Center for Adult Stem Cell Research and Regenerative Medicine Our goal for the newly established Center for Adult Stem Cell Research and Regenerative Medicine is to shape and lead in the research, ethics, and societal implications for the field of adult... By: Notre Dame Science … Continue reading →

When his infant son Sam was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes two decades ago, Doug Melton made himself a promise: He would cure it. When his daughter Emma was diagnosed with the same autoimmune disease at 14, he redoubled his efforts. Finally he can see the finish line. In a paper published Thursday in the journal Cell, Melton announces that he has created a virtually unlimited supply of the cells that are missing in people with type 1 diabetes. By replacing these cellsand then protecting them from attack by the body's immune systemMelton, now a professor and stem cell researcher at Harvard, says someday he'll have his cure. "I think we've shown the problem can be solved," he said. In type 1 diabetes, which usually starts in childhood and affects as many as three million Americans, the person's immune system attacks and destroys beta cells in the pancreas. Melton used stem cellswhich can turn into a wide variety of other cell typesto manufacture a new supply of these beta cells, which provide exquisitely fine-tuned responses to sugar levels in the blood. When you eat, beta cells increase levels of insulin in your blood to process the extra sugar; when you're … Continue reading →

Posted on behalf of David Cyranoski and Soo Bin Park Fictionalized film follows fabricated findings Stem-cell fraudster faces down the journalist who debunks him in the film sweeping Korean cinemas. Wannabe Fun A movie based on the Woo Suk Hwang cloning scandal drew more than 100,000 viewers on its opening day (2 October)and has been topping box office sales in South Korea since then. With some of the countrys biggest stars, it has made a blockbuster out of a dismal episode in South Korean stem-cell research and revealed the enduring tension surrounding it. The movie, Whistleblower, shines a sympathetic light on Woo Suk Hwang, the professor who in 2004 and 2005 claimed to have created stem-cell lines from cloned human embryos. The achievement would have provided a means to make cells genetically identical to a patients own, and able to form almost any type of cell in the body. But hopes were shattered when Hwangs claims turned out to be based on fraudulent data and unethical procurement of eggs.The whistleblower who revealed the fraud says the new movie strays far from reality. This topic is sensitive, so I was hesitant when I got the first offer, said director Yim Soon-rye … Continue reading →

Harvard University researchers have pioneered a technique to grow by the billions the insulin-producing cells people with diabetes lack, a breakthrough that may create new ways to treat the disease. The breakthrough comes after 15 years of seeking a bulk recipe for making beta cells, which sense the level of sugar in the blood and keep it in a healthy range by making precise amounts of insulin, according to Harvard scientists led by Douglas Melton, who published their work today in the journal Cell. The process begins with human stem cells, which have the ability to become any type of tissue or organ. The technique is an important step toward understanding and treating diabetes, a condition in which the pancreass beta cells are insufficient or dead. Diabetes affects 347 million people worldwide, and its chronic high blood sugar levels can injure hearts, eyes, kidneys, the nervous system and other tissues. This is part of the holy grail of regenerative medicine or tissue engineering, trying to make an unlimited source of cells or tissues or organs that you can use in a patient to correct a disease, said Albert Hwa, director of discovery science at JDRF, a New York-based diabetes advocacy … Continue reading →

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 9-Oct-2014 Contact: Mark Wheeler mwheeler@mednet.ucla.edu 310-794-2265 University of California - Los Angeles @uclanewsroom People with autism spectrum disorder often experience a period of accelerated brain growth after birth. No one knows why, or whether the change is linked to any specific behavioral changes. A new study by UCLA researchers demonstrates how, in pregnant mice, inflammation, a first line defense of the immune system, can trigger an excessive division of neural stem cells that can cause "overgrowth" in the offspring's brain. The paper appears Oct. 9 in the online edition of the journal Stem Cell Reports. "We have now shown that one way maternal inflammation could result in larger brains and, ultimately, autistic behavior, is through the activation of the neural stem cells that reside in the brain of all developing and adult mammals," said Dr. Harley Kornblum, the paper's senior author and a director of the Neural Stem Cell Research Center at UCLA's Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. In the study, the researchers mimicked environmental factors that could activate the immune system such as an infection or an autoimmune disorder by injecting a pregnant mouse with a very low dose of lipopolysaccharide, a toxin found … Continue reading →