For 60 years, doctors have believed women were born with all the eggs they'll ever have. Now Harvard scientists are challenging that dogma, saying they've discovered the ovaries of young women harbour very rare stem cells capable of producing new eggs.

If the report is confirmed, harnessing those stem cells might one day lead to better treatments for women left infertile because of disease — or simply because they're getting older.

"Our current views of ovarian aging are incomplete. There's much more to the story than simply the trickling away of a fixed pool of eggs," said lead researcher Jonathan Tilly of Harvard's Massachusetts General Hospital, who has long hunted these cells in a series of controversial studies.

Tilly's previous work drew fierce skepticism, and independent experts urged caution about the latest findings.

A key next step is to see whether other laboratories can verify the work. If so, then it would take years of additional research to learn how to use the cells, said Teresa Woodruff, fertility preservation chief at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.

Still, even a leading critic said such research may help dispel some of the enduring mystery surrounding how human eggs are born and mature.

"This is going to spark renewed interest, and more than anything else it's giving us some new directions to work in," said David Albertini, director of the University of Kansas' Center for Reproductive Sciences. While he has plenty of questions about the latest work, "I'm less skeptical," he said.

Scientists have long taught that all female mammals are born with a finite supply of egg cells, called ooctyes, that runs out in middle age. Tilly, Mass General's reproductive biology director, first challenged that notion in 2004, reporting that the ovaries of adult mice harbour some egg-producing stem cells. Recently, Tilly noted, a lab in China and another in the U.S. also have reported finding those rare cells in mice.

But do they exist in women? Enter the new work, reported Sunday in the journal Nature Medicine.

First Tilly had to find healthy human ovaries to study. He collaborated with scientists at Japan's Saitama Medical University, who were freezing ovaries donated for research by healthy 20-somethings who underwent a sex-change operation.

Egg quality questions

Tilly also had to address a criticism: How to tell if he was finding true stem cells or just very immature eggs. His team latched onto a protein believed to sit on the surface of only those purported stem cells and fished them out. To track what happened next, the researchers inserted a gene that makes some jellyfish glow green into those cells. If the cells made eggs, those would glow, too.

"Bang, it worked — cells popped right out" of the human tissue, Tilly said.

Researchers watched through a microscope as new eggs grew in a lab dish. Then came the pivotal experiment: They injected the stem cells into pieces of human ovary. They transplanted the human tissue under the skin of mice, to provide it a nourishing blood supply.

Within two weeks, they reported telltale green-tinged egg cells forming.

That's still a long way from showing they'll mature into usable, quality eggs, Albertini said.

And more work is needed to tell exactly what these cells are, cautioned reproductive biologist Kyle Orwig of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, who has watched Tilly's work with great interest.

But if they're really competent stem cells, Orwig asked, then why would women undergo menopause? Indeed, something so rare wouldn't contribute much to a woman's natural reproductive capacity, added Northwestern's Woodruff.

Tilly argues that using stem cells to grow eggs in lab dishes might one day help preserve cancer patients' fertility. Today, Woodruff's lab and others freeze pieces of girls' ovaries before they undergo fertility-destroying chemotherapy or radiation. They're studying how to coax the immature eggs inside to mature so they could be used for in vitro fertilization years later when the girls are grown. If that eventually works, Tilly says stem cells might offer a better egg supply.

Further down the road, he wonders if it also might be possible to recharge an aging woman's ovaries.

The new research was funded largely by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Tilly co-founded a company, OvaScience Inc., to try to develop the findings into fertility treatments.

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Egg-producing stem cells found in women's ovaries

Public release date: 26-Feb-2012
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Contact: Sue McGreevey
smcgreevey@partners.org
617-724-2764
Massachusetts General Hospital

For the first time, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have isolated egg-producing stem cells from the ovaries of reproductive age women and shown these cells can produce what appear to be normal egg cells or oocytes. In the March issue of Nature Medicine, the team from the Vincent Center for Reproductive Biology at MGH reports the latest follow-up study to their now-landmark 2004 Nature paper that first suggested female mammals continue producing egg cells into adulthood.

"The primary objective of the current study was to prove that oocyte-producing stem cells do in fact exist in the ovaries of women during reproductive life, which we feel this study demonstrates very clearly," says Jonathan Tilly, PhD, director of the Vincent Center for Reproductive Biology in the MGH Vincent Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, who led the study. "The discovery of oocyte precursor cells in adult human ovaries, coupled with the fact that these cells share the same characteristic features of their mouse counterparts that produce fully functional eggs, opens the door for development of unprecedented technologies to overcome infertility in women and perhaps even delay the timing of ovarian failure."

The 2004 report from Tilly's team challenged the fundamental belief, held since the 1950s, that female mammals are born with a finite supply of eggs that is depleted throughout life and exhausted at menopause. That paper and a 2005 follow-up published in Cell showing that bone marrow or blood cell transplants could restore oocyte production in adult female mice after fertility-destroying chemotherapy were controversial; but in the intervening years, several studies from the MGH-Vincent group and other researchers around the world have supported Tilly's work and conclusions.

These supporting studies include a 2007 Journal of Clinical Oncology report from the MGH-Vincent team that showed female mice receiving bone marrow transplants after oocyte-destroying chemotherapy were able to have successful pregnancies, delivering pups that were their genetic offspring and not of the marrow donors. A 2009 study from a team at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, published in Nature Cell Biology, not only isolated and cultured oocyte-producing stem cells (OSCs) from adult mice but also showed that those OSCs, after transplantation into the ovaries of chemotherapy-treated female mice, gave rise to mature oocytes that were ovulated, fertilized and developed into healthy offspring.

"That study singlehandedly deflated many of the arguments from critics of our earlier Nature paper by showing that oocyte-producing stem cells exist in mice and could develop into fully functional eggs," says Tilly. Another paper from a west-coast biotechnology company, published in Differentiation in 2010, provided further independent confirmation of Tilly's earlier conclusions regarding the presence of oocyte-producing stem cells in ovaries of adult mice.

Tilly is quick to point out, however, "These follow-up studies, while providing definitive evidence that oocyte-producing stem cells exist in ovaries of adult female mammals, were not without their limitations, leaving the question open in some scientific circles of whether the adult oocyte pool can be renewed. For example, the protocol used to isolate OSCs in the 2009 Nature Cell Biology study is a relatively crude approach that often results in the contamination of desired cells by other cell types." To address this, the MGH-Vincent team developed and validated a much more precise cell-sorting technique to isolate OSCs without contamination from other cells.

