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Stem Cells Heal Dog on Local News. Will Humans Ever Get Their Turn? (video)

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by Aaron Saenz on March 8th, 2010
dog stem cell therapy successful

Local news channels have started to pick up on the veterinary stem cell phenomenon. Could generate some interest in getting the same available to humans soon.

Chances are your dog has access to stem cell treatments more advanced than your own. A Fox News affiliate in Atlanta has picked up on a local story of a dog, named Behr, who could barely run a year ago, but who is now frolicking like a puppy. The secret to Behr’s success? He underwent stem cell therapy, effectively reversing the conditions of his hip dysplasia. Regular readers will recognize this therapy as one we discussed more than eight months ago. It is growing more common in veterinarian clinics across the US to treat horses and large dogs with joint problems using stem cells, often with miraculous results. Another local news channel, this one in New York, contacted me about a similar story set to air there. These treatments use the same autologous technique we covered before, the only difference is that now local news channels are picking up on the action. Hopefully that will lead to more people questioning why a medical treatment that has such a remarkable track record in animals has yet to be FDA approved for use in humans. Watch the Channel 5 Fox News segment below to see Behr’s joyful return to playing with his owner.

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Athersys Secures Stem Cell Patents and Stock Swells

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by Aaron Saenz on February 12th, 2010

athersys logoBiopharmaceutical company Athersys (NASDAQ: ATHX) received a major boost in its stock price on February 10th, following the announcement that it had received US and European patents related to its MultiStem technology. Guess there’s nothing investors like more than learning your company has dibs on stem cells. MultiStem is a product that is essentially non-embryonic multipotent stem cells derived from the bone marrow of select human donors. Athersys is able to take these donated stem cells, isolate them, grow them, and then process them so they can be used in patients. A single donor could provide enough MultiStem doses for hundreds of thousands if not millions of recipients! Just as impressive, no immunosuppression or donor matching is needed when using MultiStem. Athersys is hoping to make their product the stem cell equivalent of Type O blood and is working with Pfizer, Angiotech and others to develop specific treatments. Let’s hope Athersys’s bump in stock price is a good sign that safe and effective stem cell treatments are coming to the mainstream soon.

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Patient’s Own Stem Cells Used To Grow Facial Bones

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by keith kleiner on October 22nd, 2009

A 14 year old boy’s missing facial bones have been regrown with the help of his own stem cells.  The procedure, led by Jesse Taylor, MD, a surgeon and researcher at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, represents the culmination of years of work that first began on pigs.  The technology appears to be general enough that it may have the potential to grow almost any bone in the human body, possibly revolutionizing treatment for tens of millions of people across the world suffering from severe bone disorders or damage.  The procedure represents one of a growing slate of successes that are moving stem cells from pie in the sky dreams to real world therapies.  See the video at the end of this post.

cheek-bones-stem-cells

With his new stem cell derived cheek bones, Brad Guilkey no longer tries to hide his face with long hair

Lets try to explain the procedure as cleanly as possible:  These new stem cell derived bones are not grown 100% from the ground up with stem cells.  Instead donated bone is first molded into the precise shape of bone that the patient requires, serving as a scaffold for the stem cells to grow upon.  Holes are then drilled into this bone scaffold and mesenchymal stem cells taken from the patient’s abdominal fat along with a growth factor known as morphogenic protein-2 (BMP-2) are inserted into the holes.  BMP-2 is a critical protein within the body responsible for signaling mesenchymal stem cells to proliferate and differentiate into bone cells.  The bone scaffold filled with mesenchymal cells and BMP-2 is then wrapped in a thin membrane of tissue that naturally coats human bone surfaces called periosteum. The periosteum used in this surgery was taken from the patient’s thigh. Periosteum is important to the body’s normal production of BMP-2, and just as vital to providing a blood supply to nourish new bone formation.  This periosteum wrapped scaffold infused with mesenchymal cells and BMP-2 is surgically implanted into the patient and over time the stem cells grow over the scaffold to create real, healthy, functioning bone in the patient.

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Fat From Liposuction May Be Good Source for Stem Cells

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by Aaron Saenz on September 16th, 2009
Obese? I've just got more stem cells to love, baby!

