A frozen vial of human embryonic stem cells is shown at the University of Michigan Center for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich., on Oct. 22, 2008. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/Paul Sancya

A Canadian-led international team of researchers has begun solving the mystery of just how a specialized cell taken from a persons skin is reprogrammed into an embryonic-like stem cell, from which virtually any other cell type in the body can be generated.

The research is being touted as a breakthrough in regenerative medicine that will allow scientists to one day harness stem cells to treat or even cure a host of conditions, from blindness and Parkinsons disease to diabetes and spinal cord injuries.

Besides creating the reprogramming roadmap, the scientists also identified a new type of stem cell, called an F-class stem cell due to its fuzzy appearance. Their work is detailed in five papers published Wednesday in the prestigious journals Nature and Nature Communications.

Dr. Andras Nagy, a senior scientist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, led the team of 50 researchers from Canada, the Netherlands, South Korea and Australia, which spent four years analyzing and cataloguing the day-by-day process that occurs in stem cell reprogramming.

The work builds on the 2006-2007 papers by Shinya Yamanaka, who showed that adult skin cells could be turned into embryonic-like, or pluripotent, stem cells through genetic manipulation, a discovery that garnered the Japanese scientist the Nobel Prize in 2012.

Nagy likened the roughly 21-day process to complete that transformation to a black box, so called because scientists did not know what went on within the cells as they morphed from one cell type into the other.

It was just like a black box, Nagy said Wednesday, following a briefing at the hospital. You start with a skin cell, you arrive at a stem cell but we had no idea what was happening inside the cell.

Nagys team set about cataloguing the changes as they occurred by removing cells from culture dishes at set points during the three-week period, then analyzing such cellular material as DNA and proteins present at that moment.

The result is a database that will be available to scientists around the world, which the team hopes will spur new research to advance the field of stem cell-based regenerative medicine.

Originally posted here:
Stem cell breakthrough holds promise for treating blindness, Alzheimers

Sheryl Ubelacker, The Canadian Press Published Wednesday, December 10, 2014 1:39PM EST Last Updated Thursday, December 11, 2014 7:42AM EST

TORONTO -- A Canadian-led international team of researchers has begun solving the mystery of just how a specialized cell taken from a person's skin is reprogrammed into an embryonic-like stem cell, from which virtually any other cell type in the body can be generated.

The research is being touted as a breakthrough in regenerative medicine that will allow scientists to one day harness stem cells to treat or even cure a host of conditions, from blindness and Parkinson's disease to diabetes and spinal cord injuries.

Besides creating the reprogramming roadmap, the scientists also identified a new type of stem cell, called an F-class stem cell due to its fuzzy appearance. Their work is detailed in five papers published Wednesday in the prestigious journals Nature and Nature Communications.

Dr. Andras Nagy, a senior scientist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, led the team of 50 researchers from Canada, the Netherlands, South Korea and Australia, which spent four years analyzing and cataloguing the day-by-day process that occurs in stem cell reprogramming.

The work builds on the 2006-2007 papers by Shinya Yamanaka, who showed that adult skin cells could be turned into embryonic-like, or pluripotent, stem cells through genetic manipulation, a discovery that garnered the Japanese scientist the Nobel Prize in 2012.

Nagy likened the roughly 21-day process to complete that transformation to a "black box," so called because scientists did not know what went on within the cells as they morphed from one cell type into the other.

"It was just like a black box," Nagy said Wednesday, following a briefing at the hospital. "You start with a skin cell, you arrive at a stem cell -- but we had no idea what was happening inside the cell."

Nagy's team set about cataloguing the changes as they occurred by removing cells from culture dishes at set points during the three-week period, then analyzing such cellular material as DNA and proteins present at that moment.

The result is a database that will be available to scientists around the world, which the team hopes will spur new research to advance the field of stem cell-based regenerative medicine.

Read more:
Canadian-led team unlocks process to 'reprogram' stem cells

TORONTO A Canadian-led international team of researchers has created the first high-resolution characterization of the process in which stem cells are formulated from other specialized cells.

The research is being touted as a breakthrough in utilizing stem cells to treat or even cure a host of diseases in the future. Certain stem cells have the potential to become any cell type in the body.

Dr. Andras Nagy of Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, who led the international research team, says stem cells hold enormous promise for treating or reversing such conditions as blindness, Parkinsons, Alzheimers, spinal cord injury and stroke-related brain damage.

The researchers also identified a new type of stem cells, called F-class stem cells due to their fuzzy appearance.

Nagy says these F-class stem cells have unique properties that could open up new avenues for generating designer cells that may be safer and more efficient when used in future therapies.

Ontario Health Minister Dr. Eric Hoskins hails the research as a game-changer that will open up new frontiers in scientific and medical knowledge worldwide.