The 2009 study from China also had isolated OSCs based on cell-surface expression of a marker protein called Ddx4 or Mvh, which previously had been found only in the cytoplasm of oocytes. This apparent contradiction with earlier studies raised concerns over the validity of the protocol. Using their state-of-the-art fluorescence-activated cell sorting techniques, the MGH-Vincent team verified that, while the marker protein Ddx4 was indeed located inside oocytes, it was expressed on the surface of a rare and distinct population of ovarian cells identified by numerous genetic markers and functional tests as OSCs.

To examine the functional capabilities of the cells isolated with their new protocol, the investigators injected green fluorescent protein (GFP)-labeled mouse OSCs into the ovaries of normal adult mice. Several months later, examination of the recipient mouse ovaries revealed follicles containing oocytes with and without the marker protein. GFP-labeled and unlabeled oocytes also were found in cell clusters flushed from the animals' oviducts after induced ovulation. The GFP-labeled mouse eggs retrieved from the oviducts were successfully fertilized in vitro and produced embryos that progressed to the hatching blastocyst stage, a sign of normal developmental potential. Additionally, although the Chinese team had transplanted OSCs into ovaries of mice previously treated with chemotherapy, the MGH-Vincent team showed that it was not necessary to damage the recipient mouse ovaries with toxic drugs before introducing OSCs.

In their last two experiments, which Tilly considers to be the most groundbreaking, the MGH-Vincent team used their new cell-sorting techniques to isolate potential OSCs from adult human ovaries. The cells obtained shared all of the genetic and growth properties of the equivalent cells isolated from adult mouse ovaries, and like mouse OSCs, were able to spontaneously form cells with characteristic features of oocytes. Not only did these oocytes formed in culture dishes have the physical appearance and gene expression patterns of oocytes seen in human ovaries ? as was the case in parallel mouse experiments ? but some of these in-vitro-formed cells had only half of the genetic material normally found in all other cells of the body. That observation indicates that these oocytes had progressed through meiosis, a cell-division process unique to the formation of mature eggs and sperm.

The researchers next injected GFP-labeled human OSCs into biopsied human ovarian tissue that was then grafted beneath the skin of immune-system-deficient mice. Examination of the human tissue grafts 7 to 14 days later revealed immature human follicles with GFP-negative oocytes, probably present in the human tissue before OSC injection and grafting, as well as numerous immature human follicles with GFP-positive oocytes that would have originated from the injected human OSCs.

"These experiments provide pivotal proof-of-concept that human OSCs reintroduced into adult human ovarian tissue performed their expected function of generating new oocytes that become enclosed by host cells to form new follicles," says Tilly, a professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology at Harvard Medical School and chief of Research at the MGH Vincent Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. "These outcomes are exactly what we see if we perform the same experiments using GFP-expressing mouse OSCs, and GFP-expressing mouse oocytes formed that way go on to develop into fully functional eggs.

"In this paper we provide the three key pieces of evidence requested by those who have been skeptical of our previous work," he adds. "We developed and extensively validated a cell-sorting protocol to reliably purify OSCs from adult mammalian ovaries, proving once again that these very special cells exist. We tested the function of mouse oocytes produced by these OSCs and showed that they can be fertilized to produce healthy embryos. And we identified and characterized an equivalent population of oocyte-producing stem cells isolated from adult human ovaries."

Among the many potential clinical applications for these findings that Tilly's team is currently exploring are the establishment of human OSC banks ? since these cells, unlike human oocytes, can be frozen and thawed without damage ? the identification of hormones and factors that accelerate the formation of oocytes from human OSCs, the development of mature human oocytes from OSCs for in vitro fertilization, and other approaches to improve the outcomes of IVF and other infertility treatments.

###

Tilly notes that an essential part of his group's accomplishment was collaboration with study co-author Yasushi Takai, MD, PhD, a former MGH research fellow on Tilly's team and now a faculty member at Saitama Medical University in Japan. Working with his clinical colleagues at Saitama, Takai was able to provide healthy ovarian tissue from consenting patients undergoing sex reassignment surgery, many in their 20s and early 30s. Co-lead authors of the Nature Medicine report are Yvonne White, PhD, and Dori Woods, PhD, of the Vincent Center for Reproductive Biology at MGH. Additional co-authors are Osamu Ishihara, MD, PhD, and Hiroyuki Seki, MD, PhD, of Saitama Medical University.

The study was supported by a 10-year MERIT Award to Tilly from the National Institute on Aging, a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Health, the Henry and Vivian Rosenberg Philanthropic Fund, the Sea Breeze Foundation, and Vincent Memorial Hospital Research Funds. Tilly is a co-founder of OvaScience, Inc. (www.ovascience.com), which has licensed the commercial potential of these and other patent-protected findings of the MGH-Vincent team for development of new fertility-enhancing procedures.

Massachusetts General Hospital (www.massgeneral.org), founded in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The MGH conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the United States, with an annual research budget of more than $750 million and major research centers in AIDS, cardiovascular research, cancer, computational and integrative biology, cutaneous biology, human genetics, medical imaging, neurodegenerative disorders, regenerative medicine, reproductive biology, systems biology, transplantation biology and photomedicine.

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Mass. General researchers isolate egg-producing stem cells from adult human ovaries

Breakthrough stem cell research at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. has the potential to revive endangered species. Researchers at the Center for Regenerative Medicine are aiming to turn stem cells into gametes. Once new eggs and sperm are created, “test tube babies” can be born, possibly preserving a species.

In 1972, researchers preserved skin cells of certain endangered species at the Frozen Zoo, hoping that future technology would help to revive populations, and today Scripps researchers are combining the frozen skin cells with human stem cells to generate stem cells specific to the animal. Stem cells are turned into gametes through re-programming, a process in which retroviruses are used to bring the cells back to earlier stages of development. Last month, scientists created mouse sperm cells through this process.

Scientists view this method of species preservation as a last resort when cheaper, simpler means have failed. For instance, the white rhino, whose population is numbered at seven in the world, would benefit immensely since other methods of trying to save the species have failed. Scientists also hope to help the drill, a West African primate threatened by hunting and habitat degradation.

—compiled by Michelle Lim

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Bar Harbor – Yijun Ruan, Ph.D., an American geneticist who has pioneered new techniques to sequence and map DNA to better understand cancer growth and stem cell properties, will be the first scientist to join the new Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine (JAX Genomic Medicine) in Farmington, Conn.