Obese? I've just got more stem cells to love, baby!

If you’ve been hunting for useful stem cells, look no further than your butt. Work done at Stanford University’s School of Medicine in California, and recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy for Sciences, revealed that fatty cells sucked out during liposuction could be coaxed into becoming stems cells. These induced Pluripotent Stem cells (iPS) found in fat could be useful in new treatments for diseases and therapies for injuries. Typical iPS cells have to be processed from skin cells over a period of weeks. The new fat iPS cells could be ready much faster and more efficienctly. The world of stem cell research is about to be invaded by fab flab from the lab.

With fatty tissue being a plentiful resource, the availability of stem cells is likely to increase. Of course, more stem cells doesn’t guarantee more stem cell treatments, but it will hopefully make those treatments easier to perform once they are ready. We’ve seen how stem cell therapies have the potential to cure blindness, heart disease, spinal injuries, kidney disease, diabetes, and many other illnesses. There’s a certain poetic justice in iPS cells from fatty tissue, since many of these conditions arrive from or cause obesity in the first place.

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Should I Save My Child’s Cord Blood?

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by Aaron Saenz on September 10th, 2009

Will your child's umbilical cord be a missed opportunity?

Will your child's umbilical cord be a missed opportunity?

As if you didn’t have enough to worry about, now you’ve got to figure out if storing your child’s umbilical cord blood might just save his or her life. With the advent of amazing and clinically tested stem cell treatments, today’s expecting parents are faced with the real possibility that their child may one day require a stem cell transplant. Umbilical cords, with a host of hematopoietic (blood-developing) stem cells, may be puffy tubes filled with the equivalent of medical miracles. So, to store or not to store, that is the question. Let’s take a look at the benefits, costs, likely uses, and possible alternatives to freezing the umbilical cord blood of your baby. There’s a video about the collection method itself, after the break.

Here’s a short list of horrible illnesses that your child could develop and that might keep you awake at night: leukemia, lymphoma, aplastic anemia, severe sickle cell anemia, immune deficiencies, and heart disease. Each of these disasters are can be treated with hematopoietic stem cells. While you could get these cells from a bone marrow transplant, an umbilical cord allows a child to provide it’s own donation. So, if you chose to store your child’s cord blood, and he or she gets hit by one of the above disasters, you may be on your way to the ‘most cautious and loving parent award.’

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Stem Cell Treatments in Europe – Are They Real?

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by Aaron Saenz on September 8th, 2009

It’s hard to get a good grasp on the quality of stem cell treatments in the world. There are so many treatments centers which are frauds that picking out the one or two that my actually be practicing good medicine is difficult. The XCell Center based in Dusseldorf and Cologne, Germany seems like it just might be legitimate. Since August 2007 they claim to have treated more than 1600 patients, and to have obtained the first private license for stem cell treatments. If their claims are true, they would be one of the few places in the world where you can receive quality health care involving stem cells.

XCell Center's reported success rate with improving cerebral palsy symptoms is greater than 60%.

XCell Center's reported success rate with improving cerebral palsy symptoms is greater than 60%.

XCell does use an approach to stem cell treatments that has proven effective in Brazil for diabetes, and in the U.S…for horses and dogs. Autologous treatments (where adult stem cells are removed from the body, isolated, then re-inserted elsewhere in the body) have seen good results in major medical journals. By extracting adult stem cells from the bone marrow of the hip, XCell says that it can help cure a huge range of human degenerative diseases including: diabetes, stroke, MS, ALS, spinal injury, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, arthritis, heart damage, eye disease, neuropathy, incontinence, and autism. XCell’s success rate is supposedly 30/30/30. That is, roughly one third of patients will see no positive results, one third will see moderate results, and one third will see excellent results.

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Geron Explains Why First Embryonic Stem Cell Clinical Trial is Stalled

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by Aaron Saenz on September 2nd, 2009

Geron's treatment for spinal injury GRNOPC1 is based on embryonic stem cells and is stalled in its clinical trials.

Geron's treatment for spinal injury GRNOPC1 is based on embryonic stem cells and is stalled in its clinical trials.

