Category Archives: Stem Cell Transplant

STORY HIGHLIGHTS (CNN) -- A ground-breaking cell transplant has allowed a paralyzed man to walk again, researchers announced Tuesday. Polish man Darek Fidyka, 38, had been left paralyzed from the chest down after a 2010 knife attack caused an 8mm gap in his spinal cord. An initial 13 months of rehabilitation followed by an additional 8-month program before the experimental treatment had not produced an improvement in his condition, researchers said. But two years after the 2012 cell transplant he can walk with the aid of a Zimmer frame, also known as a walker. Scientists at University College London (UCL) developed the treatment, which saw olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) from the nose transplanted to Fidyka's spinal cord. OECs are what allow the sense of smell to return when nerve cells in the nose are damaged. Surgeons at Wroclaw University in Poland led by Dr Pawel Tabakow injected the OECs above and below Fidyka's spinal cord gap, then used nerve tissue taken from his ankle to act as a bridge for spinal nerves to grow across, UCL said. The underlying idea is 'can we get something out of an area where repair works and transfer it into an area where repair … Continue reading →

A ground-breaking cell transplant has allowed a paralyzed man to walk again, researchers announced Tuesday. Polish man Darek Fidyka, 38, had been left paralyzed from the chest down after a 2010 knife attack caused an 8mm gap in his spinal cord. An initial 13 months of rehabilitation followed by an additional 8-month program before the experimental treatment had not produced an improvement in his condition, researchers said. But two years after the 2012 cell transplant he can walk with the aid of a Zimmer frame, also known as a walker. Scientists at University College London (UCL) developed the treatment, which saw olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) from the nose transplanted to Fidyka's spinal cord. OECs are what allow the sense of smell to return when nerve cells in the nose are damaged. Surgeons at Wroclaw University in Poland led by Dr Pawel Tabakow injected the OECs above and below Fidyka's spinal cord gap, then used nerve tissue taken from his ankle to act as a bridge for spinal nerves to grow across, UCL said. Three months after the surgery, Fidyka's thigh muscle began to grow and three months after that he started to walk with leg braces and the help of … Continue reading →

TRI-STATE NEWS HEADLINES From our newsroom to your inbox weekday mornings at 9AM. NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) The longtime best friend of a former pharmaceutical millionaire accused of murdering her autistic son told jurors Wednesday that the woman talked about killing herself and her child years before she poisoned the boy to death. Rita Cristman tesified that Gigi Jordan told her if a stem cell transplant she was setting up to cure Jude Mirraof his autism did not work, she was going to end it all for both of them, WCBS 880s Irene Cornell reported. The witness also described a telephone conversation in 2006 in which Jordan blamed Cristman for her misery because her friend told her to have a babyin the first place. Jordan is on trial, accused of killing 8-year-old Jude with a mixture of prescription drugs in February 2010 at the Peninsula Hotel in Midtown. Jordan admitted on the witness stand earlier this month that she gave her son a fatal dose of drugs. But she denied the scenario prosecutors have painted: that she climbed on top of the comatose boy, forcibly opened his mouth and shoved a lethal dose of prescription medication down his throat with a … Continue reading →

Why Diwali is so important for me- Stem cell transplant story. Diwali, festival of lights. Diwali is one of the happiest of holidays in India,with significant preparations. I love diwali but Last year during this time of... By: Ruchi Gokhale … Continue reading →

A new research has identified that 'megakaryocytes' or 'megacells' are responsible for playing a critical role in adult stem cell transplant. Hematopoietic stem cells differentiate to generate megakaryocytes in bone marrow and the study has shown that the hematopoietic stem cells (the parent cells) could be directly controlled by their own progeny (megakaryocytes). The results had suggested that megakaryocytes might be used clinically to facilitate adult stem cell regeneration and to expand cultured cells for adult stem cell transplants. Researchers at Stowers Institute for Medical Research had discovered that megakaryocytes had directly regulated the function of murine hematopoietic stem cellsadult stem cells that had formed the blood and immune cells and that had constantly renewed the body's blood supply. These cells could also develop into all types of blood cells, including white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets. Because of their remarkable ability to renew themselves and differentiate into other cells, hematopoietic stems cells have been used to treat many diseases and conditions. The transplantation of isolated human hematopoietic stem cells has been used in the treatment of anemia, immune deficiencies and other diseases, including cancer. The study was published in the journal Nature Medicine. (Posted on 20-10-2014) Post … Continue reading →