Ruan is currently associate director and senior group leader at the Genome Institute of Singapore and professor of biochemistry at the National University of Singapore. He is also an investigator with the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project, an international consortium of research groups funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute.
Ruan said he was attracted by The Jackson Laboratory’s famously collaborative research environment, and plans to “take a community approach to tackle genomic questions through intensive collaboration.” Through innovating new technologies and studying how the human and mouse genomes are regulated, he said his goal is to translate research findings into personalized medicine. Ruan has also been appointed director of JAX Genomic Sciences, and will be bringing his current research program and team with him to JAX Genomic Medicine.
JAX Genomic Medicine will unite doctors, patients, scientists and industry to find new ways to tailor disease diagnosis, prevention and treatment to each person’s unique genetic makeup, or genome. Ruan and other recruits will begin initial operations this year in leased space while a 173,000-square-foot permanent facility is designed and built. Construction will begin in 2013, and the new facility will open in 2014.
“Yijun’s broad interests in genome biology, coupled with his innovative approach to developing new research techniques, make him an ideal member of the new JAX Genomic Medicine research team,” said Bob Braun, Ph.D., Jackson’s associate director and chair of research.
After earning BS and MS degrees in microbiology from Huazhong Agricultural University in Wuhan, China, Ruan obtained his Ph.D. in plant molecular biology from the University of Maryland, College Park, where he also conducted postgraduate research. Following scientific appointments at Monsanto Co. in St. Louis and Large Scale Biology Corp. in Vacaville, Calif., Ruan was recruited to the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) in 2002. Edison Liu, M.D., former director of GIS and now president and CEO of The Jackson Laboratory, credits Ruan for building the institute’s state-of-the-art genomic technology platforms and its award-winning genome biology programs.
Ruan is an author of 70 research papers and holds patents in Japan, Singapore and the United Kingdom for the DNA analysis techniques he helped to develop. A U.S. citizen, Ruan is married and has two children.
In addition to recruiting research faculty, JAX Genomic Medicine is currently hiring a site director, science coordinator, senior human resources manager, facilities manager and senior financial analyst in Connecticut. Job announcements are on The Jackson Laboratory’s website at http://www.jax.org/careers/connecticut.html.
Braun notes that The Jackson Laboratory is expanding the research faculty at its headquarters campus in Bar Harbor, Maine, as well as recruiting faculty in Connecticut.
The Jackson Laboratory is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution and National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center based in Bar Harbor, Maine, with a facility in Sacramento, Calif., afuture institute in Farmington, Conn., and a total staff of about 1,400. Its mission is to discover the genetic basis for preventing, treating and curing human disease, and to enable research and education for the global biomedical community.

For more health news, pick up a copy of the Mount Desert Islander.

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First researcher joins The Jackson Lab for Genomic Medicine in Conn.

Newswise — The International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2012 McEwen Award for Innovation, a coveted prize in the field of stem cell research and regenerative medicine. The 2012 recipient is Rudolf Jaenisch, MD, Founding Member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in recognition of his pioneering discoveries in the areas of genetic and epigenetic control of development in mice that directly impact the future potential of embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells for therapeutic utility.

The McEwen Award for Innovation is supported by the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The $100,000 award honors original thinking and groundbreaking research pertaining to stem cells or regenerative medicine that opens new avenues of exploration towards the understanding or treatment of human disease or affliction.

“Rudolf Jaenisch has consistently contributed new and groundbreaking discoveries to stem cell biology and regenerative medicines that have changed the way stem cell research is conducted, said Fred H. Gage, PhD, ISSCR President. “Importantly, Rudolf not only has an uncanny sense of the next big question, but also conducts his experiments with such thoughtful and critical experimental design that his results have an immediate impact. This critical attention to detail and experimental design has greatly benefited the many gifted students that have passed through his lab and now populate many of the major stem cell centers throughout the world. Rudolf is very deserving of this award.”

Winner of the inaugural McEwen Award for Innovation in 2011, Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD, ISSCR President-Elect agrees. “Dr. Rudolf Jaenisch has always been on the cutting-edge of our field and his research has been a source of inspiration not only for myself, but has influenced the careers of some of our most esteemed colleagues.”

Dr. Jaenisch will be presented with the award at the ISSCR 10th Annual Meeting, in Yokohama, Japan, on Wednesday, June 13, 2012.
***
The International Society for Stem Cell Research is an independent, nonprofit membership organization established to promote and foster the exchange and dissemination of information and ideas relating to stem cells, to encourage the general field of research involving stem cells and to promote professional and public education in all areas of stem cell research and application.

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ISSCR Honors Stem Cell Research Pioneer with Prestigious McEwen Award for Innovation

An important new study by a team of scientists at RhinoCyte™ Inc., Louisville, Ky., details promising results on the effectiveness of olfactory (nasal) stem cells in repairing spinal cord damage resulting from the most common cause of these injuries — contusions (bruising) due to major trauma such as is seen in auto accidents, falls or combat. This could have major implication for the estimated 5 million people worldwide affected by spinal cord injuries – 1.275 million of them in the United States alone, where the cost of treatment exceeds $40.5 billion each year.

Louisville, Kentucky (PRWEB) February 22, 2012

An important new study released by a team of scientists at RhinoCyte™ Inc., Louisville, Ky., details promising results on the effectiveness of olfactory (nasal) stem cells in repairing spinal cord damage resulting from the most common cause of these injuries — contusions (bruising) due to major trauma. Their study is featured in the current issue of the Journal of Neurodegeneration and Regeneration.

The study, led by Dr. Fred Roisen, has great implication for the estimated 5 million people worldwide affected by spinal cord injuries – 1.275 million of them in the United States alone, where the cost of treatment exceeds $40.5 billion each year. Current treatment options are limited to retaining and retraining mobility; no drug therapies are available, but studies pertaining to stem cell treatments are showing great promise for these as well as other neurodegenerative conditions.

A previous study by the group made national headlines when lab rats whose spinal cords had been partially cut in the region of the animal’s neck in a way that disabled their front right paws were able to regain significant use of their paws after being injected with olfactory stem cells. The investigative team took the cells from the olfactory neurosensory epithelium — the part of the nose that controls the sense of smell — in adult volunteer donors who were already undergoing elective sinus surgery. The removal of the stem cells has no effect on the patients’ ability to smell. Also, the minimally invasive surgery is frequently done on an outpatient basis so the cells are readily available and, as such, are a potentially promising source of therapeutic stem cells.

The researchers isolated the stem cells and increased their numbers in the laboratory by growing them in an enriched solution. The cells were then injected into a group of lab rats. Twelve weeks later, these animals had regained control of their affected paws while a control group that received no cells had not.

This latest study continued that original work, by concentrating on contusions caused by blunt force trauma such as that resulting from an automobile accident or a fall. Spinal cord and head trauma are common among soldiers suffering serious combat injuries, too.

Two independent sets of experiments were conducted, beginning two weeks after the rats had received contusions administered in a computer-controlled surgery. In the first group, 27 out of 41 rats were injected with olfactory stem cells, while the remainder received none. In the second group, 16 rats were treated with olfactory stem cells, 11 received no treatment and 10 received stem cells grown from human skin to see how the olfactory cells compared with another stem cell source.