The research is detailed in five papers published Wednesday in the prestigious journals Nature and Nature Communications.

See the article here:
Breakthrough research may speed up stem cell treatments

Researchers at The University of Queensland are part of a global team that has identified a new type of artificial stem cell.

UQ Associate Professor Christine Wells (right) said Project Grandiose had revealed it could track new ways to reprogram a normal adult cell, such as skin cells, into cells similar to those found in an early embryo.

The development is expected to help researchers explore ways to arrive at new cell types in the laboratory, with important implications for regenerative medicine and stem cell science.

Associate Professor Wells, who leads the Stemformatics stem cell research support unit at UQs Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, said the project involved a consortium of 50 researchers from Canada, Australia, Korea, the USA and the Netherlands

We all come from just one cell the fertilised egg and this cell contains within its DNA a series of instruction manuals to make all of the many different types of cells that make up our body, AIBN Associate Professor Wells said.

These very early stage cells can now be made in the lab by reversing this process of development.

Our research reveals the new instructions imposed on a cell when this developmental process is reversed.

Project Grandiose is a large-scale research effort to understand what happens inside a cell as it reverts to an artificial stem cell.

The role of the Stemformatics.org group was to help the researchers have access to the vast information and data they generated from the project, Associate Professor Wells said.

Our online data platform is designed to let non-specialists view the genes involved and the many ways they are regulated during cell formation.

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New UQ platform aids stem cell research

Toddlers who undergo total body irradiation in preparation for bone marrow transplantation are at higher risk for a decline in IQ and may be candidates for stepped up interventions to preserve intellectual functioning, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital investigators reported. The findings appear in the current issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The results clarify the risk of intellectual decline faced by children, teenagers and young adults following bone marrow transplantation. The procedure is used for treatment of cancer and other diseases. It involves replacing the patient's own blood-producing stem cells with those from a healthy donor.

Researchers tracked IQ scores of 170 St. Jude patients before and for five years after transplantation, making this the most comprehensive effort yet to determine how the procedure affects intelligence. The patients ranged in age from 4 months to 23 years when their transplants occurred. The procedure had little lasting impact on the IQ scores of most patients.

"For the great majority of patients, these findings provide reassurance that transplantation will not have a significant negative impact on cognitive development," said corresponding author Sean Phipps, Ph.D., chair of the St. Jude Department of Psychology. "We have also identified a high-risk group of younger patients who may benefit from more intensive interventions, including developmental stimulation and other rehabilitative therapies designed to prevent a decline in intellectual functioning and aid in recovery."

The high-risk group includes patients whose transplants occurred when they were aged 3 years or younger and involved total body irradiation (TBI). TBI is used to prepare patients for transplantation by killing remaining cancer cells and protecting the transplanted cells from their immune systems. TBI is associated with a range of short-term and long-term side effects. At St. Jude, therapeutic advances have significantly reduced the use of TBI in bone marrow transplantations.

Previous studies of bone marrow transplantation survivors reported conflicting results about the long-term impact of age and TBI on cognitive abilities.

Before transplantation, the average IQ scores of all patients in this study were in the normal range. One year after transplantation, average IQ scores of patients aged 5 and younger had declined sharply. But scores of most patients rebounded in subsequent years. Five years after the procedure, IQ scores for most patients, even the youngest survivors, had largely recovered and fell within the range of normal intelligence.

Patients in the high-risk group were the lone exception. IQ scores of patients who were both aged 3 or younger when their transplants occurred and who received TBI failed to recover from the first-year decline. Five years after transplantation, these survivors had average IQ scores in the low-normal range of intelligence. Their scores were more than 16 points lower than the scores of patients who were just as young when their transplants occurred but did not receive TBI.

Of the 72 patients in this study whose transplants included TBI, researchers found there was a long-term impact on intellectual functioning only of patients who were aged 3 or younger at transplantation.

"The significant first-year decline reflects the intensity of transplantation, which our results suggest leads to greater disruption in development in the youngest children than was previously recognized," said the study's first author Victoria Willard, Ph.D., a St. Jude psychology department research associate.

Read more:
Youngest bone marrow transplant patients at higher risk of cognitive decline

TIME Health medicine This New Kind of Stem Cell May Revolutionize How We Treat Diseases Scientists have created a new type of stem cell that could speed treatments for diseases and make them safer

Ever since Japanese researcher Shinya Yamanaka found a way to treat skin cells with four genes and reprogram them back to their embryonic state, scientists have been buzzing over the promise of stem cell therapies. Stem cells can be coaxed to become any of the bodys cell types, so they could potentially replace diseased or missing cells in conditions such as diabetes or Alzheimers. And Yamanakas method also meant that these cells could be made from patients themselves, so they wouldnt trigger dangerous immune rejections.