As if waiting for eight years wasn’t bad enough, we could see another few months pass before the first clinical trials for embryonic stem cells get underway. Geron (Nasdaq: GERN) won FDA approval for these trials back in January. Mid-August saw announced delays, and Geron finally revealed why on August 27th: cysts. As we mentioned before, Geron is looking to create a therapy for spinal cord injuries, and their latest round of animal tests revealed a larger than expected occurrence of small cysts. The official press release points out that these cysts are microscopic, not spreading, and actually fairly common with spinal injuries. Geron is dedicated to working with the FDA to get the trials back on track as soon as possible.

Being the first embryonic stem cell research to get FDA approval for clinical trials means that all eyes are on Geron. This is what people have been dreading/hoping for: that humans will finally see the benefits of the much debated use of stem cells from frozen embryos. It’s the sort of work that Christopher Reeves advertised for and that many pressured George W. Bush to prevent.

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China: “We Don’t Use Executed Prisoners for Organs…Not Anymore”

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by Aaron Saenz on August 31st, 2009

The Chinese government has many strengths, but I don’t think that international PR is one of them. In a report released from the Chinese Health Ministry, and reported in their nationalized press last week, China announced it is working with the Red Cross to create a new nation wide system by which volunteers can donate their organs after death. Yay! [The entire world cheers and applauds China for its efforts] The report then goes on to mention that up to this point, about 65% of organ donors were executed prisoners. Boo! [Suddenly China doesn't have anyone to sit with at the lunch table]

No more harvesting criminals? China's gonna need more organs.

No more harvesting criminals? China's gonna need more organs.

Yes, China finally confirmed that a huge percentage of its organs were harvested under dubious conditions. Reportedly one organ in ten went to organ tourists, though the government cracked down on organ tourism and Internet organ brokers in time for the Beijing Olympics. Organ trafficking is still a big problem, as we mentioned when discussing Britain’s approach to private organ sales. China faces an enormous hurdle when moving into a public organ donation system. There are about 1 million people waiting for organs, but only about 130 registered donors. (Yes, those are the correct numbers) Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a great portion of the necessary organs could be generated artificially?

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Hungary Raids Illegal Stem Cell Treatment Center – Arrests Four

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by Aaron Saenz on August 5th, 2009

Cue up the theme to COPS, put on your muumuu, and get ready for another round of science behind bars. Four people were arrested in Hungary late last month on charges of “suspicion on the banned use of a human body.” In other words, they were arrested for the illegal use of embryonic stem cells in up to a hundred individual treatments. The story has made its way around through Reuters and several conservative news feeds. What’s the deal here? Are we seeing a new trend in criminalizing health care? Is this a wide range attack on stem cell treatments? Perhaps, but not in the most obvious way.

stem-cell-colony-mug-shotOne of the alleged criminals is a U.S. national, Yuliy Baltaytis (also given as Juliy B.) and all four were arrested for their roles in a small clinic in Budapest that offered stem cell treatments. Stem cell treatments are illegal and unlicensed in Hungary. So on one level this is just an arrest for unlicensed medical treatments. The same could happen if a pediatrician tried to perform neurosurgery. Working without the correct license is generally a crime no matter which country you’re in.

Of course, on another level, these arrests are indicative of a larger problem with stem cell treatments: demand is running ahead of government ability to regulate. “Stem cell” clinics are popping up all over Central Europe, South America, and Asia. Some are unlicensed, many don’t use stem cells at all, and most would likely have an extremely difficult time proving that their treatments really work. After all, the majority of stem cell use, embryonic or otherwise, is still in the clinical trial phase. Read More

Growing Mice From Stem Cells? The Real Story About The Stem Cell Breakthrough From Qi Zhou

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by keith kleiner on July 30th, 2009

Traditional media outlets have been tripping over each other this week with sensational titles such as “Chinese Scientists Reprogram Cells to Create Mice” to describe the work of Chinese stem cell researchers.  Indeed, the study by hot shot Chinese stem cell researcher Qi Zhou of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing is notable, but not for the reasons most headlines would make you believe.

mouse-stem-cellsFirst, lets set the record straight.  Chinese scientists did not create an entire functioning mouse simply by reprogramming some mouse skin cells.  What they did do was reprogram mouse skin cells back into their more versatile, pluripotent embryonic state and inject them into an already healthy early stage mouse embryo.  The embryo, now partly its original self, and partly augmented with the foreign cells that were injected, was able to continue to grow normally into a fully mature, reproductively viable mouse.  What is the point, and why do we care?