The results once again showed great promise, with 40 percent of the rats treated with the olfactory-derived stem cells showing significant improvement after just six weeks, compared to 30 percent of those treated with human skin-derived cells and only 9 percent of those receiving no treatment. In addition, the olfactory stem cell-treated rats showing the highest rate of improvement recovered much faster than the other groups.

“This is very exciting on numerous levels,” said Dr. Roisen. “As an autologous cell source — that is, the patient is both the donor and the recipient — olfactory stem cells bypass the time a patient must wait while a suitable donor is found, which can be critical to the outcome of the patient’s treatment. They also eliminate the need for immunosuppressive drugs, which have numerous negative side effects.

“And just as importantly, stem cells taken from the nose of an adult do away with the ethical concerns associated with using embryonic stem cells.”

The researchers are in the final stages of their enabling studies, which are scheduled to be completed by summer; Phase 1 safety studies could begin as soon as early next year.

Dr. Roisen is chief science officer and co-founder of RhinoCtye™, and a professor and chair of the University of Louisville School of Medicine’s Department of Anatomical Sciences and Neurobiology. The original work forming the basis for the contusion study was conducted by Dr. Roisen’s group at UofL and has been licensed to RhinoCtye™ (http://www.rhinocyte.com), a company he co-founded in 2005 with Dr. Chengliang Lu and Dr. Kathleen Klueber to develop and commercialize diagnostic tools and therapies for stem cell treatment of multiple degenerative and traumatic neurological diseases. RhinoCyte™ currently has three patents for olfactory stem cell treatments approved in the United States, Australia and Israel, with others pending worldwide.

###

Laurel Harper
Laurel92@msn.com
502-550-0089
Email Information

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Nasal Stem Cells Show Promise in Repairing Spinal Cord Damage Caused by Contusion

AUSTIN, Texas, Feb. 21, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Celling Biosciences announces a sponsorship of the 7th Annual Stem Cell Summit being held on February 21st at Bridgewaters New York in New York City. The Stem Cell Summit is consistently the premiere venue for the world's leaders in regenerative medicine to network and promote next generation technologies and cell therapies.

The meeting will feature more than 30 thought leaders in stem cell therapy including Dr. Kenneth Pettine of the Orthopedic Stem Cell Institute in Loveland, Colorado.  Dr. Pettine has teamed up with Celling Biosciences' SpineSmith Division to present "Adult Stem Cell Therapy for Orthopedic and Spine Conditions Resulting from Injury or Aging."  Dr. Pettine has become an innovator in the regenerative cell therapy market and believes "regenerative therapies will become the next standard of care in treating many orthopedic conditions." 

Following the Stem Cell Summit, Dr. Pettine will be presenting a discussion on regenerative therapies to the trainers and medical staff attending this year's NFL combine.  The NFL has recently gained attention from Peyton Manning going oversees to receive a cell therapy treatment for his cervical spine condition.  Dr. Pettine envisions a day when these professional athletes stop going to foreign countries to receive medical treatment.

The Orthopedic Stem Cell Institute provides state-of-the-art regenerative cell therapy using Celling Biosciences' ART 21 system. The ART 21 system processes bone marrow from the patient at the point of care to consistently produce a concentrate of regenerative cells with high yields of mononuclear stem cells in less than 15 minutes.  Celling Biosciences provides the cell separation systems along with the biomaterials and devices necessary to recreate the environment to promote healing. 

Kevin Dunworth, founder of Celling Biosciences, believes regenerative cell therapy has more to do with creating the optimal environment then just providing cells.  "We believe autologous cell therapy is a viable solution but physicians need to understand that these cells require the necessary substrate for delivery and the proper techniques for retrieval.  Our focus has been on providing not only cell separation technologies, medical devices and biomaterials but also the registered nurses to deliver the service so physicians can have the most consistent, reliable and predictable regenerative cell therapy for their patients."

Contact:
Tracy Gladden
Communications Manager
Tgladden@spinesmithusa.com
512-637-2050

About Celling Biosciences
Celling Biosciences, works closely with surgeons, scientists and engineers to research and develop innovative technologies in the field of regenerative medicine. http://www.cellingbiosciences.com and http://www.spinesmithusa.com

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Celling Biosciences Sponsors 7th Annual Stem Cell Summit

08-02-2012 18:24 (October 25, 2011) Associate Professor at the Stanford School of Medicine, Joseph Wu explores how stem cells may be used in the future to repair hearts that have failed. This course is a single-quarter, focused follow-up to the the yearlong Mini Med School that occurred in 2009-10. The course focuses on diseases of the heart and cardiovascular system. The course is sponsored by Stanford Continuing Studies and the Stanford Medical School. Stanford University http://www.stanford.edu Stanford Continuing Studies http:///continuingstudies.stanford.edu/ Stanford University School of Medicine med.stanford.edu Stanford University Channel on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com

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5. Stem Cells for Cardiac Repair | Mini Med School - Video

05-02-2012 05:11 Dr. Martin of MetroMD performs a bone marrow extraction procedure to harvest stem cells. The extracted bone marrow will be centrifuged to separate targeted stem cells and re-injected into the patient's injured joints. Questions? Please call the MetroMD Institute of Regenerative Medicine at (323) 285-5300 or email us at info@MetroMD.net. MetroMD.net

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Bone Marrow Extraction Procedure to Harvest Stem Cells | MetroMD Los Angeles - Video

When a piece of muscle in a person’s heart dies from lack of blood flow, it scars over and is lost.  But a team of researchers from the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles has proven that those muscles may not necessarily be gone forever.

In a ground-breaking study that may change how heart attacks are treated, Dr. Eduardo Marban and his team used stem cells to re-grow damaged heart muscle.  In the 17 patients who received the therapy, Marban measured an average 50 percent reduction in the size of the scar tissue

“One of the holy grails in medicine has been the use of medicine to achieve regeneration,” Marban said.  “Patients that were treated not only experienced shrinkage of their scars, but also new growth of their heart muscle, which is very exciting.”

The stem cells were not derived from embryos, but instead were developed from the patients’ own hearts.  Marban’s team inserted a catheter into the diseased hearts and took a small biopsy of muscle.  In the laboratory, the tissue was manipulated into producing stem cells.  After a few weeks of marinating in culture, researchers had enough stem cells to re-inject them into the patients’ hearts.  Over the course of a year, the stem cells took root in cardiac tissue, encouraging the heart to create new muscle and blood vessels.  In other words, the heart actually began to mend itself.

Click here to see an animation of how the process works.

“We’ve achieved what we have achieved using adult stem cells – in this case – actually specifically from a patient’s own heart back into the same patient.   There’s no ethical issues with that – there’s no destruction of embryos.  There’s no reason to worry about immune rejection."