Now scientists led by Dr. Andras Nagy at Mount Sinai Hospital Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute in Toronto report an exciting new advance that could push stem cells even closer to the clinic. In a series of papers in the journals Nature and Nature Communications, the group describes a new class of stem cell, which they called F class, that they generated in the lab.

The F class cells, says Nagy, have a few advantages over the Yamanaka-generated induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells. While the iPS cells are created by using viruses to introduce four genes that reprogram the cells, Nagys team relied on a technique they developed several years ago using transposonssmall pieces of DNA that can insert themselves into different parts of a genome. Unlike viruses, these transposons can be popped out of the genome if theyre no longer needed, and they dont carry the potential risk of viral infection.

MORE: Stem-Cell Research: The Quest Resumes

Nagys team found that the transposons were much more reliable vehicles for delivering the reprogramming genes exactly where they were needed to efficiently turn the clock back on the skin cells. Whats more, they could use the common antibiotic doxycycline to turn the four genes on and off; adding doxycycline to the cell culture would trigger the transposons to activate, thus turning on the genes, while removing the antibiotic would turn them off.

In this way, says Nagy, he was able to pump up the efficiency of the reprogramming process. Using the Yamanaka method, it was hit-or-miss whether the viruses would find their proper place in a cells genome, and more uncertainty over how effectively it could direct the cell to activate the four reprogramming genes. F class cells are much more similar [in the culture dish], like monozygotic twins while iPS cells are more like brothers and sisters, he says.

That consistency is a potential advantage of the transposon method, since any stem cell-based treatment would require a robust population of stem cells which can then be treated with the proper compounds to develop into insulin-making pancreatic cells to treat diabetes, or new nerve cells to replace dying ones in Alzheimers, or fresh heart muscle to substitute for scarred tissue after a heart attack.

MORE: Stem Cell Miracle? New Therapies May Cure Chronic Conditions like Alzheimers

Nagys team also described, with the most detail to date, exactly how mature cells like skin cells perform the ultimate molecular feat and become forever young again when exposed to the four genes. They analyzed the changes in the cells DNA, the proteins they made, and more. Its similar to high definition TV, he says. We see things much better with much more detail. We expect that having that high resolution characterization will allow us to better understand what is happening during this process at the molecular level. And obviously that better understanding is going to affect what we can do with these cells to make them better, safer and more efficient in cell-based treatments in the future.

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This New Kind of Stem Cell May Revolutionize How We Treat Diseases

Nik Spencer/Nature

Eggs and sperm do it when they combine to make an embryo. John Gurdon did it in the 1960s, when he used intestinal cells from tadpoles to generate genetically identical frogs. Ian Wilmut did it too, when he used an adult mammalian cell to make Dolly the sheep in 1996. Reprogramming reverting differentiated cells back to an embryonic state, with the extraordinary ability to create all the cells in the body has been going on for a very long time.

Scientific interest in reprogramming rocketed after 2006, when scientists showed that adult mouse cells could be reprogrammed by the introduction of just four genes, creating what they called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells1. The method was simple enough for almost any lab to attempt, and now it accounts for more than a thousand papers per year. The hope is that pluripotent cells could be used to repair damaged or diseased tissue something that moved closer to reality this year, when retinal cells derived from iPS cells were transplanted into a woman with eye disease, marking the first time that reprogrammed cells were transplanted into humans (see Nature http://doi.org/xhz; 2004).

There is just one hitch. No one, not even the dozen or so groups of scientists who intensively study reprogramming, knows how it happens. They understand that differentiated cells go in, and pluripotent cells come out the other end, but what happens in between is one of biology's impenetrable black boxes. We're throwing everything we've got at it, says molecular biologist Knut Woltjen of the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application at Kyoto University in Japan. It's still a really confusing process. It's very complicated, what we're doing.

Kerri Smith talks to researcher Andras Nagy and reporter David Cyranoski about reprogramming cells.

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One of the problems, stem-cell biologists say, is that their starting population contains a mix of cells, each in a slightly different molecular state. And the process for making iPS cells is currently inefficient and variable: only a tiny fraction end up fully reprogrammed and even these may differ from one another in subtle but important ways. What is more, the path to reprogramming may vary depending on the conditions under which cells are being grown, and from one lab to the next. This makes it difficult to compare experimental results, and it raises safety concerns should a mix of poorly characterized cells be used in the clinic.

But new techniques are starting to clarify the picture. By carrying out meticulous analyses of single cells and amassing reams of detailed molecular data, biologists are identifying a number of essential events that take place en route to a reprogrammed state. This week, the biggest such project an international collaboration audaciously called Project Grandiose unveiled its results26. The scientists involved used a battery of tests to take fine-scale snapshots of every stage of reprogramming and in the process, revealed an alternative state of pluripotency. It was the first high-resolution analysis of change in cell state over time, says Andras Nagy, a stem-cell biologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Canada, who led the project. I'm not shy about saying grandiose.

