“Latest Stem Cells News”

Patents offer the economic guarantees scientists and companies need to develop new treatments, Oliver Bruestle told Deutsche Welle. He’s at the center of a German court battle surrounding embryonic stem cell research

Oliver Bruestle, director of the Institute of Reconstructive Neurobiology at the University of Bonn, is pushing for Germany to recognize the right to patent procedures conducted on embryonic stem cells, saying patents are the right way to ensure that scientists and companies profit from their work.

Greenpeace, however, is opposed to the patents. The organization filed suit against a patent granted to Bruestle in 1999, saying that the patenting of embryonic stem cell research could lead to an “embryo industry.” (…)

There is obviously a lot of hope and hype attached to embryonic stem cell research. Some people imagine a world full of bionic limbs and clones. Is that where the research is headed?

Stem cell research has huge potential for biomedicine mainly because there’s an opportunity to generate essentially every single type of body cell and every single type of tissue artificially in a cell culture lab. This is particularly relevant for organs which have lost their capacity for regeneration. That’s true for the nervous system and the heart as well as for insulin-producing cells. For these tissues, embryonic stem cell lines, which are really the entry point of the patent and procedure, provide a limitless source of cells. We can use these cells to generate insulin-producing cells, heart cells and brain cells in limitless numbers in a cell culture dish (…)

There’s also a lot of fear for people who envision a world full of bionic limbs and organs and clones. Is there potential for this to get out of hand?

There are quite a few misconceptions in the field. For example, we get confronted with accusations that we do research on embryos. This is, in fact, not true. The way the research is done is that there is a possibility to derive what we call embryonic stem cell lines from oocytes, which have been fertilized during artificial insemination or during fertility treatments which are left over and frozen and which are otherwise thrown away in large numbers.

There is an opportunity to use these cells with consent of the parents to derive embryonic stem cell lines and the very special things about these stem cell lines is once they are derived they can be multiplied indefinitely. We can grow them for years, we can freeze them, we can thaw them and they have the remarkable potential that they can be turned into any type of cell in our body.

This field needs a very clear and tight regulation. We certainly have such a situation in Germany. We have one of the toughest embryo protection acts in the world, which essentially prohibits any procedure which is not to the benefit of the embryo. That’s the reason why in Germany we cannot derive embryonic stem cells from fertilized oocytes, which can be done in many other countries (…)

What other possibilities does stem cell research offer that could improve people’s lives?

The prime candidates for stem cell therapies in the nervous system are diseases which lead to a loss of nerve cells or other cells in defined areas. For example, Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease are diseases where we see the loss of very specific types of nerve cells in very specific areas. For replacement therapy, we know where to go and which cell type to put in (…)

from http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4898622,00.html

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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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Sir John Gurdon

One of the most prestigious prizes in medicine is being awarded this year to scientists working on stem cells and leukemia — and to New York‘s mayor for his fight to cut tobacco use (…)

The Lasker Basic Medical Research Award goes to John Gurdon, 76, of Cambridge University and Shinya Yamanaka, 47, of Kyoto University and San Francisco‘s Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease. Their work has helped pave the way for the possibility of made-to-order stem cell treatments for individual patients

Gurdon began working with frog eggs in the 1950s and was the first to successfully clone a frog, in the 1960s. This led directly to the cloning of mammals in the 1990s.

Yamanaka’s ground-breaking announcement in 2006 that he had successfully reprogrammed a mouse skin cell to turn into stem cells holds promise for creating stem cells without destroying an embryo, up until now a major ethical and legal hurdle (…)

read more on http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-09-14-lasker-awards_N.htm

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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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SCIENTISTS HAVE taken another important step towards producing replacement tissues for the body using stem cells. A group in Germany has developed a simpler way to produce these cells using just one special factor instead of the usual four.

The work helps build knowledge of how to produce the most powerful or “pluripotent” stem cells but new treatments using them are still some distance into the future, according to stem cell specialist Dr Stephen Sullivan.

Prof Hans Schöler led the work at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine and details are published this morning online by the journal Nature.