While similar research has been done using stem cells from bone marrow, this is the first time that stem cells derived from a patient’s own cardiac tissue have been used.

Marban believes this therapy could be broadly used in many of the 5 to 7 million Americans who suffer from heart disease every year.  And he said the applications could go well beyond diseased hearts.

“If we can do that in the heart, I don’t see any reason, conceptually, why we couldn’t do it in kidneys for example, or pancreas or other organs that have very limited regenerative capacity,” Marban said.

While the procedure may be a revolutionary medical technique, there are still a few more puzzling questions about the research that Marban would like to investigate further.  For example, while the patients grew new heart muscle and saw a dramatic reduction in scar tissue, the actual function of their hearts did not show a significant improvement.  And it appeared the stem cells themselves may not have turned into cardiac muscle, but rather they stimulated the heart to produce new muscle cells.

Because this was a “Phase 1” study, it was really meant to measure whether the procedure was safe.  Of the 17 patients who were given the stem cell injections, six experienced “serious adverse events,” but only one was regarded to be possibly related to the treatment.  

The potential success of this research could hold a lot of promise for the millions of Americans who suffer from heart disease each and every year, which is the leading cause of death in the United States.  If his future experiments yield the same results as this initial study, Marban believes he could be offering this therapy to patients within four years – and that could go a long way in mending all of America’s broken hearts.

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Stem cells a fix for 'broken hearts'?

Cambridge personalised medicines pioneer Horizon Discovery Ltd has landed another showpiece deal as part of a new super-cell consortium.

Business Weekly understands that the UK company stands to make a seven-figure haul over the lifetime of an EU-funded project aimed at understanding hES cell differentiation control.

Horizon provides research tools to support the development of personalised medicines. It has joined the EU-FP7 funded ‘4D-Cell-Fate’ consortium  whose aim is to shed light on how stem cell re-programming and differentiation is regulated at the epigenetic level.

As a member of the consortium, Horizon will generate cell-lines harbouring endogenous pathway reporter genes and labelled versions of specific epigenetic target proteins to study their function.

Commercialisation of the output of the programme will be governed by a consortium agreement defined by EU regulation.

4DCellFate brings together 12 groups from nine countries, including academics, research-intensive SMEs, and Pharma, each an international leader in its field, combining expertise in a wide range of cutting-edge technologies and scientific approaches.

The aim of the 4D CellFate project, which is currently funded for five years, is to establish an integrated approach to explore the structure and function of the large multi-protein epigenetic complexes that are involved in control of stem cell self-renewal, lineage commitment, and differentiation.

Horizon will use its proprietary virally-mediated gene-engineering technology, GENESIS™, to alter endogenous genes in hES cells (e.g. via tagging with GFP and HaloTag® technologies) with unprecedented accuracy and precision.

By gaining a greater insight into how Polycomb Repressive Complexes (PRCs), and Nucleosome Remodelling and Deacetylation complexes (NuRD) control stem cell differentiation, it is hoped that better methods will be identified to generate ethical sources of ‘iPS’ stem cells and direct the fate of stem cells into the many forms of specific tissue types that are needed for disease therapy.

Dr Chris Torrance, CSO of Horizon, said: “Generating stem cells and differentiated cell types with greater precision, definition and safety are key areas for delivering on the great promise that stem cell-based therapies could bring to many disease areas.

“Horizon’s gene targeting technology will play a key role in helping to dissect key biological pathways in the fate of stem cells as part of the 4D Cell Fate project. Through this process, new and important approaches to disease therapy will be determined.”

CEO Dr Darrin Disley added: “Our company has a commitment to active involvement in cutting-edge research with leading experts in translational fields, including bringing the power of rAAV-mediated gene targeting technology to the 4D Cell Fate project.”

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Horizon in new super-cell elite

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/fc9dd6/primary_and_stem_c) has announced the addition of John Wiley and Sons Ltd's new book "Primary and Stem Cells: Gene Transfer Technologies and Applications" to their offering.

This book describes basic cell engineering methods, emphasizing stem cell applications, and use of the genetically modified stem cells in cell therapy and drug discovery. Together, the chapters introduce and offer insights on new techniques for engineering of stem cells and the delivery of transgenes into stem cells via various viral and non-viral systems. The book offers a guide to the types of manipulations currently available to create genetically engineered stem cells that suit any investigator's purpose, whether it's basic science investigation, creation of disease models and screens, or cells for therapeutic applications.

Key Topics Covered:

PART I: CLONING AND GENE DELIVERY

1. DNA Assembly Technologies Based on Homologous Recombination

2. Multigene Assembly for Construction of Synthetic Operons: Creation and Delivery of an Optimized All-IN-One Expression Construct for Generating Mouse iPS Cells

3. Strategies for the Delivery of Naked DNA

PART II: NONINTEGRATING TECHNOLOGIES

4. Episomal Vectors

5. Nonintegrating DNA Virus

6. Nonintegrating RNA Viruses

7. Protein Delivery

PART III: INTEGRATING TECHNOLOGIES

8. Sleeping Beauty Transposon-Mediated Stable Gene Delivery

9. Integrating Viral Vectors for Gene Modifications

10. Bacteriophage Integrases for Site-Specific Integration

11. Improving Gene Targeting Efficiency in Human Pluripotent Stem Cells

PART IV: APPLICATIONS

12. Modified Stem Cells as Disease Models and in Toxicology Screening

13. Screening and Drug Discovery

INDEX

Author:

UMA LAKSHMIPATHY is a principal investigator at Life Technologies. She has a PhD in life sciences, with academic and industry experience in molecular biology and stem cells. Dr. Lakshmipathy holds four patents and has authored more than forty publications.

BHASKAR THYAGARAJAN is a program manager at Life Technologies. He has a PhD in pharmacology, with expertise in the areas of molecular biology, DNA recombination, gene and cell therapy, and protein purification. He holds one patent and has authored more than twenty publications.

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/fc9dd6/primary_and_stem_c

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Research and Markets: Primary and Stem Cells: Gene Transfer Technologies and Applications

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire -02/15/12)- Stem cell stocks have performed well of late, outperforming the S&P 500 by a large margin over the last three months. Since mid-November, TickerSpy's Stem Cell Stocks index (RXSTM) has returned more than 20 percent, as favorable news from some of stem cell industry heavyweights has boosted investor optimism in the sector. The Paragon Report examines investing opportunities in the Biotechnology Industry and provides equity research on Advanced Cell Technology, Inc. (OTC.BB: ACTC.OB - News) and StemCells Inc. (NASDAQ: STEM - News). Access to the full company reports can be found at:

http://www.paragonreport.com/ACTC

http://www.paragonreport.com/STEM

Shares of StemCells Inc. have skyrocketed nearly 20 percent year-to-date. StemCells Inc. is focused on cellular medicine, or the use of stem and progenitor cells as the basis for therapeutics and therapies, and enabling technologies for stem cell research, or the use of cells and related technologies to enable stem cell-based research and drug discovery and development.