I'm not shy about saying grandiose.

But there is more to do if scientists want to control the process well enough to generate therapeutic cells with ease. Yes, we can make iPS cells and yes we can differentiate them, but I think we feel that we do not control them enough says Jacob Hanna, a stem-cell biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. Controlling cell behaviour at will is very cool. And the way to do it is to understand their molecular biology with great detail.

Read more from the original source:
Stem cells: The black box of reprogramming

Major study: Professor Thomas Preiss from ANU JCSMR who has been involved in an international project researching stem cells. Photo: Graham Tidy

Scientists, including some from Canberra, have identified a new type of stem cell which is easier to grow and manipulate as part of a major study detailing the changes cells undergo as they reprogram into stem cells.

Experts from across the globe, including some from the Australian National University John Curtin School of Medical Research, have carried out the most detailed study of how specialised body cells can be reprogrammed to be like cells from the early embryo.

"The ultimate goal with this work is to develop therapies in regenerative medicine which is a therapeutic approach whereby you would ultimately replace cells or tissues or organs that are failing in a patient with replacement parts that are made in a laboratory from the patient's own cells or from genetically highly similar stem cells," Professor Thomas Preiss from ANU's JCSMR said.

Professor Preiss said it was hoped the research could help speed up the development of treatments for many illnesses and conditions.

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"There's a range of diseases where tissues are damaged or cells or lost. It ranges from neurodegenerative disease to spinal cord injuries, stroke, diabetes, blood and kidney diseases and ultimately perhaps even heart disease," he said.

"I'm not saying our publication immediately enables any of these therapies but we're working on the molecular basis of understanding the process of making cells that would be useful for this kind of therapy."

Fifty experts in stem cell biology and genomics technologies have been involved in Project Grandiose which mapped the detailed molecular process involved in the generation of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells.

Since the 2012 Nobel Prize winning discovery that body cells can in principle be coaxed to become iPS cells, there has been a surge in research to better understand iPS cell reprogramming.

View original post here:
Researchers identify stem cells that can be reprogrammed

Scientists at UB and other institutions have turned cells normally used as model cells, known as immortalized cells, into stem or, as they call it, stem-like cells, using nothing more than mechanical stress. They have done it without employing the potentially hazardous techniques previously used to obtain similar results.

The researchers use the term stem-like cells to describe cells in tissue culture that have many of the biochemical markers of stem cells. Determining whether or not they can differentiate will be the focus of future research.

The finding is described in a paper published recently online before print in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers discovered that changing the mechanical stresses on neuronal and other cell types in tissue culture allowed them to be reprogrammed into stem-like cells.

Normal cell types in tissue culture are spread out and have differentiated internal structures, but changing cell mechanics caused the cells to turn into clusters of spherical cells that had many of the biochemical markers of cells, says Frederick Sachs, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics and senior author.

The stem cell advance was made possible by the development of a genetically encoded optical probe by Fanje Meng, research assistant professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics and lead UB author. The probe measures the mechanical stress in actin, a major structural protein present in all cells. Actin is involved in muscle contraction and numerous cellular processes, including cell signaling, how cells are shaped and how they move.

The actin probes will provide researchers with a method of studying how mechanical forces influence living cells, tissues, organs and animals in real time.

This probe allows us, for the first time, to measure the stress in actin within living cells, explains Sachs. We saw gradients of stress in actin filaments even in single living cells.

Much of existing biomechanics will have to be rethought, since many studies have assumed that the stresses are uniform, Sachs continues. The actin stress probe showed that the tension in actin fibers in stem cells is higher than in normal cells. That was very surprising to us.

He adds that while mechanics are well known to have a role in cellular processes, the details are poorly understood because there have been few ways to measure the stress in specific proteins. A clinically relevant example is that metastatic cancer cells, the fatal variety, have different mechanics than cells of the parent tumor.

This probe will allow cancer researchers to better understand what allows cells to become metastatic, says Sachs.

View original post here:
Mechanical cues reprogram normal cell lines into stem-like cells

TORONTO A Canadian-led international team of researchers has begun solving the mystery of just how a specialized cell taken from a persons skin is reprogrammed into an embryonic-like stem cell, from which virtually any other cell type in the body can be generated.

The research is being touted as a breakthrough in regenerative medicine that will allow scientists to one day harness stem cells to treat or even cure a host of conditions, from blindness and Parkinsons disease to diabetes and spinal cord injuries.

Besides creating the reprogramming roadmap, the scientists also identified a new type of stem cell, called an F-class stem cell due to its fuzzy appearance. Their work is detailed in five papers published Wednesday in the prestigious journals Nature and Nature Communications.

