“Latest Stem Cells News”

Stem cell injections may be able to cure the crippling effects of multiple sclerosis, according to a study published today. Four out of five adults in the early stages of Muscular Sclerosis who were injected with stem cells taken from their own bone marrow experienced improvements in their conditions after three years, and the rest of the patients experienced a stabilization of their conditions. Dr. Doug Brown of the Muscular Sclerosis Society said that encouraging results have been obtained, and that it is exciting to see not only that the progression of the disability was stopped in this attempt, but it also appears to cure the damaging effects of the disorder; stem cells are increasingly demonstrating more potential to treat Muscular Sclerosis .

The challenge that must now be faced involves attempting their efficiency in studies with many people. Previous studies have shown that stem cell treatments stabilize Muscular Sclerosis , but have never suggested that it could cure its conditions. Muscular Sclerosis is the most common debilitating neurological condition, damaging myelin, the protective membrane that surrounds nervous fibers, making it difficult to control muscles.

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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.”

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New hope in treating Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig’s Disease, an incurable neurological disease, which is particularly frequent in former soccer players, may come from stem cells. Nicholas Maragakis and his colleagues from the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine in Baltimore in the United States, have successfully conducted an important experiment in mice. In a study published in the online edition of ‘Nature Neuroscience’, the American researchers transplanted precursor cells called astrocytes, which function as support cells for neurons, into the mice with ALS. This allow the mice to survive for much longer.

ALS, pointed out the authors, is caused by the degeneration and death of so-called motor neurons, which are nervous cells that send signals to muscles to move. Recent research has demonstrated that astrocytes, belonging to the family of glial support cells, could be struck by the disease. Based on this concept, Maragakis’ team tried to treat an animal with ALS by transplanting early astrocytes.

The cells managed to survive in the spinal cord and the mice, although they did not heal completely, were able to survive much longer than normal. The beneficial effects, specified the scientists, require the presence of a particular transport protein in the precursor astrocytes: a scavenger protein able to remove excess glutamated neurotransmitters, a substance that is involved in the development of ALS, from motor neurons tied to astrocytes.

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Giancarlo Comi

A biopolymer could aid in the regrowing of nerves induced by the use of stem cells according to a new research project that gives hope to people who have been in an accident and have lost the use of one or more limbs. The procedure will enter into clinical testing in January after animal testing has been completed.

The Experimental Neurological Institute (INSPE), founded in 2005 at San Raffaele Hospital of Milan became operational with the inauguration of more than 1,200 square meters of lab space entirely dedicated to general and clinical research therapies for serious neurological diseases, like multiple sclerosis, strokes, spinal trauma, and peripheral neuropathy.

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