Embryonic stem cell research typically begins with cloning. Scientists insert the genetic material from an adult human cell into a human egg that's been emptied of its own DNA. The cloned cell is then nurtured in the lab for several days, until it grows into a blastocyst, a microscopic clump of cells that could theoretically develop into a fetus if attached to a uterine wall.

As he reread the article, he noticed this rather peculiar correction ...

Mesenchymal stem cells are a well-characterized population of adult stem cells, found in the bone marrow, which can form a variety of cell in the laboratory, including fat cells, cartilage, bone, tendon and ligaments, muscles cells, skin cells and even nerve cells. Mesenchymal stem cells have been studied in great detail and scientists have advanced knowledge about how to grow these cells in culture. Unlike most other human adult stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells can be obtained in quantities appropriate for clinical applications. In the study reported on here, the researchers used fat tissue as the source for mesenchymal stem cell - derived "suicide genes" to attack metastatic tumor cells, a novel way to attack small tumor metastases that evade current detection techniques and treatments:

... "These fat-derived stem cells could be exploited for personalized cell-based therapeutics," said the study's lead investigator, ...

... Mesenchymal stem cells help repair damaged tissue and organs by renewing injured cells. They are also found in the mass of normal cells that mix with cancer cells to make up a solid tumor. Researchers believe mesenchymal stem cells "see" a tumor as a damaged organ and migrate to it, and so might be utilized as a "vehicle" for treatment that can find both primary tumors and small metastases. These stem cells also have some plasticity, which means they can be converted by the micro environment of a given tissue into specialized cells ...

... After extracting the stem cells from human fat tissue the researchers worked to find a less toxic way to treat colon cancer than the standard-of-care chemotherapy agent, 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), which can produce toxic side effects in normal cells. They expanded the number of mesenchymal stem cells in the laboratory and then used a retrovirus vector to insert the gene cytosine deaminase into the cell. This gene can convert a less toxic drug, 5-fluorocytosine (5-FC), to 5-FU inside the stem cells, and the chemotherapy can then seep out into the tumor, producing a lethal by-stander effect.

In nude mice -- animals with an inhibited immune system -- engrafted with human colon cancer, the researchers first injected the engineered mesenchymal stem cells, then 5-FC. They found tumor growth was inhibited by up to 68.5 percent in the animals, and none of the mice exhibited any signs of toxic side effects.

However, none of the animals remained tumor-free. "The procedure was quite effective even though we applied the stem cells just once. Obviously, repeated treatment will increase the efficacy, as would using this strategy in combination with other treatments," Altaner said.

Related readings:
Adult Stem Cells
Mesenchymal Stem Cells: Isolation and Therapeutics
Stem Cells, Fat Tissue as Routes to Cell-Based Therapy
Stem Cell Review

Professor Harald Arnesen and colleagues from the Ullev?University Hospital, Oslo, Norway looked at studies published to date on the relatively new technique of using of autologous (derived or transferred from the same individual's body) stem cells derived from bone marrow cells to strengthen cardiac function. The authors refer to a trial done in 2002 in which the cells were administered into the heart with encouraging results. After reviewing the studies,
Professor Arnesen has called for a moratorium on the use of the stem cells to prevent heart attacks because he believes the design of the study that resulted in some apparently successful trials is flawed. Apparently, the outcome of the study that resulted in a conclusion that the treatment group showed improvement when compared with the control group could be explained by the control group doing particularly badly, with a six percent mortality:

"It is astonishing that it is driven by a very poor outcome in a placebo group. In the present setting this figure is unusually high, as is the incidence of reinfarctions also of 6 per cent reported in the placebo group in the Frankfurt study."

The team approached the company that made the substance that was injected into the heart as a control, instead of the stem cells. Prof Arnesen said: "We were really astonished to learn from the producer in Maryland, US, that this medium was never intended or accepted for use in humans at all."

"We are warning doctors about the dangers of introducing these protocols to thousands of new patients in large studies," he said. "We need more research."

Related:
Injecting Autologous Cells Could Relieve Urinary Incontinence
Clinical Trial Suggests Bone Marrow Stem Cells Are Useful for Spinal Cord Injury; PrimeCell Therapeutics Provided Pre-Clinical Study

Columbia University Medical Center said the tissue could be used for facial reconstruction following disfiguring injuries from war, cancer surgery or accidents.