Dr. Andras Nagy, a senior scientist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, led the team of 50 researchers from Canada, the Netherlands, South Korea and Australia, which spent four years analyzing and cataloguing the day-by-day process that occurs in stem cell reprogramming.

The work builds on the 2006-2007 papers by Shinya Yamanaka, who showed that adult skin cells could be turned into embryonic-like, or pluripotent, stem cells through genetic manipulation, a discovery that garnered the Japanese scientist the Nobel Prize in 2012.

Nagy likened the roughly 21-day process to complete that transformation to a black box, so called because scientists did not know what went on within the cells as they morphed from one cell type into the other.

It was just like a black box, Nagy said Wednesday, following a briefing at the hospital. You start with a skin cell, you arrive at a stem cell but we had no idea what was happening inside the cell.

Nagys team set about cataloguing the changes as they occurred by removing cells from culture dishes at set points during the three-week period, then analyzing such cellular material as DNA and proteins present at that moment.

The result is a database that will be available to scientists around the world, which the team hopes will spur new research to advance the field of stem cell-based regenerative medicine.

Co-author Ian Rogers, a scientist in Nagys lab, said the database will allow researchers to identify various properties of the developing stem cells, which could mean improving their ability to treat or cure disease.

See the original post here:
Canadian-led team of researchers shows how stem cells can be reprogrammed

Professional athletes are getting injections of stem cells to speed up recovery from injury. Critics call it a high-tech placebo.

NFL quarterback Peyton Manning reportedly had a stem cell treatment to his neck in 2011.

Elite athletes do whatever it takes to win. Lately, thats meant getting an injection of their own stem cells.

The treatments, developed over the last eight years, typically involve extracting a small amount of a players fat or bone marrow and then injecting it into an injured joint or a strained tendon to encourage tissue regeneration. Bone marrow contains stem cells capable of generating new blood cells, cartilage, and bone.

Although the treatments have become a multimillion-dollar industry, some doctors say theres only thin medical evidence they actually speed healing. In a report issued last week, public policy researchers at Rice University criticized the National Football Leagues role in promoting unproven treatments to the public. Some players, including Peyton Manning of the Denver Broncos and Sidney Rice, whos now retired but won a Super Bowl with the Seattle Seahawks last year, have reportedly gone overseas for stem cell treatments and others have acted as spokespeople for U.S. clinics offering them.

The Rice researchers, Kirstin Matthews and Maude Cuchiara, say the NFL should create an independent panel and fund research on whether stem cell treatments actually work, similar to what it did after facing questions around concussions and brain injury. I think they should be more proactive. They should get ahead of this one, says Matthews.

Sports Illustrated reports that hundreds of football players have gotten stem cell treatments, with many travelling abroad for types of therapy not offered in the United States.But its not only football players trying them. The tennis player Rafael Nadal is reportedly undergoing stem cell treatments for back pain, and the injections are also being sought out by soccer players and high school athletes.

The NFL didnt respond to questions from MIT Technology Review. Doctors offering the treatments say theyre promising and should be given a chance. Others say theres not enough data. Any of these injections have a placebo effect, says Freddie Fu, an orthopedic surgeon who is chairman of sports medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and top doctor for the schools sports teams. We dont know what we are putting in. We dont really know what exactly what it does, biologically.

Orthopedic surgeons hope one day to use stem cells to regenerate cartilage and other lost tissue. But wishful thinking, and profits, have gotten ahead of the facts, says Fu. Theres a lot of marketing in orthopedics right now. I would say 15 to 20 percent of treatments are not effective, he says.

Unlike a drug, which gets tested for years and is then weighed by experts and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration before hitting the market, the bone marrow treatments offered in the U.S. arent regulated.

See the rest here:
The NFL Has a Problem with Stem Cell Treatments

TORONTO A Canadian-led international team of researchers has begun solving the mystery of just how a specialized cell taken from a persons skin is reprogrammed into an embryonic-like stem cell, from which virtually any other cell type in the body can be generated.

The research is being touted as a breakthrough in regenerative medicine that will allow scientists to one day harness stem cells to treat or even cure a host of conditions, from blindness and Parkinsons disease to diabetes and spinal cord injuries.

Besides creating the reprogramming roadmap, the scientists also identified a new type of stem cell, called an F-class stem cell due to its fuzzy appearance. Their work is detailed in five papers published Wednesday in the prestigious journals Nature and Nature Communications.

Dr. Andras Nagy, a senior scientist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, led the team of 50 researchers from Canada, the Netherlands, South Korea and Australia, which spent four years analyzing and cataloguing the day-by-day process that occurs in stem cell reprogramming.

