“Latest Stem Cells News”

How will stem cells change the way we think about treating diseases? Here is the 5 year forward look at the world of Stem Cells, from some of the greatest experts in the field.

What are the diseases we’ll be treating, and the tools we’ll be using in 2015? Where will we be in terms of clinical trials? What are the dangers in the stem cell hype, and medical tourism? How will stem cells pave the way for personalized medicine, and more rational treatments? How important will stem cells become in the drug discovery process? Discussed in the episode are the eye (macular degeneration), the skin, diabetes (type 1 & 2), blood and autoimmune diseases, glioblastoma, HIV, and more.

Presented by Bill Kridel, and featuring George Daley, Ron McKay, Rudolf Jaenisch, John Sinden, Alan Trounson, Alan Colman, John Walker, Shinya Yamanaka, Irv Weissman, David Scadden, and Greg Bonfiglio.

from http://biobusinesstv.cmail2.com/t/y/l/uruja/kykdujyhl/k

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

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

Stem-cell science is a fast-moving field. Just three years since a Japanese researcher first reprogrammed ordinary skin cells into stem cells without the use of embryos, scientists at a Massachusetts biotech company have repeated the feat, only this time with a new method that creates the first stem cells safe enough for human use. The achievement brings the potentially lifesaving technology one step closer to real treatments for disease.

Dr. Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer at Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), reported today in the journal Cell that his team has created stem cells using human skin cells and four proteins. The innovation builds on the breakthrough discovery in 2006 by Shinya Yamanaka, who similarly coaxed human skin cells to revert to a pristine, embryonic state by introducing four key genes into the cells, piggybacked on viruses. However, some of those genes are known to cause cancer, which made Yamanaka’s stem cells — known as induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells — unsuitable for human use.

Read more on TIME

Former Vice President Al Gore Endorses Trans-Pacific Collaboration to Promote Use of Patient Cells for Drug Discovery and Development and Cell-Based Therapies iZumi Bio, Inc., and Kyoto University‘s Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA), today announced a collaboration to promote the basic research, development and application of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell technology – a form of cellular reprogramming which originated in Japan – with the goal of advancing drug discovery and enabling cell-based therapies.

“Stem cell research holds great promise for the creation of new therapies that could revolutionize the treatment of disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, diabetes and muscular dystrophy. The discovery that iPScell technology brings, that “stem cell-like” cells can be generated from a small amount of human skin rather than from embryos, opens a new door for stem cell research and its application to therapeutic discovery,” said Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States and a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. Noting that Science Magazine named cellular reprogramming the “breakthrough of the year” in 2008, Gore concluded, “The partnership between these two leading organizations is a critical step in furthering this research and turning stem cell research into therapeutic realities sooner.”

A team at Keio University has used stem cells to cure mice whose hind legs were paralyzed due to spinal cord damage, the researchers reported Wednesday at a Tokyo symposium.
The team transplanted neural stem cells grown from human iPS cells.

Team leader Hideyuki Okano, a physiology professor at Keio, said it is the first time in the world in which the curative effects of “induced pluripotent stem cells,” or iPS cells, have been confirmed.
Currently, there is no effective treatment for spinal nerve damage and treatment using iPS cells gives hope of a cure.

“It is valuable that treatment using human iPS cells has proved effective. We want to apply (the results) in a clinical setting as soon as possible,” Okano said.
The team generated neural stem cells, which will grow into nerve cells, from human iPS cells produced with a technique developed by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University.