“Latest Stem Cells News”

Cells grown in culture are not alone: They are constantly communicating with one another by sending signals through their culture media that are picked up and transmitted by other cells in the media. When thousands of cells are cultured together in a dish, there are hundreds of thousands of these signals present every minute, all competing to be heard.

Scientists trying to direct cells to do useful things — like causing stem cells to turn into neurons or heart cells — typically try to overcome these signals by adding their own exogenous factors. These exogenous factors are often added at saturating concentrations, blanketing the cells with a particular growth factor or cytokine to activate specific pathways to produce a desired outcome, such as controlling stem cell differentiation. However, the constant din of cell communications is still present, causing alternate and perhaps opposing pathways to be stimulated.

This unstoppable secretion by cells in culture makes it difficult to determine the exact “recipe” of exogenous factors needed to elicit a specific phenotype, particularly in fast-growing cells like embryonic stem cells. MIT researchers Laralynne Przybyla, a graduate student in biology, and Joel Voldman, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, report in a paper published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences how they were able to silence this din by using a microfluidic device to culture embryonic stem cells under continuous liquid flow (known as perfusion) such that factors secreted by the cells were removed before they could be transmitted to other cells. They used this device to investigate the influence of these factors on stem cells.

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Parkinson’s Disease – Medical world has struggled in finding permanent cure for this condition that usually affects men over the age of 50 years, but now this maybe changing with the advent of stem cell based research in regenerative medicine. A significant clinical human trial using these technique now seems feasible in the near future.

Stem Cells and its Potential:

Stem cells have the remarkable potential to develop into many different cell types in the body during early life and growth. In addition, in many tissues they serve as a sort of internal repair system, dividing essentially without limit to replenish other cells as long as the person or animal is still alive. When a stem cell divides, each new cell has the potential either to remain a stem cell or become another type of cell with a more specialized function, such as a muscle cell, a red blood cell, or a brain cell.

Stem cell therapy in Parkinson’s disease:

The race to find permanent cure for Parkinson’s disease seems to be on with many exciting and rapid developments taking place in stem cell based regenerative research. However on a cautious note it remains to be shown whether stem cell-derived dopamine neurons can efficiently reinnervate the regions of the brain like the striatum and provide functional recovery in Parkinson’s patients.

The transplantation of the human foetal midbrain tissue in animals and humans has provided knowledge of a number of requirements for establishing a clinically competitive Stem Cell-based therapy in Parkinson’s disease.

The stem cell grafts should:

1. Exhibit a regulated release of dopamine and molecular, electrophysiological, and morphological properties similar to those of substantia nigra neurons(substantianigra lies in the midbrain immediately dorsal to the cerebral peduncles);
2. Enable survival of more than 100,000 dopamine neurons per human putamen(round structure located at the base of the forebrain);
3. Re-establish the dopamine network within the striatum and restore the functional connectivity with host extra-striatal neural circuitries;
4. Reverse the motor deficits resembling human symptoms in animal models of Parkinson’s disease and induce long-lasting andmajor symptomatic relief in patients;
5. Produce no adverse-effects such as tumor formation, immune reactions and gastric disorders.

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Howie Lindeman was facing the loss of his career and Neim Malo wasn’t supposed to see 2011. They were each treated for heart disease years ago using their own stem cells to repair their damaged heart tissue. Several years following treatment, both men continue to see improvement in their condition and quality of life.

Howie Lindeman, 60, had a heart attack at 39 years old that severely damaged his heart. He went through several procedures including having stents placed in his arteries and his physicians were considering open heart surgery for a quintuple bypass. He was in constant pain and struggled to walk just 25 feet, but when Zannos G. Grekos, MD, MAAC, FACC, chief medical officer of Regenocyte and a Florida-based pioneer in the field of adult stem cell therapy suggested he have the Regenocyte Adult Stem Cell procedure, he jumped at the opportunity. A normal ejection fraction (EF) is over 50 percent and Lindeman’s was down to a dangerous 22 percent before the adult stem cell procedure. Shortly after receiving treatment, his EF improved to a near-normal 47 percent, and is now at a stable 54 percent.

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A notice for 8 million euros in funding for stem cell projects, a line of research that promises important results for ocular diseases, Parkinson’s, heart diseases, and the fight against tumors was announced by deputy health minister Ferruccio Fazio, who while speaking to the AGI press agency underlined “the importance of regenerative medicine, one of the great hopes for the future, as well as biotechnologies for new treatments altering molecular systems”.

The notification will expire on July 20 and is intended for universities, the National Research Council (CNR), and other private and public research groups. Three independent judges, one of whom will be from abroad, will evaluate the projects that are presented. The research topics eligible for funding include innovative strategies for experimental models (cellular and animal), risk/benefit analysis for pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments and epidemiology research.

An allocation of three million euros for the next three years is planned to finance projects on rare diseases. No referral to embryonic stem cells, which are considered by many experts to be more promising in research because they are totipotent, or potentially able to become any type of cell, was made in the notice. “This was a choice,” specified Fazio, “that the Federal and Regional government conference made, which asked for a change to the original announcement, which was open also to stem cells.

Not mentioning them was a not a political choice by the health ministry, but a decision made by the federal and regional governments”. In any case, explained the deputy minister, “studying adult stem cells and their differentiation is more interesting to me and I believe that it is more advantageous”. There are numerous possibilities for treatments: “Not only ocular and cardiac diseases, Parkinson’s and rare diseases,” explained Fazio, “but also new possibilities to fight tumors.

Some researchers believe that tumor stem cells are the most aggressive stem cells of the tumor, and somehow determine the spread of the tumor. Tumor stem cell research could help understand the evolution of tumors and prevent their growth by striking their stem cells”. Financing, assured Fazio, “is in line with previous funding and in 2009 there will be funding for general research, open to all lines of research, therefore there will be funds available for stem cells.”

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Medistem Inc. announced the appointment of Dr. Hugh S. Taylor to its Scientific Advisory Board. Dr. Taylor is the first scientist to identify the bone marrow origin of endometrial tissue, and performed independent experiments demonstrating that endometrial stem cells are capable of treating diabetes and Parkinson’s Disease in animal models.

Dr. Taylor is Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences; Section Chief, Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility; Director, Yale Center for Endometrium and Endometriosis and Director of the Yale Center for Reproductive Biology.

“Dr. Taylor has literally defined the field of endometrial stem cells. His fundamental discovery of the bone marrow origin of endometrial cells in humans was one of the major forces behind the now growing field of endometrial stem cell research,” said Thomas Ichim, CEO of Medistem. “We strongly believe that Dr. Taylor’s deep scientific understanding of biological mechanisms occurring in the endometrium will serve as a foundation for our clinical development programs.”

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