By Steven Reinberg HealthDay Reporter WEDNESDAY, Dec. 31, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Using stem cells derived from a patient's own bone marrow, researchers have repaired a fistula -- a potentially fatal tissue abnormality -- in the man's lower airway. "This is another interesting new therapeutic approach for stem cells," said lead researcher Dr. Francesco Petrella, deputy director of thoracic surgery at the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, Italy. The patient, a 42-year-old firefighter, developed the fistula after surgeons removed a lung as part of treatment for mesothelioma cancer. A fistula is abnormal tissue connecting an organ, blood vessel or intestine to another structure. In this case, the fistula developed between the lower airway and the tissue that surrounds the lungs. "Our clinical experience supports the idea that stem cells could be effectively used to close some tissue defects developing after very complex surgical procedures, thus restoring a functioning airway," Petrella said. A fistula that develops after chest surgery is serious and even deadly, Petrella said. Current treatments involve removing ribs and taking medications for months or years, he explained. "Less invasive approaches like endoscopic glue injections have only poor results, so our proposed techniques could improve quality of life … Continue reading →

Why are some types of cancer so much more common than others? Sometimes its due to faulty genes inherited from ones parents and sometimes to behaviors like smoking a pack of cigarettes every day. But in most cases, it comes down to something else stem cells. This is the intriguing argument made by a pair of researchers from Johns Hopkins University. In a study published Friday in the journal Science, they found a very high correlation between the differences in risk for 31 kinds of cancer and the frequency with which different types of stem cells made copies of themselves. Just how strong was this link? On a scale that goes from 0 (absolutely no correlation) to 1 (exact correlation), biostatistician Cristian Tomasetti and cancer geneticist Bert Vogelstein calculated that it was at least a 0.8. When it comes to cancer, thats high. No other environmental or inherited factors are known to be correlated in this way across tumor types, Tomasetti and Vogelstein wrote. Researchers have long recognized that when cells copy themselves, they sometimes make small errors in the billions of chemical letters that make up their DNA. Many of these mistakes are inconsequential, but others can cause cells … Continue reading →