“Latest Stem Cells News”

CINCINNATI—New research from the University of Cincinnati may help in the recovery of lost vision for patients with corneal scarring.

Winston Whei-Yang Kao, PhD, professor of ophthalmology, along with other researchers in UC’s ophthalmology department found that transplanting human umbilical mesenchymal stem cells into mouse models that lack the protein lumican restored the transparency of cloudy and thin corneas.

Mesenchymal stem cells are “multi-potent” stem cells that can differentiate into a variety of cell types.

These findings are being presented Dec. 8 in San Diego at the 49th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Cell Biology.

“Corneal transplantation is currently the only true cure for restoration of eyesight that may have been lost due to corneal scarring caused by infection, mechanical and chemical wounds and congenital defects of genetic mutations,” Kao says. “However, the number of donated corneas suitable for transplantation is decreasing as the number of individuals receiving refractive surgeries, like LASIK, increases.”

“Worldwide, there is a shortage of suitable corneas for transplantation, and at the present time, there is no effective alternative procedure besides corneal transplantation to treat corneal blindness,” he continues. “There is a large need to develop alternative treatment regimens, one of which may be the transplantation of mesenchymal stem cells.”

Researchers used mouse models that did not have the lumican gene, also known as lumican knock-out models. Lumican is a protein that controls the formation and maintenance of transparent corneas.

“Lumican knock-out models manifested thin and cloudy corneas,” he says. “Transplantation of the umbilical stem cells significantly improved transparency and increased corneal stromal thickness in these mice.”

In addition, Kao says, the umbilical mesenchymal stem cells survived in the mouse stroma (connective tissue) for more than three months with minimal or no rejection and became corneal cells, repairing lost functions caused by mutations.

“Our results suggest a potential treatment regimen for congenital and/or acquired corneal diseases,” he says, adding that the availability of human umbilical stem cells is almost unlimited. “These stem cells are easy to isolate and can be recovered quickly from storage when treating patients.

“These findings have the potential to create new and better treatments—and an improved quality of life—for patients with vision loss due to corneal injury.”

This study was funded by grants from the National Eye Institute, Research to Prevent Blindness and the Ohio Lions Eye Research Foundation.

from http://healthnews.uc.edu/news/?/9613/

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Adult stem cells tested for defects before being implanted in the injured spinal cords of mice helped the animals recover with no cancerous side effects, according to new research. In recent years, scientists found that some experimental stem cell therapies can cause cancerous tumors. Pre-screened cells could result in potentially life- saving treatments without such side effects.

These new findings were presented at Neuroscience 2009, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and the world’s largest source of emerging news about brain science and health. “We tried to identify induced pluripotent stem cells from adult tissue that would be safe when applied to cell therapy for central nervous system disorders,” said Masaya Nakamura, MD, PhD, at Keio University School of Medicine, a co-author of the study. “These results suggest that properly pre-evaluated cells may be a promising source for future transplantation therapy.”

Here, the authors investigated the possibility of making transplantation therapies safer and more efficient by examining different types of stem cells. They generated 36 induced pluripotent stem cell clones, which differed in their origins and other characteristics. They found that the cell’s origin was a crucial indicator of whether the cells would result in tumors.

Results showed that immature (undifferentiated) stem cells are more likely to form tumors than mature ones. The transplantation of “safe” cells into mice with spinal cord injuries resulted in the formation of new neurons, while “unsafe” cells sped recovery for a short period but ultimately formed tumors.

“This study confirms that before human clinical trials go forward involving treatment of central nervous system disorders with induced pluripotent stem cells, pre-evaluating each cell clone carefully is essential,” Nakamura said.

from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091022115618.htm

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A clampdown on unproven and potentially unsafe stem cell research is being called for by an expert group.
Bionet, a group of expert Chinese and European doctors, lawyers and bioethicists, says countries throughout the world must develop more effective regulation for this emerging science (…)

They had provided a wealth of anecdotal evidence about their concerns that stem cell research was being moved too rapidly into clinical practice without proper study.
He said: “The key is informed consent. Doctors should be able to tell the patient about the short-term and long-term prognosis and the things we don’t know about the risks.”

Bionet is recommending that the safety and efficiency of stem cell treatments is investigated through state-of-the-art clinical trials before they are offered to patients (…)

And there should be quality standards for stem cells used in clinical practice.
These should include the bacterial and viral contamination applied during the production of the stem cells.

China introduced new regulations in May calling for clinical trials before stem cell treatments were offered to patients.
Professor Qui Renzong, vice-president of the ethics committee at the Chinese Ministry of Health, said: “In China there are about 150 institutions now providing stem cell therapy for diabetes through to spinal injuries.” (…)

“When stem cell ‘treatments’ are based overseas, regulatory oversight and jurisdiction is particularly problematic.
We take this very seriously and strongly encourage anyone considering participating in overseas stem cell ‘research trials’ or buying internet treatments to talk to their doctor and follow health guidelines.”

from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8234206.stm

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It has been about 3 months since I last updated you on Preston Walker and Richard Humphries, the two Multiple Sclerosis Stem Cell Research pioneers who received their own Adult Stem Cells to improve their MS.

Since then, both have returned to Costa Rica to receive a second helping of their own Adult Stem Cells- a second stem cell therapy.   Let’s check in with their stem cell blog and see what they have to say.

Update from Stem Cell Research Blog

First is this July 7th post from adult stem cell recipient, Preston “An Energetic Day“-

I am not sure how to describe what happened today other than that I have a LOAD OF ENERGY!!