Earlier this month the company released a statement saying that it received U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorization to start a clinical trial of the company's potential treatment for dry age-related macular degeneration, or AMD. AMD is the leading cause of vision loss and blindness in people over 55 years old and about 30 million people worldwide are affected by the disease, the company said

The Paragon Report provides investors with an excellent first step in their due diligence by providing daily trading ideas, and consolidating the public information available on them. For more investment research on the biotechnology industry register with us free at http://www.paragonreport.com and get exclusive access to our numerous stock reports and industry newsletters.

Shares of Advanced Cell Technology are up more than 30 percent this year - although they are down more than 20 percent over the last month. Advanced Cell Technology has acquired, developed and maintained a portfolio of patents and patent applications that forms the base for its research and development efforts in the area of embryonic and adult stem cell research.

Earlier this week Advanced Cell Technology announced that a third patient has been treated for Stargardt's macular dystrophy in its US. Phase I/II clinical trial. The therapy uses retinal pigment epithelial cells derived from human embryonic stem cells. Stargardt's disease or Stargardt's Macular Dystrophy is a genetic disease that causes progressive vision loss, usually starting in children between 10 to 20 years of age.

The Paragon Report has not been compensated by any of the above-mentioned publicly traded companies. Paragon Report is compensated by other third party organizations for advertising services. We act as an independent research portal and are aware that all investment entails inherent risks. Please view the full disclaimer at http://www.paragonreport.com/disclaimer

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Favorable News From Advanced Cell Technology and StemCells Inc Boosts Optimism in Regenerative Medicine Industry

February 15, 2012, 12:06 AM EST

By Ryan Flinn

(Adds comment from researcher in 13th paragraph.)

Feb. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Stem cells grown from patients’ own cardiac tissue can heal damage once thought to be permanent after a heart attack, according to a study that suggests the experimental approach may one day help stave off heart failure.

In a trial of 25 heart-attack patients, 17 who got the stem cell treatment showed a 50 percent reduction in cardiac scar tissue compared with no improvement for the eight who received standard care. The results, from the first of three sets of clinical trials generally needed for regulatory approval, were published today in the medical journal Lancet.

“The findings in this paper are encouraging,” Deepak Srivastava, director of the San Francisco-based Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, said in an interview. “There’s a dire need for new therapies for people with heart failure, it’s still the No. 1 cause of death in men and women.”

The study, by researchers from Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, tested the approach in patients who recently suffered a heart attack, with the goal that repairing the damage might help stave off failure. While patients getting the stem cells showed no more improvement in heart function than those who didn’t get the experimental therapy, the theory is that new tissue regenerated by the stem cells can strengthen the heart, said Eduardo Marban, the study’s lead author.

“What our trial was designed to do is to reverse the injury once it’s happened,” said Marban, director of Cedars- Sinai Heart Institute. “The quantitative outcome that we had in this paper is to shift patients from a high-risk group to a low- risk group.”

Minimally Invasive

The stem cells were implanted within five weeks after patients suffering heart attacks. Doctors removed heart tissue, about the size of half a raisin, using a minimally invasive procedure that involved a thin needle threaded through the veins. After cultivating the stem cells from the tissue, doctors reinserted them using a second minimally invasive procedure. Patients got 12.5 million cells to 25 million cells.

A year after the procedure, six patients in the stem cell group had serious side effects, including a heart attack, chest pain, a coronary bypass, implantation of a defibrillator, and two other events unrelated to the heart. One of patient’s side effects were possibly linked to the treatment, the study found.

While the main goal of the trial was to examine the safety of the procedure, the decrease in scar tissue in those treated merits a larger study that focuses on broader clinical outcomes, researchers said in the paper.

Heart Regeneration

“If we can regenerate the whole heart, then the patient would be completely normal,” Marban said. “We haven’t fulfilled that yet, but we’ve gotten rid of half of the injury, and that’s a good start.”

While the study resulted in patients having an increase in muscle mass and a shrinkage of scar size, the amount of blood flowing out of the heart, or the ejection fraction, wasn’t different between the control group and stem-cell therapy group. The measurement is important because poor blood flow deprives the body of oxygen and nutrients it needs to function properly, Srivastava said.

“The patients don’t have a functional benefit in this study,” said Srivastava, who wasn’t not involved in the trial.

The technology is being developed by closely held Capricor Inc., which will further test it in 200 patients for the second of three trials typically required for regulatory approval. Marban is a founder of the Los Angeles-based company and chairman of its scientific advisory board. His wife, Linda Marban, is also a founder and chief executive officer.

“We’d like to study patients who are much sicker and see if we can actually spare them early death, or the need for a heart transplant, or a device,” Eduardo Marban said.

--Editors: Angela Zimm, Andrew Pollack

#<184845.409373.2.1.99.7.25># -0- Feb/14/2012 17:13 GMT

To contact the reporter on this story: Ryan Flinn in San Francisco at rflinn@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reg Gale at rgale5@bloomberg.net

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Scarred Hearts Can Be Mended With Stem Cell Therapy

14 February 2012 Last updated at 19:10 ET By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News

Bone marrow stem cell therapy offers "moderate improvement" to heart attack patients, according to a large UK review of clinical trials.

The analysis by the Cochrane Collaboration looked at 33 trials involving more than 1,700 patients.

It said longer-term studies were needed to see if the experimental therapy affected life expectancy.

The review comes a day after doctors reported the first case of using heart cells to heal heart attack damage.

If a patient survives a heart attack, dead heart muscle is replaced with scar tissue - leaving the patient weaker and possibly on a lifetime of medicine.

Researchers are beginning to show that taking cells from a heart, growing millions of new heart cells in the laboratory and pumping those back into the heart may reduce scar tissue and lead to new heart muscle.

Continue reading the main story “Start Quote

Stem cell therapy may also reduce the number of patients who later die or suffer from heart failure, but currently there is a lack of statistically significant evidence based on the small number of patients treated so far”

End Quote Dr Enca Martin-Rendon Lead researcher

However, the trials are at a very early stage and in only a handful of patients. Using a similar technique with cells taken from the bone marrow, which is a prime source of stem cells, has a much longer pedigree.

The report by Cochrane pooled the data from all 33 bone marrow trials which had taken place up to 2011.

It concluded that bone marrow therapy "may lead to a moderate long-term improvement" in heart function which "might be clinically very important".

Longer life uncertain

It said there was still no evidence of "any significant effect on mortality" in comparison with standard treatment. However, this may be due to the size of the studies and that patients were followed for a short period of time.

