“Latest Stem Cells News”

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.

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Aileen Anderson and Brian Cummings led the pre-clinical studies for the neural stem cell treatment

A therapy developed by Aileen Anderson and Brian Cummings of UC Irvine’s Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center in collaboration with researchers at StemCells Inc. will be the basis of the world’s first clinical trial using human neural stem cells to treat spinal cord injury.

Swissmedic, the Swiss regulatory agency for therapeutic products, has authorized a Phase I/II clinical trial for chronic spinal cord injury, cases in which inflammation has stabilized and recovery has reached a plateau.

The trial will utilize StemCells Inc.’s proprietary purified human neural stem cells and will be conducted at the University of Zurich’s University Hospital Balgrist, one of the world’s leading medical centers for spinal cord injury and rehabilitation.

It’s designed to assess both safety and preliminary efficacy in patients with varying degrees of paralysis who are between three and 12 months post-injury at the time of transplantation. Enrollment is expected to begin in early 2011.

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Hans Keirstead, a researcher at University of California, Irvine, is set to begin a small human trial of his embryonic stem cell treatment on patients with spinal cord injuries. The treatment is designed for patients within 14 days of suffering spinal cord injuries. In rat trials, paralyzed rats were injected with a stem cell formula. The paralyzed rats were able to walk six weeks later.

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Stem Cell Therapeutics Corp. or the  wishes to announce the acceptance and publication of the paper entitled “The Beta-hCG + Erythropoietin in Acute Stroke (BETAS) Study” by the journal “Stroke”, on March 8, 2010.
This paper was authored by Dr. Steven C. Cramer, from the University of California, Irvine, Dr. David Brown at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, New Port Beach, Dr. Michael D. Hill of Foothills Hospital at the University of Calgary, and colleagues.

Dr. Allen Davidoff, VP of Product Development, commented as follows:

“The Stroke journal, published by the American Heart Association, is the top journal in the field of stroke research. Stem Cell Therapeutics is pleased to congratulate Dr. Steven C. Cramer, David Brown and Michael Hill for their efforts, acceptance and successful publication of this novel study by this highly respected, peer reviewed journal.

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U.S. researchers have found that a supplemental protein may help restore impaired mobility of people who suffer from a stroke.
Naturally occurring in humans, the protein has proved to work well in restoring motor function in rats after a stroke, according to two new studies by researchers at the University of California, Irvine (UCI).
The researchers hope that the protein will also help humans.

Administered directly to the brain, the protein restores 99 percent of lost movement; if it’s given through the nose, 70 percent of lost movement is regained. Untreated rats improve by only 30 percent.

Report of the Brain Tumor Progress Review Group (SuDoc HE 20.3502:B 73/10)

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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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