An adult stem cell center established by the Kansas Legislature in 2013 is almost ready for its first clinical trial. Buddhadeb Dawn, executive director of the Midwest Stem Cell Therapy Center, told legislators Tuesday that the trial will focus on treating graft-versus-host disease and will begin after final approvals from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Our goal was to do this (trial) in January, but we got delayed because of different things, Dawn said during a hearing of the House Health and Human Services Committee. So we are now hoping to start it perhaps in summer. Based at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, the stem cell center has analyzed trials done elsewhere and hosted a clinical trial sponsored by a biotech company that uses modified stem cells from bone marrow to treat stroke. But the graft-versus-host disease trial would be the first homegrown one. Download the Midwest Stem Cell Therapy Center annual update to legislators. Graft-versus-host disease is a potential complication when a patient receives a transplant of tissue, like an organ or bone marrow, from another person. The disease occurs when transplanted tissue fights the patients natural immune system, potentially damaging the liver, skin … Continue reading →

March 8, 2017 Credit: University of Tsukuba University of Tsukuba-led researchers explored the function of the reprogramming factor KLF4 in production of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). KLF4 was shown to bind upstream of the Tcl1 target gene, which controls a metabolic change in energy generation during the acquisition of cellular pluripotency. This helps explain how cells turn back the developmental clock from adult to stem cell, and could be harnessed to improve efficiency or limit genetic damage during iPSC generation. A little over 10 years ago, the first reprogramming of adult cells into undifferentiated stem cells was achieved. These induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have the ability to become almost any cell type and can divide indefinitely, so share many features with embryonic stem cells. Such characteristics enable iPSCs to be used in several applications of regenerative medicine, particularly because they can be derived from an individual's own cells so tissue rejection problems are not encountered. They can also be programmed to develop into rare or inaccessible cell types, used to screen novel drugs, and studied to understand the cellular basis of disease or reprogramming. However, while the genetic factors responsible for reprogramming are well known, the mechanisms underlying … Continue reading →