“Latest Stem Cells News”

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)

Scientists at the University of California have found a potential new use for human embryonic stem cells: helping cancer patients recover the cognitive function lost when their brains are treated with radiation.

People with tumors in their head or neck often undergo radiation therapy after the cancer is surgically removed. Radiation helps kill malignant cells left behind. But it also can debilitate the hippocampus, the brain region responsible for learning, memory and processing of spatial information.

The researchers wondered whether embryonic stem cells could pick up the slack.

So they radiated the heads of 18 rats. Two days later, six of those rats got two injections of human embryonic stem cells directly into the hippocampus. After four months, the researchers measured the rats’ cognitive abilities. They placed the rats in an arena with two Lego blocks and let them explore. When they were done, the researchers took the rats out of the arena and moved one block. Five minutes later, the rats went back in.

All of the animals studied both of the blocks, but the rats that were treated with stem cells spent far more time nosing around the one that had been moved. And the radiated rats that didn’t get stem cells lost half of their cognitive function, according to the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The results suggest that embryonic stem cells could spare cancer patients much of the short-term memory loss from cranial radiation.

from http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-tc-nw-stem-cells-1113-1114nov16,0,4526555.story

With veterinarians across the country training to use stem cells for tendon and ligament repair, a professor at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) wants to take the technology a step further by applying them to chronic, cell-based diseases.

Richard Vulliet, DVM, is very early into the work. But he is optimistic about the evidence as it exists, of course, and he may have had a success.

Vulliet has treated four dogs with degenerative myelopathy with their own stem cells, which he prefers to call mesenchymal stem cells or pluripotent marrow stromal cells. The terminology has evolved and those names are more descriptive, he says (…)

Vulliet says he got interested in treating these conditions because he was working with mesenchymal stem cells and their interaction with connective tissue, and it was boring. Then he came across two papers.

In one of the papers, Japanese researchers described treating induced cardiomyopathy in experimental rats (Circulation 2005;112:1128-35). They reported that when the cells were injected into the myocardium, function improved, and there was evidence that the cells formed new vascular structures and produced collagen.

In the other paper, researchers at Tulane University in New Orleans induced spine injuries in experimental rats and treated them with mesenchymal stem cells. When they treated the animals immediately after the injury was induced, there was no apparent effect. However, when they waited one week before treating, they found that at five weeks, seven rats out of 12 could lift their trunks with their hind legs. By comparison, none of the 10 rats that were not treated showed similar signs of improvement.

Vulliet says notions of how mesenchymal stem cells might enhance the healing process have expanded beyond the idea that the cells migrate to a site of injury, differentiate into the proper type of cell and incorporate into the tissue. They might modulate immune response as well (…)

Stem cells are an ideal entrée into real-animal research, Vulliet explains. Experiments with human subjects and stem cells are not generally allowed, and federal regulators are unclear about whether they have the authority to regulate such research, since the cells are not drugs and usually are autologous tissue (…)

from http://news.vin.com/VINNews.aspx?articleId=14031

A new technique has shown that allowing embryonic stem cell research and having laws that regulate and monitor this type of research does not prevent the development of less ethically controversial techniques, rather, it creates incentives for them. In Valencia, at the same clinic where the first Spanish embryonic stem cell lines were obtained, the same researcher who developed the lines has obtained embryonic stem cells without destroying the embryo.

The announcement was made by Carlos Simòn, making the Centro de Investigaciòn Prìncipe Felipe (CSPF) the third laboratory in the world to succeed with the technique. The first researcher successfully perform this technique was Robert Lanza from Advanced Cell Technology in Boston in 2007 and at the University of California in San Francisco one month later the technique was performed again. The technique used is similar to prenatal diagnosis, which removes a single cell from the embryo. Health Advisor, Manuel Cervera, while presenting these stem cell lines announced the need for this type of work and the willingness to obtain stem cells using this technique.

Promising results from a small study may offer hope for the treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS).

Researchers from the University of California – San Diego report dramatic improvement after treating MS patients with stromal vascular fraction (SVF) stem cells from a patient’s own body fat. They say the SVF therapy can limit the body’s immune system reaction and promote the growth of new myelin – the fatty “insulation” on axons in the brain, which breaks down in patients with MS.

“None of the presently available MS treatments selectively inhibit the immune attack against the nervous system, nor do they stimulate regeneration of previously damaged tissue,” Boris Minev, M.D., from the Division of Neurosurgery at UCSD, was quoted as saying. “We’ve shown that SVF cells may fill this therapeutic gap”.

Only three patients were treated in the study, but all three showed dramatic results following treatment, including improved balance and coordination and increased energy. They also say their frequent, painful seizures had stopped.

Stem cells from the brain could be transplanted into the ear to cure hearing loss.
Often, age and overstimulation can damage ciliated cells that act like small microphones, allowing us to hear sounds, noise, and voices and are located in the deep ear (cochlea). About 10% of people experience damage to the cells in this area which leads to hearing loss. The loss of these cells is irreversible, but according to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a group of scientists from the University of California substituted them with stem cells taken from another area in the brain.