Etiqueta: stem cell research
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Adult Stem Cell Therapy Successfully Treats Spinal Cord Injury
An interesting spinal cord injury study was published last week. The Turkish researchers tested two types of stem cells on spinal cord injured mice. The two cell types were native bone marrow cells and cultured repair stem cells called Mesenchymal stem cells. Native bone marrow cells contain bone marrow forming stem cells as well as…
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Medistem Begins Phase II Clinical Trial for Heart Failure
Medistem Inc announced today treatment of 3 heart failure patients in the Non-Revascularizable IschEmic Cardiomyopathy treated with Retrograde COronary Sinus Venous DElivery of Cell TheRapy (RECOVER-ERC) trial. The trial is aimed at assessing safety and efficacy of the company’s Endometrial Regenerative Cell (ERC) stem cell product in 60 heart failure patients who have no available…
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Mechanism by Which Injured Tissue “Tells” Stem Cells to Leave Bone Marrow
Urao et al. Stem Cells. 2012 Jan 30. In addition to the established role of bone marrow derived stem cells in producing blood cells, an interesting aspect of these stem cells is to assist/accelerate tissue healing after injury. Perhaps the most studied example of this is in the situation of myocardial infarction (heart attack), in…
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Mimicking Human Diseases in Cells: iPS Cells Used to Create Model of Extremely Rare Condition Dyskeratosis Congenita
Batista et al. Nature. Key to scientific progress is the ability to test new treatments in animals that represent the human disease of interest or in cells in the laboratory that represent the human disease. The better these test systems represent the human disease, the more likely it is that approaches successful in the test…
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Killing of the iPS Field?
Zhao et al. Nature. Embryonic stem cells are associated with numerous ethical dilemmas. The creation of equivalents of ES cells through retrodifferentiation led to a new area of research that does not require destruction of life. Specifically, it was discovered that any adult cell can be transfected with several genes, which results in the cell…
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Where Cord Matrix Stem Cells Go After Injection
Maurya et al. World J Stem Cells. 2011 Apr 26;3(4):34-42. Stem cell migration is a very relevant issue when discussing the systemic administration of stem cells as therapeutics. There is a widely held belief that intravenous administration of stem cells results in accumulation into the lungs and liver. While studies have demonstrated that stem cells…
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Bone Marrow Stem Cells Protect Lungs from Herbicide Injury
Yang et al. Clin Toxicol (Phila). 2011 Apr;49(4):298-302. Paraquat is a herbicide that is linked to development of Parkinsons. It also is a toxin to lung cells and is used as a model of inducing lung injury in rats. In the current study the investigators wanted to see if administration of bone marrow mesenchymal stem…
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UW Researchers Make Stem Cell Breakthrough
Seung Park, Badger Herald Researchers at the University of Wisconsin have made a breakthrough in stem cell research. Igor Slukvin headed the team that has successfully reprogrammed bone marrow cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). “This is important because blood banks have huge amounts of samples of bone marrow,” he said. “You can select…
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New Stem Cells Found in Ovary
Parte et al. Stem Cells Dev. Very small embryonic like cells (VSEL) are a type of stem cell that appears to be found in bone marrow and other tissues of the body, presumably as a remnant of embryonic or embryonic-like cells left over from development. In a recent paper it was demonstrated that these cells…
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Limb Transplants Facilitated by Bone Marrow Stem Cells
Kuo et al. Plast Reconstr Surg. 2011 Feb;127(2):569-79. Composite tissue allografts are usually transplants of anatomical structures that contain multiple types of tissues. We have seen numerous high-profile examples of human composite tissue allografts such as whole hands, faces, and arms. While advancement of surgical techniques have made such transplants a reality, immunologically-mediated rejection remains…