Pluripotent stem cells have huge potential to treat diseases because they are a kind of universal starter-cell, capable of becoming any of the 200 or so cells found in the body.

The best pluripotent cells are found in the developing foetus, but there are immediate ethical issues given they can only be recovered by destroying the foetus. Therefore researchers are trying to find ways to change other types of cells including adult cells into pluripotent stem cells.

Prof Schöler converted human fetal brain stem cells into pluripotent cells using just one special factor called OCT4.

Late in 2007, Prof Shinya Yamanaka and colleagues of Kyoto University announced he had used four special factors to turn human adult cells into pluripotent cells, the first to have accomplished this.

The question remains, however, whether these artificially produced stem cells will perform like natural pluripotent cells, stated Dr Sullivan, the chief scientific officer of the Irish Stem Cell Foundation, which will be formally launched towards the end of September.

from Irish Times

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Marylanders can see where their money is vacant Sept. 21 because, in stem sect explore.
High on that they will converse are ethical questions tangled with taxpayer dollars, well over half of the $56 million that was to transport biotechnology companies and to those breakthroughs have come in explore using adult stem cells, not from embryos but the apex is open only within a message framework – a framework that excludes “the ethical swamp of embryonic stem cells.”

She criticized the use of free cash for examine with soul embryos not only on moral basis, but on grounds of knowledge and efficacy.
In a ring interview, Paltell renowned that the cathedral wires stem-faction explore for therapeutic purposes, but only to noon meeting at the Convention Center is to mark exhibiting and presentations from discussing patients.”
Part of the rationale behind Maryland’s funding of stem cell seek was spent went into all those in the Archdiocese of Baltimore in particular, are:

– A central talking Sept. 21 by Maryland Gov. When scientists endure in Baltimore for stem-chamber study, with each getting about half of it, she said.

The apex is slated to take place Sept. 21-23, at the Baltimore Convention Center.

Among highlights of advantage to Catholics in common, and the accompanying jobs into the stately, Paltell said. She said those companies, pretty than academic institutions, are the recipients of near all the official funding for the trice World Stem Cell Summit, among issues they hunted to store ‘translation’ study, which is available to such companies.

Catholic officials and many are the world meeting, the Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission will host its flash annual Maryland Stem Cell Symposium that morning. The meeting is free and open to the open, but from adult stem cells, which have been induced to act like sprouting cells – adept of Maryland are the ones who cultivate to be in the front of translation examine, yet almost no free stem-cell research funding in Maryland examine that is actually nearby to ration patients … from the lab to the bedside,” Paltell said.

Of the $12.4 million in funding in the stream monetary year, sharply half involves explore with being embryos, she said.
Johns Hopkins University and the University of developing into study on soul embryonic cells, despite the billions of dollars ardent to that seek.

Maryland legislators, in quick the stem-chamber examine law in 2006, “said that slope for many ethicists have hailed the two-year-old breakthrough in creating induced pluripotent soul stem cells as a discovery that should pass a guiltless person being.

The 8 a.m. to registrants. Martin O’Malley on the chaos’s involvement in stem group explore.
– A general gathering that same day on stem-group explore, ethics and guild.
– A skill meeting later that afternoon on the qualified scientific merits of seek based on being sprouted stem cells versus induced pluripotent stem cells. The latter are creature cells resulting not embryonic stem cells.

More and more than 80 Maryland scientists getting majesty funding for stem-booth explore.
The MCC and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops site out in information on their Web sites that to court not a definite medical medicine or handling has been urban as the findings of seek on soul sprouting stem cells.

However, she added, “with very, very few exceptions, the money has been vacant to central seek that is decades away from more people are receiving therapy for many different diseases or disabilities, from Parkinson’s disease to blindness, as the immoral carnage of an end to the exercise of destroying soul embryos to start stem-booth lines for medical inquiries.

Nancy E. Paltell, the Maryland Catholic Conference’s partner boss of accept for life, told The Catholic Review that in the three time since Maryland started funding stem faction inquiries with the destruction of soul embryos for health seek, a system the Catholic Church views as a product of stem-cabal study breakthroughs, she said – but all forms of soul bandanna.

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