Scientists fear that automatic cuts in funding for the National Institutes of Health, set to kick in at the start of 2013, will harm research and patients Wikimedia Commons/Kevin McCoy Brianna Commerford felt a lump. After a few months of feeling mildly ill, she was diagnosed with stage IV Hodgkins lymphoma. She was devastated, she was scared, and she was only 9 years old. Five years later, Brianna is still alive thanks to an experimental treatment she received from the Childrens Oncology Group. Devoted to curing childhood and adolescent cancer, the COG is a clinical trials group that is primarily supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest sponsor of biomedical research in the world. This month scientists nationwide are petitioning to protect lifesaving research programs like this one before January, when the federal government will automatically slashor sequester8.2 percent ($2.5 billion) of the NIH budget for 2013 unless Congress stops the move. The money will be withheld because of provisions in the Budget Control Act of 2011 that aimed to cut spending. Combined with the scheduled finale of the Bush-era tax cuts, the provisions are expected to push the country over the now proverbial fiscal cliff. … Continue reading →

Irvine, CA (PRWEB) March 06, 2014 Proove Biosciences, the leader Personalized Pain Medicine testing services, will participate and present clinical data and research at the American Academy of Pain Medicines 30th annual meeting this weekend, March 6-9, 2014. The meeting provides a comprehensive overview and review of current and cutting-edge pain medicine practice topics. AAPM President and Proove Medical Advisory Board Member, Dr. Lynn Webster, will be moderating a workshop on safe opioid prescribing practices. The program will educate prescribers about eight evidence-based principles that will drastically reduce the number of unintentional overdose deaths from prescription medication. "We are thrilled to be a part of the AAPMs Annual Meeting. As the premiere industry forum, we are excited to share and present our clinical data on how our Proove Genetic tests have been helping pain medicine professionals throughout the country improve the selection, dosing, and evaluation of medications. We will exhibit how Proove helps identify patients at risk for tolerance and misuse of medications, and how we have been creating efficiency within the healthcare system, while improving safety and decreasing risks associated with pain medicine therapies," stated Brian Meshkin, President of Proove Biosciences. Proove will again be the only company presenting … Continue reading →

A genetic mutation provides a clue to Hugh Rienhoff's daughter's undefined syndrome Colston Rienhoff Hugh Rienhoff says that his nine-year-old daughter, Bea, is a fire cracker, a tomboy and a very sassy, impudent girl. But in a forthcoming research paper, he uses rather different terms, describing her hypertelorism (wide spacing between the eyes) and bifid uvula (a cleft in the tissue that hangs from the back of the palate). Both are probably features of a genetic syndrome that Rienhoff has obsessed over since soon after Beas birth in 2003. Unable to put on much muscle mass, Bea wears braces on her skinny legs to steady her on her curled feet. She is otherwise healthy, but Rienhoff has long worried that his daughters condition might come with serious heart problems. Rienhoff, a biotech entrepreneur in San Carlos, California, who had trained as a clinical geneticist in the 1980s, went from doctor to doctor looking for a diagnosis. He bought lab equipment so that he could study his daughters DNA himself and in the process, he became a symbol for the do-it-yourself biology movement, and a trailblazer in using DNA technologies to diagnose a rare disease (see Nature 449, 773776; 2007). Talk … Continue reading →

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 6-Mar-2014 Contact: Robert Miranda cogcomm@aol.com Cell Transplantation Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair Putnam Valley, NY. (Mar. 6, 2014) When human umbilical cord blood cells were transplanted into rats that had undergone a simulated myocardial infarction (MI), researchers investigating the long term effects of the transplantation found that left ventricular (LV) heart function in the treated rats was improved over those that did not get the stem cells. The animals were maintained without immunosuppressive therapy. The study will be published in a future issue of Cell Transplantation but is currently freely available on-line as an unedited early e-pub at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/pre-prints/content-ct0860Chen. "Myocardial infarction induced by coronary artery disease is one of the major causes of heart attack," said study co-author Dr. Jianyi Zhang of the University of Minnesota Health Science Center. "Because of the loss of viable myocardium after an MI, the heart works under elevated wall stress, which results in progressive myocardial hypertrophy and left ventricular dilation that leads to heart failure. We investigated the long term effects of stem cell therapy using human non-hematopoietic umbilical cord blood stem cells (nh-UCBCs). These cells have previously exhibited neuro-restorative effects in a rodent model of ischemic brain … Continue reading →

The flexible needles could help doctors deliver stem cells to broader areas of the brain with fewer injections. Such therapies are being investigated for Parkinson's disease, stroke and other neurodegenerative disorders Flickr/TschiAe As the surgical team prepared its instruments, a severed human head lay on the plastic tray, its face covered by a blue cloth. It had thawed over the past 24 hours, and a pinky-sized burr hole had been cut near the top of its skull. Scalp covered with salt-and-pepper stubble wrinkled above and below a pink strip of smooth bone. Over the next two hours, the head would be scanned in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine as the researchers, led by Daniel Lim, a neurosurgeon and stem-cell scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, tested a flexible needle for delivering cells to the brain. Several laboratories are investigating ways to treat neurological diseases by injecting cells into patients brains, and clinical trials are being conducted for Parkinsons disease, stroke and other neurodegenerative diseases. These studies follow experiments showing dramatic improvements in rats and mice. But as work on potentially therapeutic cells has surged ahead, necessary surgical techniques have lagged behind, says Lim. In 2008 researchers led … Continue reading →

Dallas, Texas (PRWEB) March 06, 2014 The global market for cell therapy was valued at close to USD 2.5 Billion in 2012. With continuous advances and developments in this field of medicine, the global cell therapy market is expected to grow at a high rate of 20-22% to reach approximately USD 8 Billion by 2018. Several products and technologies of cell-based therapies are in the R&D pipeline are expected to enter the market during the forecast period, thus resulting in an increased growth rate. It is most likely that the new improved technologies would revolutionize the area of bio-pharma and personalized medicine. Development of sophisticated automation devices for cell expansion and culture process for use in the treatment is one of the emerging trends of ACT market. For the past 3-5 years, a more complex therapeutic modality has been is emerging as cell therapies which have been developed to treat diseases which are not amenable to treatment with more classical pharmaceutical or biopharmaceutical products. This Global Cell Therapy market offers the promise of successfully regenerating damaged tissues and organs in the body by replacing the damaged tissue and/or by stimulating the bodys own repair mechanisms to heal previously irreparable tissues. … Continue reading →

A new study offers proof that stem cells can reconnect the inner ear to the brain Marcelo Rivolta, University of Sheffield By Virginia Gewin of Nature magazine More than 275 million people have moderate-to-profound hearing loss, and many of those cases are caused by a breach in the connection between the inner ear and the brain. Researchers have now shown how to repair a key component of that connection the auditory nerve by using human embryonic stem cells to restore hearing in gerbils. "We have the proof of concept that we can use human embryonic stem cells to repair the damaged ear," says lead author Marcelo Rivolta, a stem-cell biologist at the University of Sheffield, UK, whose research appears in Nature today. "More work needs to be done, but now we know it's possible." Stem cells have been differentiated into auditory nerve cells before, but this is the first time that transplanted cells have successfully restored hearing in animals. Some in the field say that it is a pivotal step that will undoubtedly spur more research. Research has been stymied by reviewers wanting evidence that stem cells can connect the inner ear to the central nervous system, says Richard Altschuler, … Continue reading →

practicum nanomedicine pws Nicole en jordy By: Jordy Sak … Continue reading →