Lead author Dr Enca Martin-Rendon, from NHS Blood and Transplant at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, said: "This new treatment may lead to moderate improvement in heart function over standard treatments.

"Stem cell therapy may also reduce the number of patients who later die or suffer from heart failure, but currently there is a lack of statistically significant evidence based on the small number of patients treated so far."

Prof Anthony Mathur, from Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, is leading the largest ever trial of stem cells in heart attack patients.

It starts this year, however, he told the BBC that the results could come quite quickly. Three thousand patients across Europe will take part. They will be injected with stem cells five days after a heart attack and then followed for two years to see if the therapy affects life expectancy.

Prof Peter Weissberg, medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said: "This review reflects the consensus of opinion about these trials - cell therapy has a modestly beneficial effect.

"Despite that, no-one knows why, or even if, cell therapies will translate into better survival or sustained improvement in damaged hearts. It's much too early to judge the likely long-term benefits."

Read the rest here:
Bone gives 'some' heart healing

Washington, Feb 14 (ANI): Researchers have shown for the first time that radiation treatment -despite killing half of all tumour cells during every cycle - transforms other cancer cells into treatment-resistant breast cancer stem cells.

According to researchers with the UCLA Department of Radiation Oncology at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, the generation of these breast cancer stem cells counteracts the otherwise highly efficient radiation treatment.

If scientists can uncover the mechanisms and prevent this transformation from occurring, radiation treatment for breast cancer could become even more effective, said study senior author Dr. Frank Pajonk, an associate professor of radiation oncology and Jonsson Cancer Center researcher.

"We found that these induced breast cancer stem cells (iBCSC) were generated by radiation-induced activation of the same cellular pathways used to reprogram normal cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) in regenerative medicine," said Pajonk, who also is a scientist with the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine at UCLA.

"It was remarkable that these breast cancers used the same reprogramming pathways to fight back against the radiation treatment."

"Controlling the radiation resistance of breast cancer stem cells and the generation of new iBCSC during radiation treatment may ultimately improve curability and may allow for de-escalation of the total radiation doses currently given to breast cancer patients, thereby reducing acute and long-term adverse effects," the study stated.

There are very few breast cancer stem cells in a larger pool of breast cancer cells. In this study, Pajonk and his team eliminated the smaller pool of breast cancer stem cells and then irradiated the remaining breast cancer cells and placed them into mice.

Using a unique imaging system Pajonk and his team developed to visualize cancer stem cells, the researchers were able to observe their initial generation into iBCSC in response to the radiation treatment.

The newly generated iBCSC were remarkably similar to breast cancer stem cells found in tumors that had not been irradiated, Pajonk said.

The team also found that the iBCSC had a more than 30-fold increased ability to form tumors compared to the non-irradiated breast cancer cells from which they originated.

Pajonk said that the study unites the competing models of clonal evolution and the hierarchical organization of breast cancers, as it suggests that undisturbed, growing tumors maintain a small number of cancer stem cells.

However, if challenged by various stressors that threaten their numbers, including ionizing radiation, the breast cancer cells generate iBCSC that may, together with the surviving cancer stem cells, repopulate the tumour.

"What is really exciting about this study is that it gives us a much more complex understanding of the interaction of radiation with cancer cells that goes far beyond DNA damage and cell killing," Pajonk said.

"The study may carry enormous potential to make radiation even better."

Pajonk stressed that breast cancer patients should not be alarmed by the study findings and should continue to undergo radiation if recommended by their oncologists.

"Radiation is an extremely powerful tool in the fight against breast cancer," he said.

"If we can uncover the mechanism driving this transformation, we may be able to stop it and make the therapy even more powerful," Pajonk added.

The study has been published in the online edition of peer-reviewed journal Stem Cells. (ANI)

Originally posted here:
Radiation therapy transforms breast cancer cells into cancer stem cells

ScienceDaily (Feb. 13, 2012) — Breast cancer stem cells are thought to be the sole source of tumor recurrence and are known to be resistant to radiation therapy and don't respond well to chemotherapy.

Now, researchers with the UCLA Department of Radiation Oncology at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center report for the first time that radiation treatment -- despite killing half of all tumor cells during every treatment -- transforms other cancer cells into treatment-resistant breast cancer stem cells.

The generation of these breast cancer stem cells counteracts the otherwise highly efficient radiation treatment. If scientists can uncover the mechanisms and prevent this transformation from occurring, radiation treatment for breast cancer could become even more effective, said study senior author Dr. Frank Pajonk, an associate professor of radiation oncology and Jonsson Cancer Center researcher.

"We found that these induced breast cancer stem cells (iBCSC) were generated by radiation-induced activation of the same cellular pathways used to reprogram normal cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) in regenerative medicine," said Pajonk, who also is a scientist with the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine at UCLA. "It was remarkable that these breast cancers used the same reprogramming pathways to fight back against the radiation treatment."

The study recently appeared in the early online edition of the peer-reviewed journal Stem Cells.

"Controlling the radiation resistance of breast cancer stem cells and the generation of new iBCSC during radiation treatment may ultimately improve curability and may allow for de-escalation of the total radiation doses currently given to breast cancer patients, thereby reducing acute and long-term adverse effects," the study states.

There are very few breast cancer stem cells in a larger pool of breast cancer cells. In this study, Pajonk and his team eliminated the smaller pool of breast cancer stem cells and then irradiated the remaining breast cancer cells and placed them into mice.

Using a unique imaging system Pajonk and his team developed to visualize cancer stem cells, the researchers were able to observe their initial generation into iBCSC in response to the radiation treatment. The newly generated iBCSC were remarkably similar to breast cancer stem cells found in tumors that had not been irradiated, Pajonk said.

The team also found that the iBCSC had a more than 30-fold increased ability to form tumors compared to the non-irradiated breast cancer cells from which they originated.

Pajonk said that the study unites the competing models of clonal evolution and the hierarchical organization of breast cancers, as it suggests that undisturbed, growing tumors maintain a small number of cancer stem cells. However, if challenged by various stressors that threaten their numbers, including ionizing radiation, the breast cancer cells generate iBCSC that may, together with the surviving cancer stem cells, repopulate the tumor.

"What is really exciting about this study is that it gives us a much more complex understanding of the interaction of radiation with cancer cells that goes far beyond DNA damage and cell killing," Pajonk said. "The study may carry enormous potential to make radiation even better."

Pajonk stressed that breast cancer patients should not be alarmed by the study findings and should continue to undergo radiation if recommended by their oncologists.

"Radiation is an extremely powerful tool in the fight against breast cancer," he said. "If we can uncover the mechanism driving this transformation, we may be able to stop it and make the therapy even more powerful."

