“Latest Stem Cells News”

Historic Hurd Hall on Johns Hopkins’ East Baltimore campus was filled to capacity on Jan. 13 with students, faculty and staff waiting to hear five scientists—all in the early part of their careers—describe their novel ideas on how to cure metastatic cancer.

The five were finalists, chosen from among 44 entrants, in a competition on creative thinking named for John Rangos Sr., chairman of the Rangos Family Foundation, who funded the awards. Each scientist had 10 minutes to present his or her idea and answer questions from a panel of faculty judges, who would select the winners based on the novelty and scientific merit of their ideas, as well as the feasibility of future clinical applications of their proposals (…)

First up to the podium was medical oncology fellow and eventual fifth-place winner Kevin Cheung, who proposes turning back the clock on cancer cells by reprogramming them into germ cells. He suggests that the reason testicular and other germ cell tumors have high cure rates is because of their undifferentiated state. Just as scientists have created immature pluripotent stem cells from adult cells, Cheung says that the same could be done with cancer cells. By age reversing resistant cancer cells, he proposes to make them sensitive to conventional chemotherapy (…)

The overall prize went to radiation oncology resident Sharabi for his idea titled “Specific Immune Response Against Testicular Cancer: A Proposed Mechanism for Long-Term Remission.”

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Doctors hope a Nottinghamshire boy with leukaemia can undergo a stem cell transplant in May.

Roman Cusick, from Calverton, is currently recovering from chemotherapy.

If he is deemed to be well enough, he will receive cells from an umbilical cord from a German donor in a procedure at Sheffield Children’s Hospital.

In February almost 200 people in Calverton helped took part in a saliva test to see if they were a suitable match.

Leukaemia occurs when large numbers of white blood cells take over the bone marrow, leaving the body unable to produce enough normal blood cells.

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An ‘antenna’ molecule, which is capable of guiding blood stem cells to their natural ‘home’, the bone marrow, has been discovered. The discovery could improve the efficiency of umbilical cord stem cell transplants. This type of transplant is not efficient when there are not many umbilical cord stem cells present, since few of them are able to reach the bone marrow from the blood.
Reported by Nature magazine, the discovery was made by David Scadden of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Boston. The stem cells, which normally renew the population of blood cells in the body (red and white blood cells and platelets), are found in the bone marrow, but continuously move throughout blood in circulation, and eventually end up back in the bone marrow.

This is the reason why blood stem cells transplants are never highly efficient. In fact, the injected stem cells are not always able to make it back to the bone marrow, where they need to be present in order to function. These researchers have discovered a guide molecule, a protein called ‘GSA’, which is like an antenna placed on the surface of the cells, which guides them back to the marrow. Researchers have demonstrated in mice that have received stem cell transplants, that with drugs that activate GSA, the injected stem cells easily find their way to the bone marrow and the transplant functions more efficiently.

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Italian Welfare Undersecretary Ferruccio Fazio disapproves of private biobanks and is clearly in favor of the “allogenic” conservation of umbilical cord stem cells, meaning the conservation of stem cells saved for the exclusive use of the donor-patient. Speaking about a government report on “the appropriate use of umbilical cord stem cells”, Fazio outlined the government’s approach on the issue. A few weeks after a ministerial decree dictating new regulations for umbilical cord conservation, Fazio explained autologous donation, meaning conservation of stem cells for yourself, “is not only less useful, but also less efficient as science has demonstrated”.

The only exception allowed by the ministerial decree is “the conservation of umbilical cord blood to be used by families with children who are at risk for diseases that are genetically determined, which are scientifically proven and clinically approved to be treated with umbilical cord stem cells upon presenting clinical documentation released by a specialist”. From a scientific standpoint, underlined Fazio, “the use of hematopoietic stem cells for allogenic transplants creates another advantage because these stem cells eliminate diseased cells that remain after chemotherapy or radiotherapy, thanks the ability of special white blood cells from the donor to recognize them as foreign and destroy the residual diseased cells, performing an actual ‘cellular therapy’. This effect of hematopoietic stem cells transplants is known as ‘Graft versus Leukemia’.

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Gerhard Bauer & Jan A. Nolta

A new experimental technique in the future will remove skin cells from HIV patients, manipulate the cells bringing them to a state similar to that of stem cells, and then re-implant them in the same patient to eliminate the virus. The technique is still in the experimental phase in mice, but according to Gerhard Bauer, presenting the initial results of his study today at the 50th American Society of Hematology Congress in San Francisco, it’s a possibility. Bauer has been working for more than 10 years on this technique together with colleague Joseph Anderson.

The objective is to identify anti-HIV genes and insert them into stem cells produced by the skin. His UC Davis-Sacramento research team will also be present at the conference, and together they will present their study, which will lead to clinical genetic experimentation to demonstrate the safety of their method. Bauer hopes to be able perform clinical experimentation on human beings within five years. “The transformed cells, called pluripotent stem cells, are able to differentiate into different types of cells, which include hematopoietic stem cells found in the bone marrow, which produce various types of immune cells. “The next step is a test on human beings,” said Bauer.

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Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) scientists have discovered that endothelial cells, the building blocks of the vascular system, keep blood stem cells dividing healthily in a lab dish much longer and more effectively than previous methods of growing the cells. The new advance dramatically improves scientists’ ability to manufacture large quantities of authentic adult blood stem cells, which may help revolutionize the field of bone marrow transplantation.

Shahin Rafii, an HHMI investigator at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, and his colleagues report on the development of an endothelial cell platform that supports self-renewal of the blood stem cells, known as long-term hematopoietic stem cells (LT-HSCs), in the March 2010 issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell. Their study also describes a novel mechanism by which endothelial cells support propagation of LT-HSCs in adult mice.

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