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The findings were announced in the June 2007 medical journal Cell Proliferation in a paper titled "the first demonstration that human umbilical cord blood-derived stem cells can be engineered" to synthesize insulin.

Here's the amazing thing: for years we've been told by embryonic stem cell proponents that cures for diabetes are being prevented because the government does not fund their embryo destroying research. However, during this same perioed of time scientists have been developing potential cures, with tangible results, that actually bay do what ESC proponents dream.

Here's their press statement:

In a fundamental discovery that someday may help cure type 1 diabetes by allowing people to grow their own insulin-producing cells for a damaged or defective pancreas, medical researchers here have reported that they have engineered adult stem cells derived from human umbilical cord blood to produce insulin.

The researchers announced their laboratory finding, which caps nearly four years of research, in the June 2007 issue of the medical journal Cell Proliferation, posted online this week. Their paper calls it "the first demonstration that human umbilical cord blood-derived stem cells can be engineered" to synthesize insulin

"This discovery tells us that we have the potential to produce insulin from adult stem cells to help people with diabetes," said Dr. Randall J. Urban, senior author of the paper, professor and chair of internal medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and director of UTMB's Nelda C. and Lutcher H. J. Stark Diabetes Center. Stressing that the reported discovery is extremely basic research, Urban cautioned: "It doesn't prove that we're going to be able to do this in people -- it's just the first step up the rung of the ladder."

The lead author of the paper, UTMB professor of internal medicine/endocrinology Larry Denner, said that by working with adult stem cells rather than embryonic stem cells, doctors practicing so-called regenerative medicine eventually might be able to extract stem cells from an individual's blood, then grow them in the laboratory to large numbers and tweak them so that they are directed to create a needed organ. In this way, he said, physicians might avoid the usual pitfall involved in transplanting cells or organs from other people -- organ rejection, which requires organ recipients to take immune-suppressing drugs for the rest of their lives.

Huge numbers of stem cells are thought to be required to create new organs. Researchers might remove thousands of donor cells from an individual and grow them in the laboratory into billions of cells, Denner explained. Then, for a person with type 1 diabetes, researchers might engineer these cells to become islets of Langerhans, the cellular masses that produce the hormone insulin, which allows the body to utilize sugar, synthesize proteins and store neutral fats, or lipids. "But we're a long way from that," Denner warned.

Denner said this research, which reflects a fruitful collaboration with co-authors Drs. Colin McGuckin and Nico Forraz at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne in the United Kingdom, used human umbilical cord blood because it is an especially rich source of fresh adult stem cells and is easily available from donors undergoing Caesarian section deliveries in UTMB hospitals. "However," he added, "embryonic stem cell research was absolutely necessary to teach us how to do this."

Embryonic stem cells have been engineered to produce cardiac, neural, blood, lung and liver progenitor cells that perform many of the functions needed to help replace cells and tissues injured by many diseases, the paper notes. Among the insights into cell and tissue engineering gained from work with embryonic stem cells, it adds, are those "relevant to the engineering of functional equivalents of pancreatic, islet-like, glucose-responsive, insulin-producing cells to treat diabetes."

The researchers said they tested adult stem cells in the laboratory to ensure that they were predisposed to divide. Then they used a previously successful method in which complex signals produced by the embryonic mouse pancreas were used to direct adult stem cells to begin developing, or "differentiating," into islet-like cells.

As they grew these adult stem cells in the laboratory, the researchers conducted other tests in which the cells to be engineered showed evidence of a characteristic, or marker, known as SSEA-4 that was previously thought to exist only in embryonic cells. They also found that, just as embryonic cells have been shown to do, these adult stem cells produced both C-peptide, a part of the insulin precursor protein, and insulin itself. Confirming the presence of the C-peptide was especially crucial, the researchers suggested, because although insulin is often found in the growth media with which the cells are nurtured and is often taken up by such cells, the presence of the C-peptide proves that at least some of the insulin was produced, or synthesized, by the engineered cells.

IT could be the answer to the prayers of millions of bald men. Scientists have coaxed stem cells into growing hair for the first time.

Within a decade, advances in stem-cell science could help them to regrow their own hair where it has been lost.

The breakthrough could also lead to new treatments for other conditions, such as alopecia, in which hair is lost in patches.

Writing in the journal Nature, American scientists described how they had shown that adult mammals were able to grow new hair follicles.