The first point of interest here is that the study joins a  growing mountain of studies that show that mouse and even human skin cells can be reprogrammed into pretty much anything.  In this particular study, skin cells from a mouse were essentially reprogrammed into embryonic stem cells.  These reprogrammed skin cells were injected into an early stage embryo and then multiplied and mutated into all of the many different types of cells and tissues required to make a mature mouse.  In the coming decades this type of research could unlock the ability to take your own skin cells and create any cell, tissue, or organ you need for your body without any fear of rejection by your immune system.  Immortality anyone?

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Why Your Dog Is Getting Better Stem Cell Treatment Than You

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by Aaron Saenz on June 25th, 2009

If you like controversy there’s nothing that will bring you more joy than yelling “stem cell research” in a mixed crowd and then sadistically sneaking out of the room. The debate over the use of the extremely potent little cells has led to massive regulation in all realms of stem cell transplants in the United States. That’s why stem cell research for diabetes has been centered in Brazil, and why your dog or horse can receive the newest stem cell treatments now, while you’re likely to have to wait years or decades.

C'mon girl, help me get a stem cell treatment!

C'mon girl, help me get a stem cell treatment!

What are these treatments promising? According to anecdotes, the results are amazing. Old dogs with bad hips frolic like puppies. Race horses with injuries come back to become world class winners. One such racehorse, Be A Bono, won 16 out of 24 starts, earned more than 1.3 million in prize money, and was the 2004 World Champion Quarterhorse. All after a stem cell treatment. The success stories with dogs are equally remarkable, if a little tinted by emotion; check out the video from Vet-Stem after the break.

Most animals that have been treated with stem cells suffer from joint ailments. Damage to cartilage, tendons, ligaments, or arthritic inflammation top the list. Stem cells are seen as a way to provide almost magical regenerative healing to combat these ailments. The process is actually pretty simple. Rather than embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells are used. These adult stem cells are harvested in a veterinary office from fat cells in the animal, and then sent to a lab. Processing separates out the stem cells from other cells, and a concentrated dose is sent back to the vet (The turn around time for processing is only a day). The adult cells are then injected into the animal in the area that needs regeneration.

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Stem Cells Used to Grow Hearts: Cool New Pics and Vid

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by Aaron Saenz on June 23rd, 2009

When you’re heart is broken, you’ll do anything to fix it. Even replace it with a pig heart. Scientists at the University of Minnesota have been working on stripping down hearts, removing much of the muscular and vascular tissue. What you get is a semi-translucent “decellularised” heart. Add some stem cells, and a new heart can be grown on this scaffold. A new heart that your body won’t reject, at least in theory. When Singularity Hub first brought you this story last year, researchers at UM were using the technique on rat hearts. Now, they’ve moved on to pig hearts and we’ve got a hold of some cool new pics and a short video from New Scientist. Check them out before and after the break.

At top, a rat's heart is decellularised until it becomes a scaffold. Stem cells from mice are then applied to the heart, and it is recellularised at bottom. Photo courtesy of University of Minnesota.

At top, a rat's heart is decellularised until it becomes a scaffold. Stem cells from mice are then applied to the heart, and it is recellularised at bottom. Photo courtesy of University of Minnesota.

It's alive! This rat heart is being pumped in an artificial structure, allowing stem cells to grow into a new version of the organ. Photo courtesy of the University of Minnesota

It's alive! This rat heart is being pumped in an artificial structure, allowing stem cells to grow into a new version of the organ. Photo courtesy of the University of Minnesota

The biggest problem is making sure that each heart grown is fully functioning and able to be transplanted. After being decellularised, each heart has to be recellularised by applying a coating of stem cells and having blood pumped through the heart scaffolding. Along with chemical signals from the scaffold cells, the blood allows the stem cells to specialize into the various needed tissues. Looking at the rat hearts in the pumping machine, it’s hard to believe that you are looking at a living, autonomous organ outside a body. Check out the video from New Scientist:

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