This study was funded by the National Cancer Institute, the California Breast Cancer Research Program and the Department of Defense.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Health Sciences, via Newswise.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

Chann Lagadec, Erina Vlashi, Lorenza Della Donna, Carmen Dekmezian and Frank Pajonk. Radiation-induced Reprograming of Breast Cancer Cells. Stem Cells, 10 FEB 2012 DOI: 10.1002/stem.1058

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Continue reading here:
Radiation treatment generates cancer stem cells from less aggressive breast cancer cells, study suggests

PIEDMONT, Okla. -- Stem cell research is one of the newest and most exciting areas of study. Experts believe these tiny unwritten cells hold the keys to curing a number of diseases and debilitating injuries. But here in the U.S., stem cell research isn't moving fast enough for a growing number of families.

This is the story of an Oklahoma family that traveled to China for cutting-edge stem cell treatment not offered in the US.

Cora Beth Taylor walks a different road than most will ever travel.

Her journey is filled with obstacles, heartbreak and triumph.

Cora, William and Tate Taylor are triplets born premature.

The brothers have never shown any signs of prematurity.

But Cora, at about a year old, started falling behind developmentally.

By 18 months she had been diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy.

Cora has never had any cognitive delays.

She's a super-smart little gal but her muscles haven't developed properly.

It's devastating; they just won't cooperate.

Cora's parents, Kevin and Beth Taylor, have tried everything for their little girl; that is, everything available in the U.S.

Last year, Piedmont Schools raised the money to help the Taylors take Cora to China for treatment, close to $50,000.

Research hospitals in China are using stem cells from donor umbilical cord blood to treat children with Cerebral Palsy.

Beth Taylor says, "That was a difficult decision to make to take your child to a foreign country for medical treatments. Living in the US you feel like this is the best there is."

The Taylors spent 37 days in China.

Cora Beth had eight stem cell transfusions.

Through a spinal tap, doctors put the cells into her spinal column where they penetrate the blood-brain barrier and get to work.

Critics are quick to point out this area of regenerative medicine has largely unverified effectiveness. Results are often anecdotal and the FDA is a long way from approving this type of experimental treatment for America.

Though the Taylors are convinced and here's why.

Beth Taylor said, "Within the first couple of weeks we could see changes. We could see definite improvements in strength and balance."

Cora had never been able to do a sit-up in her life ever; she did her first in China.

Nine-year-old Cora remembers, "The thing that I was most happy about accomplishing was a sit up. Because I'd tried to do a sit up before going to China but I just couldn't do it."

Now, Cora Beth can do 20.

The most notable change has been Cora's walk.

This third-grader had never gone to school without her walker.

Today she walks the halls without it; she hasn't used it in months.

She recently competed in a beauty pageant in her hometown of Piedmont, without the help of her walker as well.

Cora says, "So, I'm really excited. I don't think there's anything that I couldn't accomplish."

Doctors say Cora’s stem cells will continue to mature over the next few years.

For her, there are many milestones ahead.

In the US, Duke University is studying stem cell treatments for children with Cerebral Palsy.

Right now they don't have FDA clearance to use donor stem-cells.

Experts say treatment similar to Cora Beth's Chinese therapy is years away in the U.S.

See the article here:
Stem cell treatments change girl's life

13-02-2012 12:31 Sridhar Ramaswamy, MD, Tucker Gosnell Investigator and Associate Professor of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, Harvard Medical School, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, and Harvard Stem Cell Institute, discusses ongoing research into drug tolerance and resistance, specifically the roll of dormant cancer cells. If a tumor goes into remission as a result of a cancer drug and then recurs it is likely that the tumor will still respond to the initial treatment. In the dormant state the cells are resistance, in the original they are sensitive. The exact mechanism behind this has yet to be discovered. In some cases giving a course, stopping, and then continuing later on can create an additive effect, an idea that Ramaswamy calls a drug holiday. A comparison is underway between drug and non-drug induced dormant cells in order to find the mechanism that causes resistance. The ultimate goal of the research is to be able to predict and stop drug resistance.

Original post:
Dr. Ramaswamy on Dormant Tumor Cells and Resistance - Video

BOCA RATON—

A physician from Indianapolis met the woman who saved his life on Sunday morning, providing an emotional kick-off for the second annual Walk for Life, sponsored by the Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation.

"It's almost like a total out of body experience," said Scott Savader, 53, moments after he embraced former Sunrise resident Jill Rubin, who provided the stem cells that were transplanted into Savader's body nearly two years ago.

As the two met for the first time, about 300 people cheered before heading off on a 5K walk at Florida Atlantic University. The effort is part of a campaign to raise awareness and raise $100,000 for lab tests necessary to match donors and recipients.

Savader said receiving the transplant was "like being plucked from a fire or a sinking car. There is a bond there now that transcends just knowing somebody. If not for her generosity, I would have died."

Each year, 10,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with a disease treatable with a bone marrow transplant. Yet only about half find the donor who could save them, according to Jay Feinberg, the Delray Beach resident who started the foundation after he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia.

He received a transplant in 1995 and has since dedicated his life to making matches for others.

Savader, a radiologist, was diagnosed with myelofibrosis in 2008.

Rubin, 45, a physical therapist, said she registered as a bone marrow donor 10 years ago while attending a fair in Plantation. She and her family have since moved to Deland.

"This is very emotional for me," said Rubin as she and Savader posed for pictures.

After spending a little time with Savader and his family Sunday, Rubin said she felt even better about her gift to him.

She also learned that Savader grew up and went to high school in Cooper City. "Small world," she said.

Temperatures in the 40s and a chilly wind did little to dampen enthusiasm for the walk. Participants were inspired by Savader and Rubin and other success stories.

Among the latter were 6-year-old Matthew Welling, on hand with his parents Michael and Susie Welling of Port Chester, N.Y., and Boca Raton resident Jill Goldsmith, who donated the bone marrow that reversed the boy's osteoporosis in 2007.

"It was an amazing, life-changing experience," said Goldsmith, 50, as she watched Matthew dance happily around a field at the university.

"What I had to do to save a life was so easy," said Goldsmith. "And to see him now, well, I feel proud and honored and so blessed."

During last year's walk, more than 1,000 new donors were added to the registry and resulted in 14 matches for patients throughout the U.S. They joined a total registry of nearly 200,000, said Feinberg.

Volunteering to become a potential donor begins with an oral swab that is then tested for tissue type. Most of the foundation's money goes toward paying for those lab tests, which cost about $55 each, said Feinberg.

For information, go to mwclary@tribune.com">http://www.giftoflife.org.

mwclary@tribune.com or at 954-356-4465

Link:
Bone marrow recipient meets donor who gave him gift of life