“Latest Stem Cells News”

IntelliCell BioSciences filed its patent application with the US Patent office that will claim priority to its provisional US patent serial #61/427, 221 that was filed on December 27, 2010. The title of the patent application is Ultrasonic Cavitation Derived Stromal or Mesenchymal Vascular Extracts and Cells Derived Therefrom Obtained from Adipose Tissue and use Thereof. It covers the methods of manufacturing using ultrasonic cavitation to dissociate the fat cells and blood vessels contained within the adipose tissue, thereby obtaining multi-potent, mesenchymal or stromal vascular fractions for use in human subjects. These methods do not include the use of any exogenous dissociating enzymes such as collagenase and result in increased number of cells which constitute the multi-potent, mesenchymal or stromal vascular fractions (about ten folds greater than methods which use collagenase to isolate these cells).

Dr. Steven Victor, the inventor, and CEO of IntelliCell BioSciences commented “we are extremely excited to have filed this patent in the US and around the world. The use of ultrasonic cavitation allows physicians to use less than 60cc’s of adipose tissue (fat) to manufacture approximately a half billion to 1.4 billion stromal vascular fraction cells (SVF cells) within five to ten minutes. The use of sound and water allows this manufacturing method to be utilized by physicians in the US underneath FDA (PHS Act Section 361 1271.10 (a)) of the health bill passed by Congress in 2009.

This manufacturing method has significant cost and time advantages over any other method of producing SVF cells. These cells have been used around the world for conditions caused by inflammation, such as lower back pain, migraines, MS, autism, fibromyalgia, tinnitus, arthritis; tissue repair, such as growing cartilage for bone on bone knee repair; bone and gingival tissue (gum disease): cosmetic indications such as fat grafting, wrinkle removal and other cosmetic procedures. The success rate for these patients has been approximately 80% plus. We believe that the use of non-enzymatic SVF cell therapy will find its first applications in treating sports related injuries. We are proud to have numerous luminaries on our advisory board who are leaders in the sports medicine world. We anticipate significant revenues from the utilization of SVF cells from the various IntelliCell BioSciences Centers of Excellence in the year 2012.

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Scientists have improved the sight of two people who were almost blind by injecting their eyes with stem cells from embryos.

The two women, both registered as blind, saw their vision improve in a matter of weeks after being given the embryo-derived cells in the US safety trial.

The breakthrough holds out the hope of a cure in the future for age-related macular degeneration, which currently affects some 500,000 people in Britain.
The results, published this week in The Lancet, provide a major boost for the field of stem cell reseach.

Professor Daniel Brison, of the North West Embryonic Stem Cell Centre in Manchester, said: “This is a very exciting moment for embryonic stem cell therapies.
This is the first peer-reviewed scientific report showing that cells derived from human embryonic stem cells can be transplanted safely into a patient with no sign of complications (…)

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Cells grown in culture are not alone: They are constantly communicating with one another by sending signals through their culture media that are picked up and transmitted by other cells in the media. When thousands of cells are cultured together in a dish, there are hundreds of thousands of these signals present every minute, all competing to be heard.

Scientists trying to direct cells to do useful things — like causing stem cells to turn into neurons or heart cells — typically try to overcome these signals by adding their own exogenous factors. These exogenous factors are often added at saturating concentrations, blanketing the cells with a particular growth factor or cytokine to activate specific pathways to produce a desired outcome, such as controlling stem cell differentiation. However, the constant din of cell communications is still present, causing alternate and perhaps opposing pathways to be stimulated.

This unstoppable secretion by cells in culture makes it difficult to determine the exact “recipe” of exogenous factors needed to elicit a specific phenotype, particularly in fast-growing cells like embryonic stem cells. MIT researchers Laralynne Przybyla, a graduate student in biology, and Joel Voldman, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, report in a paper published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences how they were able to silence this din by using a microfluidic device to culture embryonic stem cells under continuous liquid flow (known as perfusion) such that factors secreted by the cells were removed before they could be transmitted to other cells. They used this device to investigate the influence of these factors on stem cells.

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South Korea’s government drug agency cleared the way Thursday for commercial sales of what it called the world’s first approved medicine using stem cells collected from other people.

Cartistem, developed by Seoul-based Medipost, will help regenerate knee cartilage using stem cells developed from newborns’ umbilical cord blood, the Korea Food and Drug Administration said.

“Cartistem is… the world’s first approved allogeneic (taken from different individuals of the same species) stem cell drug, that can offer new opportunity for treatment of patients with degenerative arthritis,” the administration said in a statement.

Medipost said 27 billion won ($23.8 million) from private investors and government funds had been invested to develop Cartistem since 2001. The drug can be injected into a patient’s knees via surgery.

Clinical trials have been under way in the United States since last year, the statement said.

Two of the world’s top 10 drugmakers are in talks to seek a worldwide licence to make the drug, a Medipost spokesman told AFP, adding that final trials involving a large number of people would likely begin in the US in 2015 (…)

Cartistem, developed by Seoul-based Medipost, will help regenerate knee cartilage using stem cells developed from newborns’ umbilical cord blood, the Korea Food and Drug Administration said.

“Cartistem is… the world’s first approved allogeneic (taken from different individuals of the same species) stem cell drug, that can offer new opportunity for treatment of patients with degenerative arthritis,” the administration said in a statement (…)

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Stem Cell researchers at Cambridge and Edinburgh have discovered a promising stem cell therapy for multiple sclerosis. While much work is still needed to translate the discovery into an effective treatment, this breakthrough provides a promising road map towards a cure.

A video story featuring the SCI’s Robin Franklin can be viewed on the BBC News website.

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THE SWIRL of controversy that greeted President Obama’s executive order lifting the ban on federal funding of stem cell research in March didn’t make a significant return when the final rules were released over the summer. That’s because the National Institutes of Health successfully navigated a minefield of ethical and moral questions. To protect those regulations from politics and changes by another administration, Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) soon will introduce the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2009. The legislation would codify Mr. Obama’s executive order permitting federal funding of such research within guidelines established by the NIH and would require that they be reviewed periodically (…)

Mr. Obama’s executive order overturned one issued by President George W. Bush in 2001 that allowed federal funding only for those stem cell lines already developed. Scientists ultimately found the number of approved lines too few and the utility of those lines limited.

For facilities with stem cell lines developed on or before July 7, the NIH will establish a committee of scientists, ethicists and advocates to examine on a case-by-case basis the procedures and paperwork to determine whether the lines were derived with voluntary informed consent from donors and in a manner consistent with the new rules. This panel would also make the same evaluation of stem cell lines originating outside the United States. There are an estimated 700 stem cell lines already in existence.

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