The work builds on the 2006-2007 papers by Shinya Yamanaka, who showed that adult skin cells could be turned into embryonic-like, or pluripotent, stem cells through genetic manipulation, a discovery that garnered the Japanese scientist the Nobel Prize in 2012.

Nagy likened the roughly 21-day process to complete that transformation to a black box, so called because scientists did not know what went on within the cells as they morphed from one cell type into the other.

It was just like a black box, Nagy said Wednesday, following a briefing at the hospital. You start with a skin cell, you arrive at a stem cell but we had no idea what was happening inside the cell.

Nagys team set about cataloguing the changes as they occurred by removing cells from culture dishes at set points during the three-week period, then analyzing such cellular material as DNA and proteins present at that moment.

The result is a database that will be available to scientists around the world, which the team hopes will spur new research to advance the field of stem cell-based regenerative medicine.

Co-author Ian Rogers, a scientist in Nagys lab, said the database will allow researchers to identify various properties of the developing stem cells, which could mean improving their ability to treat or cure disease.

Go here to read the rest:
Researchers show how stem cells can be reprogrammed

The Latest in Stem Cell Therapy
Dr. MIchael Belich of integrative Medical Clinics talks about the latest therapies using Stem Cells.

By: Integrative Medical Clinics

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The Latest in Stem Cell Therapy - Video

Beverly Hills, CA (PRWEB) December 11, 2014

R3 Stem Cell is proud to welcome Dr. George Graf as a Featured Regenerative Medicine Doctor in the Los Angeles and Beverly Hills area. Dr. Graf is a first rate pain management doctor, who offers several types of stem cell procedures and platelet rich plasma therapy for all types of spinal conditions such as neck and back pain, arthritis, disc degeneration and more. Those interested should call (844) GET-STEM for more information and scheduling.

R3 Stem Cell is a nationwide provider of regenerative medicine products and education for both doctors and patients. The company only works with the top doctors and practices in the field of stem cell therapy. Dr. Graf is Double Board Certified and is very highly regarded by his peers and patients.

The conditions Dr. Graf treats include degenerative disc disease, spinal arthritis, scoliosis, neuropathy, failed back surgery syndrome and more. Regenerative medicine offers the potential to not only bring pain relief, but also help repair and regenerate damaged tissue.

Along with Dr. Graf being a regenerative medicine expert in the LA and Beverly Hills area, R3 also works with Dr. Raj. Dr. Raj is a Double Board Certified orthopedic specialist, who offers regenerative medicine procedures for rotator cuffs, hip and knee arthritis, sports injuries and much more. Between Dr. Graf and Dr. Raj, the whole body is covered for treatments.

All of the treatment options are outpatient and very low risk. Platelet Rich Plasma Therapy involves a person's own blood, which is immediately processed and injected into the problem area. Bone marrow derived stem cell therapy involves an aspiration from one's iliac crest, with the material being processed to concentrate stem cells and then inject into the problem area. Additionally, amniotic stem cells are offered, with the fluid being obtained from a consenting donor undergoing a scheduled C-section. The fluid is processed at an FDA regulated lab and no fetal tissue is involved whatsoever.

To date, several small studies have shown excellent benefit with regenerative medicine procedures. This has been extremely encouraging, and allowed stem cell therapy to exponentially increase in popularity nationwide. R3 Stem Cell is at the forefront in regenerative medicine, teaming with the top doctors such as Drs. Raj and Graf to help patients achieve pain relief and avoid surgery.

Call (844) GET-STEM today for more information and scheduling with a top stem cell doctor today.

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R3 Stem Cell Welcomes Beverly Hills Pain Specialists Dr. George Graf as a Featured Regenerative Medicine Doctor

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Newswise An innovative targeted payload immunotherapy that is being readied for a Phase 3 clinical trial (due to begin in the first half of 2015), received a favorable endorsement from Actinium Pharmaceuticals Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). The nod occurred after the members conducted its year-end meeting to review the progress of Iomab-B, a radiolabeled antibody being developed as a part of bone marrow transplant regimen initially in relapsed and refractory AML patients ages 55 and older.

The group met prior to the 56th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition in San Francisco and was Chaired by John Pagel, MD PhD of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Swedish Cancer Institute in Seattle and included senior members from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, MD Anderson Cancer Center and other leading institutions. The SABs goal is to further the development of Iomab-B as a myeloablative agent for older relapsed and refractory AML patients. If approved, Iomab-B should increase the number of patients eligible for curative bone marrow transplant (BMT, also known as HSCT) and improve clinical outcomes.

Richard Champlin MD, Chair of Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapy at MD Anderson Cancer Center, stated, We are impressed with progress in Iomab-B development and are looking forward to starting the trial. Iomab-B treatment would be an important new addition to our unfortunately very limited armamentarium for the most difficult-to-treat AML patients, and could potentially change the way refractory AML in older patients is treated.

