“Latest Stem Cells News”

Scientists at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI) and the University of Ottawa have discovered a powerful new way to stimulate muscle regeneration, paving the way for new treatments for debilitating conditions such as muscular dystrophy.

The research, to be published in the June 5 issue of Cell Stem Cell, shows for the first time that a protein called Wnt7a increases the number of stem cells in muscle tissue, leading to accelerated growth and repair of skeletal muscle.

“This discovery shows us that by targeting stem cells to boost their numbers, we can improve the body’s ability to repair muscle tissue,” said senior author Dr. Michael Rudnicki. Dr. Rudnicki is the Scientific Director of Canada’s Stem Cell Network and a Senior Scientist at OHRI and Director of OHRI’s Sprott Centre for Stem Cell Research, as well as a Professor of Medicine at the University of Ottawa.

Stem cells give rise to every tissue and organ in the body. Satellite stem cells are specialized muscle stem cells that live in adult skeletal muscle tissue and have the ability to both replicate and differentiate into various types of muscle cells. Dr. Rudnicki’s team found that the Wnt7a protein, when introduced into mouse muscle tissue, significantly increased the population of these satellite stem cells and fueled the regeneration process, creating bigger and stronger muscles. Muscle tissue mass was increased by nearly 20 per cent in the study.

“Our findings point the way to the development of new therapeutic treatment for muscular diseases such as muscular dystrophy, sarcopenia and muscle wasting conditions resulting from extended hospital stays and surgeries,” said Dr. Rudnicki.

from physorg

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Scientists at the Ottawa Health Research Institute have been awarded $2.4 million to develop stem-cell therapies that could reverse blindness.
The five-year grant is to help researchers develop better methods for turning stem cells, harvested from human embryos and from patients themselves, into different kinds of eye cells.

If successful, this form of stem-cell therapy would take medicine one more step toward rebuilding the body’s sick and damaged parts.
The treatment could benefit more than one million Canadians affected by degenerative eye diseases.

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Douglas A. Melton

Scientists have created stem cells from patients suffering from 10 incurable diseases, from Down syndrome to diabetes and Parkinson’s – immortal cells that might one day be turned into repair material for wasting muscles or damaged brains.
The Harvard University-led team has taken skin and bone marrow cells from diseased patients and re-programmed those cells to behave like cells from days-old embryos.

The feat allows scientists for the first time to watch muscular dystrophy and other diseases unfold in a petri dish, “that is, to watch what goes right or wrong,” said Doug Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. The cells will also allow researchers to screen new drugs to treat the diseases.
“In these complex genetic diseases, we’re so ignorant at the moment we don’t even know when a patient gets diabetes if they all get it the same way,” Melton said. “There could be 50 different ways to get Type 1 diabetes.” The stem cell lines could help researchers hone in on exactly which mutations are responsible and find “the weak point where you could try to prevent, or treat it.”
“We have good reason to believe that this will make it possible to find new treatments, and eventually drugs, to slow or even stop the course of a number of diseases,” Melton said.
The new cells are “pluripotent” cells that can be coaxed into making any tissue in the human body, and can grow forever.

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