“Latest Stem Cells News”

Emory University researchers have received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to advance to the next phase of a landmark trial to treat patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) using human neural stem cells.

The Phase I trial, currently underway exclusively at Emory University, is designed to assess the safety of implanting neural stem cells into the spinal cord in up to 18 people with ALS and began in January 2010. The first 12 patients received neural stem cell transplants in the lumbar, or lower, region of the spinal cord. After reviewing safety data from these patients, the FDA has granted approval for the trial to advance to the final two groups of patients (three in each group), all of who will be transplanted in the cervical, or upper, region of the spinal cord.

“This represents a major accomplishment for the trial, meaning that we have achieved our stated goal of proving safety in the first 12 patients who received lumbar spinal injections,” says Jonathan Glass, MD, Professor of Neurology, Emory School of Medicine and director of the Emory ALS Center.

“Our next objective is to demonstrate that we can deliver the cells safely to the cervical spinal cord, which is particularly important because therapy in this region may help patients better maintain their ability to breathe.”

Italian researchers have discovered new stem cells that could be potential sources of ‘spare’ neurons. A study carried out at the University of Verona has led to the discovery of Leptomeningeal Stem Cells (LeSC), a new population of stem cells located in the the meninges, which cover the entire central nervous system in mammals.

LeSCs are immature cells able to maintain themselves and differentiate into mature excitable neurons. This demonstrates that the brain has a greater regenerative capacity than what was believed until now. The results of the study, conducted on an animal model, were published recently in the Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine.

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The symptoms of multiple sclerosis could be reversed thanks to stem cell transplants from the patient’s own bone marrow, according to a study that will be published in March in Lancet Neurology by researchers from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, who say that stem cell transplants could restore the immune system of patients suffering from the disease, stopping its evolution, and even causing its regression.

Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease characterized by a defective immune system, which attacks the body’s own tissues in the central nervous system, and effects 57 thousand Italians. The disease develops through a process called “demyelinization”, which causes the deterioration of myelin – sheaths composed of fatty acids that cover nerve fibers – slowing or completely stopping the transmission of nerve impulses along the fibers in the brain and the spinal cord.

Researchers using stem cells must work to make their treatments safer after a 17 year-old boy with a rare genetic disease in 2001 was cured with an embryonic stem cell transplant in Moscow, but then developed benign brain and spinal tumors four years later. According to ‘Plos Medicine’ magazine, Israeli doctors removed cancer from the boy, the tumors developed due to a stem cell treatment that he received.

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39-year-old Ted Harada was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig‘s disease. It’s one of the worst diagnoses anyone could get.
He and his doctors expected his health to have severely declined by now. But thanks to an experimental stem cell treatment, he has tossed his cane and is once again playing in the pool with his three kids (…)

Then his neurologist told him about an experiment at Emory University that was recruiting ALS patients to test a stem cell treatment.
The surgeons told Harada that injecting the stem cells into his spine likely would not help him personally, and might even cause harm. But the study would hopefully help scientists find an effective treatment in the future. Harada had nothing to lose and expected nothing – he became study subject number 11 and underwent surgery on March 9 (…)

The Emory surgeons injected 1 million neural stem cells into 10 locations in Harada’s spine (earlier patients received fewer cells; the dosage was gradually increased as the trial progressed). All of the cells came from a single voluntarily aborted and donated two-month-old fetus. Using technology developed by Neuralstem, scientists multiplied the cells and created enough of them to treat all of the patients in this trial and beyond.

“We took one small part of the spinal cord and isolated one million stem cells which are now going to, we hope, treat millions of people around the world,” Dr. Karl Johe, chief scientific officer at Neuralstem told me.

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Complications and unanticipated side-effects that have slowed the progression of stem cell studies from the lab to the clinic could soon change, researchers say.
For a decade, stem cells have tantalized scientists and patients with their promise to regenerate damaged tissues and offer treatments for incurable diseases.

No one hears, however, about the individuals who died due to complications of surgery, said Dr. Hans Keirstead, a Canadian researcher who made a paralyzed rat walk back in 2004 by injecting its spinal cord with cells derived from human embryonic stem cells.
Keirstead’s lab at the University of California-Irvine just received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to conduct the same experiment in 10 people with recent spinal cord injuries.