As an international leader in the field of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), Dr. Champlin pioneered the use of donor transplants and lower doses of chemotherapy, reducing mortality rates along the way. Under his leadership, the MD Anderson HSCT program grew to become the largest in the world.

The Company updated the SAB on progress made in 2014, including refining and completing the Phase 3 protocol, progress in manufacturing centralization and scale-up, CRO engagement and the completion of other administrative items. Plans for 2015 were also reviewed, including assembly of the IND (Investigational New Drug) Application for submission to FDA early next year, clinical trial sites selection, preparation of ancillary materials and other items related to the upcoming pivotal trial. This study is planned as the final clinical trial prior to potential FDA clearance and approval.

Dr. Dragan Cicic, Chief Medical Officer of Actinium stated: "Actinium is committed to the ongoing development of Iomab-B with a multi-center Phase 3 pivotal trial due to begin in 2015. With the continued support and input from our world renowned scientific advisors, we are moving quickly to advance Iomab-B development. The SAB meeting further supported our belief that, if approved by FDA, Iomab-B could significantly change the treatment paradigm for elderly relapsed and refractory AML patients by providing a potentially curative pathway for majority of patients who today have a life expectancy of 5 or fewer months."

About AML Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is an aggressive cancer of the blood and bone marrow. It is characterized by an uncontrolled proliferation of immature blast cells in the bone marrow. The American Cancer Society estimates there will be approximately 18,860 new cases of AML and approximately 10,460 deaths from AML in the U.S. in 2014, most of them in adults. Patients over age 60 comprise the majority of those diagnosed with AML, with a median age of a patient diagnosed with AML being 67 years. Treatment approaches in this population are limited because a majority of these individuals are judged too frail and unable to tolerate standard induction chemotherapy or having forms of disease generally unresponsive to currently available drugs. Elderly, high risk patients ordinarily have a life expectancy of 5 or fewer months if treated with standard chemotherapy, and only about a third of them receive this treatment because of toxicity of and limited responses to the available therapy. The other two-thirds receive best supportive care, with 2 months survival, according to Oran and Weisdorf (Haematologica 2012; 1916-24).

About Iomab-B Iomab-B will be used in preparing patients for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), the fastest growing hospital procedure in the U.S. The Company established an agreement with the FDA that the path to a Biologics License Application (BLA) submission could include a single, pivotal Phase 3 clinical study if it is successful. The trial population in this two arm, randomized, controlled, multicenter trial will be refractory and relapsed Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) patients over the age of 55. The trial size was set at 150 patients with 75 patients per arm. The primary endpoint in the pivotal Phase 3 trial is durable complete remission, defined as a complete remission lasting at least 6 months and the secondary endpoint will be overall survival at one year. There are currently no effective treatments approved by the FDA for AML in this patient population and there is no defined standard of care. Iomab-B has completed several physician sponsored clinical trials examining its potential as a conditioning regimen prior to HSCT in various blood cancers including the Phase 1/2 study in relapsed and/or refractory AML patients. The results of these studies in over 300 patients have demonstrated the potential of Iomab-B to create a new treatment paradigm for bone marrow transplants by: expanding the pool to ineligible patients who do not have any viable treatment options currently; enabling a shorter and safer preparatory interval for HSCT; reducing post-transplant complications; and showing a clear survival benefit including curative potential.

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Experts in Leukemia and Bone Marrow Transplant Prepare for Upcoming Pivotal Trial of Innovative Targeted Payload ...

Tommy #39;s Experience with Stem Cell Therapy
Tommy discusses living with debilitating back pain and choosing stem cell therapy followed by hyperbaric oxygen therapy to improve his quality of life. Learn more at http://beyondpills.com/,...

By: PainSpecialistCenter

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Tommy's Experience with Stem Cell Therapy - Video

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MONDAY, Dec. 8, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Some professional football players are seeking unproven stem cell therapies to speed their recovery from injuries. But experts are concerned that they may be unaware of the potential risks, a new report shows.

Stem cell therapy has attracted the attention of elite athletes. A number of National Football League (NFL) players have highlighted their use of those therapies and their successful recoveries.

Twelve NFL players are known to have received unapproved stem cell treatments since 2009.

"The online data on NFL players and the clinics where they obtained treatment suggest that players may be unaware of the risks they are taking," report co-author Kirstin Matthews, a fellow in science and technology policy at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, said in a university news release.

"Players who are official spokespersons for these clinics could influence others to view the therapies as safe and effective despite the lack of scientific research to support these claims," she added.

Most of the players receive treatment in the United States, but several have gone to other countries for stem cell therapies that aren't available in the United States.

"With the rise of new and unproven stem cell treatments, the NFL faces a daunting task of trying to better understand and regulate the use of these therapies in order to protect the health of its players," Matthews said.