It had been thought that follicles, the tiny structures responsible for hair growth, were always formed before birth, with their gradual death leading to baldness.

Disgraced South Korean cloning expert Hwang Woo-Suk has for the first time admitted playing a key role in fabricating stem cell research, Yonhap news agency has said.

Hwang, under questioning for a fifth day by prosecutors, admitted telling a researcher working for him to fake key research that won him international acclaim in 2005, the agency said.

"Hwang was admitting that he directed Kwon Dae-kee, a senior researcher at his laboratory, to manipulate samples for DNA testing of stem cell lines numbers 4-11 in connection with Hwang's 2005 paper," the agency quoted an unidentified prosecution official as saying.

Prosecutors declined to comment on the report.

Hwang, 52, claimed in the landmark paper last year that he had created 11 patient-specific stem cells through cloning. But a panel of experts concluded last month that the claims were bogus.

The panel at Seoul National University also concluded that a 2004 paper by Hwang, in which he claimed to have produced a stem cell from a cloned human embryo, was also fabricated.

According to prosecutors, Hwang still insists that the data for the 2004 paper is genuine.

Prosecutors called Hwang for questioning on Thursday concerning his alleged misuse of millions of dollars in funds. They say the professor made donations to politicians and failed to account for 6.2 billion won (6.4 million dollars) in research funding.

Stem cells are master cells that have the potential to develop into any organ of the body. Scientists believe they could be used to fight a range of illnesses including cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer's disease.

British scientists will launch a study of the effectiveness of adult stem cells to treat heart disease. Various techniques of obtaining the cells will be tried including extraction from bone marrow and the use of growth factor drugs to stimulate their production in the blood.

The research was instigated by Ian Rosenberg, a man who traveled to Germany to undergo stem cell treatment for his heart condition. Rosenberg’s treatment was so successful that he set up a charitable foundation, the Heart Cells Foundation, to study the use of adult stem cells for heart disease.

After the first treatment, I started to get better immediately. They take injections from the bone marrow in my hipbone. When they have enough cells they take it to a lab for "witchcraft," as I call it. I don't really know what they do there but two hours later I have a treatment that is a bit like an angiogram. Instead of using a stent, though, they inject the cells into the arteries in my heart.

Basically, the heart regrows the dead tissue. Even with so much scarring, my heart is pretty good now. I can go cruising, travel to America where I spend about six months of the year and walk a lot further than previously. I still can't play 18 holes of golf; I do nine instead now.

Cardiologists who have performed the procedure in Europe, South America and Japan using adult human stem cells have reported Lazarus-like improvements in their patients, some of whom have even returned from near-permanent hospitalization to their previous, normal lives. In the last year the therapy has caught on in the United States, too, with similar early results. The Food and Drug Administration, at first wary, has started approving more trials (mostly using stem cells from patients' own bodies rather than controversial embryonic stem cells). In the next few years several hundred American patients who have run out of conventional options will enroll, their hopes renewed.

Unlike embryonic stem cells which require the destruction of human life, the doctors extracted the stem cells from the patients' blood and then, in turn, injected the cells into blood vessels connected to the liver.

Within two months, the liver function and general health of three of the five patients improved significantly, according to a report in New Scientist magazine. The two patients who did not respond showed no ill-effects from the treatment.

Researchers said the stem cells appeared to home in on damaged areas of the liver and make repairs, although the process involved is not yet fully understood.

The study was led by Dr. Nagy Habib, an Imperal College London surgeon.

Habib hopes to conduct a follow-up trial on 18 more liver patients, the Scotsman reported Wednesday.

Within two weeks, treated animals were about 20 percent less likely to favor the unaffected side of their bodies and experienced about a 25 percent improvement in balance, compared to untreated controls, Medical College of Georgia researchers say.

Their findings are being presented during the 34th annual meeting of the Child Neurology Society Sept. 28-Oct. 1 in Los Angeles.

“We found that when these cells, provided by Athersys, Inc., were injected directly into the brain, it significantly improves the outcome in the animals,” says Dr. James E. Carroll, chief of the MCG Section of Pediatric Neurology and the study’s principal investigator.

Athersys, Inc., a Cleveland-based biopharmaceutical company pursuing cell therapy programs in cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancer and other diseases, funded the research in which about 200,000 cells were injected directly into the brain injury site.

The adult stem cells, called multipotent progenitor cells because of their ability to make different types of tissue, were taken from the bone marrow of rats and expanded by Athersys for dosing in the injury model, Dr. Carroll says.

