant, many of these children might die, the researchers noted in a journal news release.

In order to create space for the donor stem cells and prevent rejection, the patient usually undergoes chemotherapy, radiotherapy or both. This chemoradiotherapy can cause severe liver or lung damage, as well as hair loss and sickness. It may also cause problems with growth, puberty and infertility in later life, according to the news release (…)

With this approach, the 16 children with primary immunodeficiencies in this study, who were too sick for a traditional stem-cell transplant, were able to avoid much of the toxicity caused by chemotherapy (…)

read full article on http://www.ajc.com/health/content/shared-auto/healthnews/bird/630592.html

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A new experimental therapy to treat diabetes, which involves transplanting embryonic pig stem cells into the diseased tissue, is currently being researched. Experiments have been done on primates, but the results that have been obtained indicate that in the future the same technique could be applied to human beings. For many years, pig organs have been considered the most best match to be used in human transplants, but strong immune reactions and powerful combinations of anti-rejection drugs have always represented an important obstacle in their clinical use.

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrates that embryonic tissue from pigs, if transplanted, can form a complete pancreas in the host organism. Yair Reisner and his colleagues say that using an embryonic pancreas in place of an adult pancreas in a transplant encourages the development of the organ and the network of blood vessels that supply and nourish the organ, helping reduce the intensity of the immune response against foreign tissues.

For now, researchers have transplanted embryonic pig pancreases into two groups of monkeys with diabetes, which caused the death of the animals in the first group. An analysis demonstrated that the dose of drugs administered to the first group to suppress the immune response was too high and was lowered in the second group of monkeys. This group survived for almost one year after the transplant.

The key result of this study, say researchers, is that they now understand that the monkeys that received the transplants did not need any insulin for at least four months after the operation. Differently from adult pancreatic tissues, embryonic Langerhans cells have a greater ability to tolerate stress and to regenerate.

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