The NFL and other sports leagues may need to evaluate and possibly regulate stem cell therapies in order to ensure the safety of their players, the report authors suggested.

The paper appears in a special supplement to the journal Stem Cells and Development.

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Some NFL Players Use Unproven Stem Cell Therapies: Report

Software billionaire Paul Allen says he's committing $100 million to create a new institute in Seattle focusing on the mechanics of human cell biology.

The Allen Institute for Cell Science's first project, the Allen Cell Observatory, will focus on creating computational models for the kinds of induced pluripotent stem cells, or IPS cells, that have the ability to turn into heart muscle cells or the epithelial cells that form the inner linings of organs as well as skin.

Such cells hold promise for facilitating research into how cells become diseased, and potentially for growing replacement tissues.

"Cells are the fundamental units of life, with every disease we know of affecting particular types of cells," Allen said in a news release. "Scientists have learned a great deal about many of the 50 trillion cells in our bodies over the last decades, but creating a comprehensive, predictive model of the cell will require a different approach."

The Allen Cell Observatory's goal is to produce a dynamic, visual database and animated models of cell parts in action. Such models could shed light on the processes by which genetic information is translated into cellular functions, and reveal what goes wrong in a diseased cell. That, in turn, could help researchers predict which therapies will work best to counter diseases, or perhaps head off the disease in the first place.

Allen's latest philanthropic venture was unveiled Monday at the American Society for Cell Biology's annual meeting in Philadelphia. It follows up on plans that the co-founder of Microsoft has had in mind for years.

"It's the right time to start a big initiative in cell biology: understanding how cells work, understanding the detailed things that happen inside cells, which is behind cancer and Alzheimer's and all those things," Allen told NBC News last year.

Software billionaire Paul Allen's latest philanthropic project is a $100 million commitment to create the Allen Institute for Cell Science.

Paul Allen's net worth is estimated at more than $17 billion. Over the past 15 years, he has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to scientific projects including the Allen Telescope Array, the Allen Institute for Brain Science and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Last month, he said he would contribute $100 million to the global fight against the Ebola virus. (Allen also owns somewhat less-scientific ventures, such as the Seattle Seahawks and the Portland Trail Blazers.)

The cell science institute will be housed in the seven-story Allen Institute headquarters building that is currently under construction in Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood. The building is scheduled for completion in the fall of 2015, and will also house the Allen Brain Institute.

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Billionaire Paul Allen Pledges Millions for Cell Science

Seattle After tackling the brain, the Ebola epidemic, and a host of other issues, billionaire Paul Allen has a new target for scientific philanthropy: unraveling the inner workings of human cells.

On Monday, the Microsoft co-founder announced a $100 million, five-year grant to establish the Allen Institute for Cell Science in Seattle.

The goal is to better understand the teeming world inside cells, where thousands of organelles and millions of molecules interact in a dynamic ballet that researchers are just beginning to fathom.

We really dont have a good idea of how normal cells work, and what goes wrong in disease, said Rick Horwitz, the former University of Virginia professor who jumped at the chance to lead the new institute. People spend careers trying to understand little parts of the cell, but nobody has stitched it together because its too complicated for any individual to study.

The institute will take on the challenge by combining new technologies, like microscopes that can visualize living cells in three dimensions, with enough computational firepower to make sense of the flood of data that will result, Horwitz said.

Eventually, he and his team hope to develop computer models that mimic living cells. If they succeed, those models could also shed light on what goes haywire in cancer and other diseases and help develop cures, he said.

At a time when federal research budgets are shrinking, the announcement is one of the most exciting things to happen in Seattle science in a long time, said Dr. Chuck Murry, co-director of the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Washington. When the Allen folks get into something, they do it at a scale thats just mind-blowing.

The grant is one of Allens largest, on par with the $100 million he committed earlier this year to fight Ebola in West Africa, and a $100 million grant in 2003 to establish the Seattle-based Allen Institute for Brain Science. He has since plowed an additional $300 million into the brain institute.

Allen, who joined his old partner Bill Gates in pledging to donate the bulk of his wealth, has stepped up his philanthropic efforts in recent years. Its a good bet he will continue investing in the cell institute as long as it measures up, said Allan Jones, who leads the Allen Institute for Brain Science and helped organize its new sister institute.

We need to knuckle down and show that we can deliver something very powerful, Jones said.

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Microsoft Co-Founder Establishes Cell Institute with $100 Million Grant

Future of Care: The Future of Stem Cell Therapy Highlights
A few highlights from our October 29, 2014 Future of Care: Future of Stem Cell Therapy event featuring UC San Diego Health System CEO Paul Viviano, Director of Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center...

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Future of Care: The Future of Stem Cell Therapy Highlights - Video