Seven days after injury, stem cells were injected directly into the brains of 22 animal models through a tiny hole in the skull. As with human transplant recipients, the animals were placed on immunosuppressive therapy to avoid rejection, although Athersys’ experience in multiple animal models for human disease has shown donor-recipient matches and immunosuppression are not required.

Behavioral tests seven days after transplant showed a trend toward recovery and significant recovery by day 14. About 1 percent to 2 percent of the transplanted cells actually survived, apparently replacing some cells destroyed by the original injury, while others helped injured cells recover.

“Recovery might be even more important in baby brains than forming new cells,” Dr. Cesario V. Borlongan, neuroscientist at MCG and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Augusta, says of newborn brains that recover more readily than adult brains. Dr. Borlongan, a co-author on the abstract, is exploring stem cell therapy’s potential for aiding stroke recovery, including the use of clinical-grade human adult cells provided by Athersys in a stroke animal model. About 80 percent of strokes are caused by clots that cause ischemic brain injury similar to that of cerebral palsy.

The MCG researchers have evidence that the healing benefit of stem cells comes from nourishing factors they secrete. The cells seem attracted by chemokines, growth factors that rally to an injury site, Dr. Carroll says. Next steps include looking at longer-term recovery and at whether surviving stem cells actually function as brain cells, networking with other cells by forming points of communication called synapses.

Perhaps most importantly, they also will look at whether stem cells produce similar results when they are given intravenously rather than injected directly into the injury site, Dr. Carroll says. “If the ideal way of doing it scientifically doesn’t work, why move on from here?” he says. “Now that we know it does work, we are going to look at different methods of injection to try and find the one that is the easiest. We think the chemokines, at least in part, attract the cells, so we hope it will work even when given through the bloodstream.”

He notes that the therapy likely will need to be done soon after injury. Whether this therapy could help the some 500,000 people in the United States living with cerebral palsy still must be explored, he says.

He and Dr. Borlongan note much work needs doing before their findings might move to clinical trials. But they are optimistic that the availability of clinical-grade cells would expedite such a move.

“We hope this will eventually be something that can be used in the neonatal intensive care unit in babies with severe asphyxial brain injuries,” Dr. Carroll says of cerebral palsy patients. He and other pediatric neurologists and neonatologists already have begun to discuss such possibilities.

“These results suggest another promising avenue for stem cell therapy, this time to help newborn babies recover from a potentially devastating injury of birth for which there currently is no treatment,” says Dr. Gil Van Bokkelen, chairman and chief executive officer of Athersys.

Ischemic brain injury accounts for about 10 percent of cerebral palsy, broadly defined as brain injury that occurs before or during birth, and about 80 percent of strokes. For every 1,000 babies born, one or two have cerebral palsy, with consequences ranging from undetectable to major physical and mental impairment. Currently there is no treatment to repair or reduce the damage of cerebral palsy; tPA was approved in 1996 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as the first stroke treatment to reduce the damage of ischemic injuries.

Within two weeks, treated animals were about 20 percent less likely to favor the unaffected side of their bodies and experienced about a 25 percent improvement in balance, compared to untreated controls, Medical College of Georgia researchers say.

"Our research demonstrates the potential for using human adipose-derived stem cells in treating patients with degenerative disc disease," stated Christopher J. Calhoun, Chief Executive Officer for Cytori Therapeutics. "We are encouraged by these early findings and have initiated preclinical animal studies to further evaluate the effect of these cells, in vivo, on injured discs."

In a poster presentation at the Conference, scientists from the Skeletal Tissue Engineering Group Amsterdam (STEGA) and Cytori Therapeutics demonstrated that an NP-phenotype was observed when adipose stem cells were grown in conditions that can be adapted to clinical practice. The human adipose stem cells and NP cells were co-cultured for 14 days. RNA expression analysis found the presence of genes which are markers of mature NP cells. One of the genes in particular forms a protein that is critical to the function of the nucleus pulposus.

"People literally are dying on the transplant list who could be cured with this," said Dr. Brian Mason, the St. John obstetrician/gynecologist who approached the Storm family of Sterling Heights 10 minutes before the birth to ask them to contribute Peter's cord blood to a public registry.

Now, major changes are under way, in Michigan and nationally, that will make cord blood donations to public banks for potential transplant use much more likely.

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