To let everyone understand this, I documented today’s events in the following information:

I invited my son to a bike ride. We rode twenty miles and returned home. Instead of wanting to sleep, I started looking for other things to do!! I found that my lawnmower needed the rear wheel removed and replaced.

It was quite a day of doing little things, but it would have been very taxing several weeks ago.

It’s now 9:00 p.m. and I am still full of energy!! There is only one reason for this turn of events. It is God’s good grace through the injection of ADULT STEM CELLS. GO STEM CELLS GO!!

In Him, Preston

Adult Stem Cells Enable Multiple Sclerosis Patient to Deal With the Heat

And this is from Richard Humphries, MS patient treated with Adult Stem Cells Twice:

June 30, 2009
Dealing with the heat

Heat intolerence is associated with every MS patient. With the heat we are having all of us have this intolerance.

This week in Wichita Falls I was in the 100-degree heat for over 8 hours on back to back days. This was not even possible after the first stem cell treatment but after a 4-month regeneration from the second stem cell treatment, not only is it possible but reality.

Even Dr. Thomas Ichim, a stem cell expert from the University of California-San Diego is in amazement.

I just keep getting blessed.

Richard

Richard of course was Case Study #1 in a recently published stem cell research clinical paper.  And I’m not sure, but  I believe Preston was involved in the research paper as well (either Case Study 2 or 3)

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Sheng Ding, the leader of a group of researchers at the Scripps Research Institute of the La Jolla University in California, spoke about using chemistry-related techniques to obtain pluripotent stem cells from a miniscule section of skin at Milan University in a conference on stem cells.

Experts were able to cause some skin cells in mice to regress to their embryonic state by injecting four proteins into an adult mouse without performing any sort of DNA manipulation. A technique that, according to their idea, could be safer than techniques based on genetic manipulation. The cells obtained by intervening directly on DNA have proven to be potentially dangerous since in the long term, they have caused tumors in mice. Acting through proteins (and not through the genes that produce them) should allow this risk to be avoided.

The technique was described in a study published recently in ‘Cell Stem Cell’. Sheng Ding, dressed in a pink shirt, wearing a backpack, and looking like a student, spoke about his research. “Recent discoveries about the biology of stem cells can help us to find new approaches to treat various diseases,” he explained in his speech. “In order to reach these objectives a better comprehension of the mechanisms that control the destiny of stem cells is fundamental, as well as further studies into more efficient methods to manipulate them,” he reflected.

This is the path that Ding and his colleagues have followed in their lab in California: “Our most recent discovery represents a step towards controlling cells and the ‘self restoration’, survival, differentiation, and reprogramming mechanisms of pluripotent stem cells”.

Currently, scientists are faced with “just a promising path to explore. Clinical applications are far from a reality,” specified Fulvio Gandolfi, head of Unistem’s biomedical embryology lab (the stem cell research center of the university of Milan).

Certainly, if initial results are confirmed, he continued “Ding’s discovery would have important repercussions since they would solve a series of difficult ethical questions”. First of all, explained the expert, “we would be able to obtain pluripotent cells without using embryos”. It would suffice to have an adult cell and induce it to regress by using chemical techniques. There is another advantage though: any somatic cell that can regress into an embryonic state can be reprogrammed to replicate into any other human tissue, from heart to nerve cells. “Think about an elderly person who has just suffered a heart attack. We could obtain heart cells just by scraping away a little bit of skin,” observed Gandolfi, “without being forced to remove any damaged heart tissue. The same goes for nerve cells, which are difficult to obtain and subject to the effects of age”

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Culturing stem cells to use to treat certain illnesses is already a reality. In Spain, two labs have received authorization from the Agencia Espanola de Medicamento y Productos Sanitarios to produce stem cells, and there are others waiting to be certified.

Currently, just one public health center, the Gregorio Maranon Hospital in Madrid (HGM) and one private center, the Clinica Universitaria in Navarra (CUN) have undergone the rigid system of quality certification to become “Good Manufacturing Regulations” (GMR) laboratories and are developing stem cell products to be administered and transplanted into patients.

Cardiology, urology, hematology, oncology, and dermatology are some of the areas that will benefit from this research. Manufacturing cells for treatment is extremely rare and there is currently no commercial development in this area. The cells are basically used in small “wise, independent clinics” on a few subjects.

There are two cellular production processes based on how the cells are manipulated: the first method extracts stem cells, selects them, and purifies them for a future transplant into a patient; the other, which requires greater manipulation and infrastructure with a GMP quality system for cellular production to use the products to treat sick individuals.

Each manipulation that alters a cells basic characteristics cause it to be considered a medicinal product. Therefore, “the same regulations are applied that are required by the pharmaceutical industry to produce pharmaceuticals,” explained Javier Perez Calvo, the head of CUN’s GMP lab. The criterion that needs to be followed is complex and a clean room alone is not sufficient.

“The entire cell production process is subject to precise biological and cytogenic inspections to verify the safety of the samples in compliance with manufacturing regulations, guaranteeing that the patient is receiving cells that are cultivated and multiplied under optimal conditions,” explained Maria Eugenia Fernandez Santos, the head of the Gregorio Maranon unit. The cells come from the patient. The process involves “directing” the cells with enzymes or breaking down the tissue until, once the cells are obtained, the proper conditions of humidity, carbon dioxide, and temperature are supplied.

Then, the cells divide and multiply to obtain a sufficient number of stem cells to perform the treatment according to the needs of the specific clinical experiment and transplant strategy. The cells are made available to the researcher on the requested medium, syringe or sac, so they can be implanted into the patient.

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