By RON WINSLOW Stroke, until recently the third leading cause of death in the U.S., has dropped back to fourth place, reflecting a host of gradual improvements in preventing and treating the disease. The change isn't a result of major advances in new medicines or devices. Instead, medical experts cite improvements in controlling people's risk factors such as high blood pressure and smoking. They also point to the increase in recent years in the number of designated stroke centers and emergency rooms that are specially equipped for stroke patients. A recent study underlines the incremental progress being made. Researchers in California found that treating stroke patients with cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins throughout a hospital stay substantially improved survival rates and increased the chances of patients being discharged to their home instead of to a nursing home. "In the country as a whole, there has been a dramatic reduction in stroke-related mortality in the last few years," said Larry Goldstein, director of the Duke Stroke Center at Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C. "We're learning more and more about preventing stroke." In the 10 years ending in 2008, the latest data available, the death rate from stroke, as a percentage of … Continue reading →

Posted on: 3:00 pm, June 12, 2012, by John David, updated on: 04:05pm, June 12, 2012 Robots used to be the subject of science fiction novels and vintage movies. Now, real-life medicine is tapping into this technology to treat stroke patients. Its taking place between Mercy Medical Center in Clinton and University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. These are steps of gratitude for Gerri and Highland Nichols. It felt good, she said. The Clinton woman, 69, is back on her feet after suffering a stroke on May 20. With this, its just amazing that I can walk and talk, she said. A quick recovery, thanks in part to a robot. Inside the Mercy Medical Center Emergency Room, doctors from Clinton and the University of Iowa team up for a teleconference. Its just like the link that helped to treat Gerri. It is the first robot in Iowa for telemedicine, said Dr. Harold Adams, director of the University of Iowa Stroke Center. Telemedicine is in many ways the future for medicine in rural areas similar to Iowa. Iowa City doctors control a camera to see through the robot in Clinton. The stroke team runs tests and talks directly with patients. I … Continue reading →

CARLSBAD, Calif., June 12, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Life Technologies Corporation (LIFE) today announced a partnership with Cellular Dynamics International (CDI), the world's largest producer of human cells derived from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, to commercialize a set of three new products optimized to consistently develop and grow human iPS cells for both research and bioproduction. The partnership marries CDI's leadership in human iPS cell development with Life Technologies' expertise in stem cell research tool manufacturing and global distribution network to make these novel technologies accessible to researchers around the world. Life Technologies' commercialization of Essential 8 Medium, Vitronectin (VTN-N), and Episomal iPSC Reprogramming Vectors addresses several challenges associated with developing relevant cells for use in a wide range of studies, from basic and translational research to drug discovery efforts. The effectiveness of these products is the focus of recent validation studies published in the journals Nature Methods and PLoS One. "The launch of these new stem cell culture products furthers CDI founder and stem cell pioneer Jamie Thomson's vision to enable scientists worldwide to easily access the power of iPSC technology, thus driving breakthroughs in human health," noted Bob Palay, CDI Chief Executive Officer. To eliminate the variability introduced … Continue reading →

Public release date: 12-Jun-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ] Contact: Jia Liu liujia@genomics.cn BGI Shenzhen Chalfont St. Giles, UK, and Shenzhen, China 12 June, 2012 GE Healthcare, the healthcare business of GE (NYSE: GE), and BGI, the world's largest genomics organization, jointly announced today a pioneering multi-year research collaboration in stem cell science. The objective of the collaboration is to help advance the potential global utility of stem cell-derived assays for use in drug discovery and toxicity testing by exploring the underlying genetic variation between ethnically diverse human stem cell lines. The collaboration was announced at a signing ceremony attended by Dr Amr Abid, General Manager Cell Technologies, GE Healthcare Life Sciences and Lin Fang, Vice President of BGI, Ye Yin, Deputy President of BGI, and Yutao Du, Deputy President of BGI. The collaborating parties are initially undertaking two ground-breaking projects. Firstly, BGI is performing genome sequencing and epigenetic analysis on cardiomyocytes and hepatocytes supplied by GE Healthcare Life Sciences. The aim is to map out the genetic variation across an ethnically diverse range of stem cell lines and to examine the changes that occur during differentiation into specific cell types in order to increase the understanding of cell … Continue reading →

A few years ago, concerns over these heart trials were voiced by a Norwegian professor, Harald Arnesen. He concluded in 2007 that they are not convincing and that one German team had achieved striking results only because the control group in its trial had done particularly badly. Prof Arnesen called for a moratorium on this kind of stem-cell therapy. That still did not deter the clinicians. This January, another trial funded by the EU was announced the largest of all, with 3,000 heart-attack patients recruited from across Europe. The idea behind the trials is straightforward. During a heart attack, a clogged blood vessel starves heart muscle of oxygen. Up to a billion heart muscle cells, called cardiomyocytes, can be damaged, and the body responds by replacing them with relatively inflexible scar tissue, which can lead to fatal heart failure. So why not implant stem cells that can grow into cardiomyocytes? Stem cells, of course, come in many kinds: the embryonic variety have the potential to turn into all 200 cell types in the body. Adult stem cells, harvested from the patient, have a more limited repertoire: bone marrow stem cells generate blood cells, for example. So to claim, as was … Continue reading →