CTV Ottawa Published Tuesday, October 14, 2014 4:36PM EDT Last Updated Tuesday, October 14, 2014 7:25PM EDT Fourteen months ago, Mike Berry thought he had it all. He and his wife, Christine, has just welcomed their first child into the world. Now Berry is wondering how much time he has left with his young son, Troy. Starting about a year and a half ago, the 42-year-old Kingston native began noticing a shortness of breath. Eventually, he was diagnosed with systemic scleroderma. The rare auto-immune disease is causing his body to produce too much collagen, essentially scarring and eating away at his internal organs. Hardest hit are his lungs which have developed an equally-rare secondary disease. He has now lost almost 60% of his lung capacity and has trouble walking up a flight of stairs. It is life-threatening. People with symptoms of this severity can have a handful of years to live. In Mike Berry's case the onset has been particularly fast. "It's very aggressive and even surprising the doctors," he says. There is no cure. But there is hope. At Northwestern University in Chicago, Dr. Richard Burt has pioneered a stem cell therapy called Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant (HSCT). The … Continue reading →

"In Transit" by D'Quan Brown In 2012, 10 yr old D'Quan Brown was diagnosed with leukemia and admitted for immediate care at a South Florida children's hospital. 6 days later, he suffered a spinal hematoma that subsequently... By: DeQuido Brown … Continue reading →

Suzanne Kreiter/Boston Globe/Getty A research team led by Douglas Melton (left) has made insulin-secreting cells using human stem cells. Each year, surgeon Jose Oberholzer frees a few people with type1 diabetes from daily insulin injections by giving them a transplant of the insulin-secreting -cells that the disease attacks. But it is a frustrating process. Harvested from a cadavers pancreas, the -cells are in short supply and vary in quality. And the patients must take drugs to suppress their immune response to the foreign cells, which can in turn cause kidney failure. On 9October, stem-cell researcher Douglas Melton of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his colleagues reported an advance that has the potential to overcome Oberholzers frustrations and allow many more people with type1 diabetes to receive transplants. Melton and his team have achieved a long-term goal of stem-cell science: they have created mature -cells using human stem cells that can be grown from a potentially unlimited supply, and that behave like the real thing (F.W.Pagliuca etal. Cell 159, 428439; 2014). The next challenge is to work out how to shield these -cells from the bodys immune response. Researchers had previously created immature -cells from stem cells and transplanted them … Continue reading →

Injecting stem cells into the eyes of people who are blind may work as a way to restore their vision, a small new study suggests. In the study, researchers coaxed stem cells into developing into cells called retinal pigment epithelium cells, which the scientists transplanted into one eye of each of 18 patients. After the transplants, the researchers tested the patients' eyesight. Visual acuity improved in 10 of the patients' eyes, remained about the same in another seven patients and got worse in one patient's eye. The participants experienced no improvement in their untreated eyes. The results show that human embryonic stem cells can slow or reverse the vision loss in people with degenerative eye diseases, the researchers said. In addition, the stem cells caused no medical problems for the patients up to three years after transplant, according to the study published in the journal The Lancet. Stem cells, with their ability to develop into many different types of tissue, have long been touted for their promise in regenerative medicine, yet treatments have been slow to develop. The new findings"mark an exciting step towards using [human embryonic] stem cells as a safe source of cells for the treatment of various … Continue reading →

Boston, MA (PRWEB) October 14, 2014 The most important function of tissue stem cells is the most ignored function of tissue stem cells. This seemingly paradoxical revelation is the special province of the ASCTC, upon which Director James L. Sherley, M.D., Ph.D. is staking the companys future success. A newly released video of a presentation given by Sherley at the recent 2014 BioPharm America Conference in Boston, provides an opportunity for the regenerative medicine community in particular, and the public in general, to learn directly from the source the scientific basis for this surprising statement. Director Sherley reveals that the most important function of adult tissue stem cells is their asymmetric self-renewal. Asymmetric self-renewal is the unique property of tissue stem cells to divide continuously to make large numbers of constituent body cells while keeping their own number constant and maintaining their own stem cell function. This tissue stem cell-specific function allows stem cells to continuously renew organs and tissues and to repair them when they are diseased or damaged. In the video, Director Sherley describes ASCTCs three main next generation technologies that motivate the companys current development goals. The first is patented biomarkers that identify tissue stem cells with … Continue reading →