“Latest Stem Cells News”

An international team of scientists led by researchers at The Scripps Research Institute has developed a straightforward technique to determine the ethnic origin of stem cells.

The team’s analysis of a variety of human embryonic stem cell lines currently in use in research laboratories around the world found that these cells originated largely from Caucasian and East Asian populations, with little representation from populations originating in Africa. In response to these results, the scientists used skin cells from an individual of West African Yoruba heritage to create a new stem cell line, the first to carry the genetic profile of this ethnic group.

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Scripps Research Institute scientists have offered new hope for parents whose children suffer from the rare genetic disorder ‘cystinosis’ by showing through an experiment on mice that stem cell transplantation can successfully correct the defect (…)

In the study, the researchers used bone marrow stem cell transplantation to address symptoms of cystinosis in a mouse model (…)

In the new study, the researchers found that transplanted bone marrow stem cells carrying the normal lysosomal cystine transporter gene abundantly engrafted into every tissue of the experimental mice (…)

“The results really surprised and encouraged us. Because the defect is present in every cell of the body, we did not expect a bone marrow stem cell transplant to be so widespread and effective,” says Cherqui.
Cherqui said that adult bone marrow stem cell therapy is particularly well suited as a potential treatment for cystinosis because these cells target all types of tissues.

In addition, stem cells reside in the bone marrow for the duration of a patient”s life, becoming active as needed, a particular benefit for a progressive disease like cystinosis. The study has been published in the journal Blood.

from http://www.newkerala.com/nkfullnews-1-114380.html

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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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Frank LaFerla, left, Mathew Blurton-Jones and colleagues found that neural stem cells could be a potential treatment for advanced Alzheimer's disease

UC Irvine scientists have shown for the first time that neural stem cells can rescue memory in mice with advanced Alzheimer’s disease, raising hopes of a potential treatment for the leading cause of elderly dementia that afflicts 5.3 million people in the U.S.

Mice genetically engineered to have Alzheimer’s performed markedly better on memory tests a month after mouse neural stem cells were injected into their brains. The stem cells secreted a protein that created more neural connections, improving cognitive function.

“Essentially, the cells were producing fertilizer for the brain,” said Frank LaFerla, director of UCI’s Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders, or UCI MIND, and co-author of the study, which appears online the week of July 20 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Lead author Mathew Blurton-Jones, LaFerla and colleagues worked with older mice predisposed to develop brains lesions called plaques and tangles that are the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s.

To learn how the stem cells worked, the scientists examined the mouse brains. To their surprise, they discovered that just 6 percent of the stem cells had turned into neurons. (The majority became the other two main types of brain cells, astrocytes and oligodendrocytes.) The stem cells didn’t improve cognition by becoming new neurons, nor did they act by reducing the number of plaques and tangles.

Rather, the stem cells were found to have secreted a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF. This caused existing tissue to sprout new neurites, strengthening and increasing the number of connections between neurons. When the team selectively reduced BDNF from the stem cells, the benefit was lost, providing strong evidence that BDNF is critical to the effect of stem cells on memory and neuronal function.

“If you look at Alzheimer’s, it’s not the plaques and tangles that correlate best with dementia; it’s the loss of synapses – connections between neurons,” Blurton-Jones said. “The neural stem cells were helping the brain form new synapses and nursing the injured neurons back to health.”

Diseased mice injected directly with BDNF also improved cognitively but not as much as with the neural stem cells, which provided a more long-term and consistent supply of the protein.

“This gives us a lot of hope that stem cells or a product from them, such as BDNF, will be a useful treatment for Alzheimer’s,” LaFerla said.

In April, LaFerla, Blurton-Jones and colleagues were awarded $3.6 million by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine toward the development of an Alzheimer’s therapy involving human neural stem cells.

In addition to LaFerla and Blurton-Jones, Masashi Kitazawa, Hilda Martinez-Coria, Nicholas Castello, Tritia Yamasaki, Wayne Poon and Kim Green of UCI worked on the study, along with Franz-Josef Muller and Jeanne Loring of the Scripps Research Institute. Funding for the study was provided by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the National Institutes of Health.

from UC Irvine

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