Category Archives: Cell Medicine

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 26-Feb-2014 Contact: Jeremy Lechan jlechan@tuftsmedicalcenter.org 617-636-0104 Tufts Medical Center BOSTON (Feb. 27) A study in this week's New England Journal of Medicine potentially has significant implications for prenatal testing for major fetal chromosome abnormalities. The study found that in a head-to-head comparison of noninvasive prenatal testing using cell free DNA (cfDNA) to standard screening methods, cfDNA testing (verifi prenatal test, Illumina, Inc.) significantly reduced the rate of false positive results and had significantly higher positive predictive values for the detection of fetal trisomies 21 and 18. A team of scientists, led by Diana W. Bianchi, MD, Executive Director of the Mother Infant Research Institute at Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center, reports the results of their clinical trial using non-invasive cell-free DNA prenatal testing in a general obstetrical population of pregnant women, in an article entitled "DNA sequencing versus standard prenatal aneuploidy screening." The multi-center, blinded study analyzed samples from 1,914 pregnant women, and found that noninvasive cfDNA testing had a ten-fold improvement in the positive predictive value for trisomy 21, commonly known as Down syndrome, compared to standard prenatal aneuploidy screening methods (aneuploidy is a term for one or more extra or missing chromosomes). … Continue reading →

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 25-Feb-2014 Contact: Michael C. Purdy purdym@wustl.edu 314-286-0122 Washington University School of Medicine Increased brain cell activity boosts brain fluid levels of a protein linked to Alzheimer's disease, according to new research from scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Tau protein is the main component of neurofibrillary tangles, one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease. It has been linked to other neurodegenerative disorders, including frontotemporal dementia, supranuclear palsy and corticobasal degeneration. "Healthy brain cells normally release tau into the cerebrospinal fluid and the interstitial fluid that surrounds them, but this is the first time we've linked that release in living animals to brain cell activity," said senior author David M. Holtzman, MD. "Understanding this link should help advance our efforts to treat Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative disorders associated with the tau protein. The study appears online in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. Tau protein stabilizes microtubules, which are long columns that transport supplies from the center of the cell to the distant ends of the cell's branches. Some tau in the cell is not bound to microtubules. This tau can become altered and clump together inside brain cells, forming structures called tangles. Scientists have … Continue reading →

TORONTO, ON Stars, diamonds, circles. Rather than your average bowl of Lucky Charms, these are three-dimensional cell cultures generated by an exciting new digital microfluidics platform, the results of which have been published in Nature Communications this week by researchers at the University of Toronto. The tool, which can be used to study cells in cost-efficient, three-dimensional microgels, may hold the key to personalized medicine applications in the future. We already know that the microenvironment can greatly influence cell fate, says Irwin A. Eydelnant, recent doctoral graduate from IBBME and first author of the publication. The important part of this study is that weve developed a tool that will allow us to investigate the sensitivity of cells to their 3D environment. Everyone wants to do three-dimensional (3D) cell culture, explains Aaron Wheeler, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Bioanalytical Chemistry at the Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering (IBBME), the Department of Chemistry, and the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research (DCCBR) at the University of Toronto. Cells grown in this manner share much more in common with living systems than the standard two-dimensional (2D) cell culture format, says Wheeler, corresponding author of the study. More naturalistic, 3D cell … Continue reading →

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 25-Feb-2014 Contact: Shawna Williams shawna@jhmi.edu 410-955-8236 Johns Hopkins Medicine Using tiny particles designed to target cancer-fighting immune cells, Johns Hopkins researchers have trained the immune systems of mice to fight melanoma, a deadly skin cancer. The experiments, described on the website of ACS Nano on February 24, represent a significant step toward using nanoparticles and magnetism to treat a variety of conditions, the researchers say. "Size was key to this experiment," says Jonathan Schneck, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of pathology, medicine and oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine's Institute for Cell Engineering. "By using small enough particles, we could, for the first time, see a key difference in cancer-fighting cells, and we harnessed that knowledge to enhance the immune attack on cancer." Schneck's team has pioneered the development of artificial white blood cells, so-called artificial antigen-presenting cells (aAPCs), which show promise in training animals' immune systems to fight diseases such as cancer. To do that, the aAPCs must interact with immune cells known as naive T cells that are already present in the body, awaiting instructions about which specific invader they will battle. The aAPCs bind to specialized receptors on the T cells' surfaces … Continue reading →

Duke University Health SystemDr. Victor J. Dzau, the current president and CEO of Duke University Health System Dr. Victor J. Dzau, the current president and CEO of Duke University Health System and chancellor for health affairs at Duke University, has been appointed to a six-year term as the next president of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), effective July 1, 2014. Dr. Dzau will take over the lead role from Dr. Harvey Fineberg, who served in the position for twelve years. Dr. Dzau began his career in medicine as a cardiologist, having previously taught at Harvard Medical School and served as chair of the department of medicine. He also worked at Brigham and Womens Hospital as the director of research. His ongoing award-winning research has been key in the development of cardiovascular drugs, as well as techniques to repair tissue damage from heart attacks and heart disease using stem cell therapies. Dr. Eugene Braunwald, often called the father of modern cardiology and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, has known Dr. Dzau for more than 40 years and worked with him at many different stages of his career at Brigham and Womens Hospital and Partners Healthcare. In an interview … Continue reading →

ALAMEDA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--BioTime, Inc. (NYSE MKT: BTX), a biotechnology company that develops and markets products in the field of regenerative medicine, today announced that Chief Executive Officer Michael D. West, PhD will present at the 9th Annual Stem Cell Summit in New York. Dr. West will speak in the session Disrupting the Pharma Model with Allogeneic Stem Cell Therapies on February 18, 2014, starting at 9:05 a.m. EST. Dr. West will discuss the potential comparative advantages of treating disease with BioTime's PureStem-based therapeutics compared to traditional small molecule pharmaceuticals and BioTime's product development strategy. The presentation will be made available on BioTime's website at http://www.biotimeinc.com. About BioTime, Inc. BioTime is a biotechnology company engaged in research and product development in the field of regenerative medicine. Regenerative medicine refers to therapies based on stem cell technology that are designed to rebuild cell and tissue function lost due to degenerative disease or injury. BioTimes focus is on pluripotent stem cell technology based on human embryonic stem (hES) cells and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. hES and iPS cells provide a means of manufacturing every cell type in the human body and therefore show considerable promise for the development of a number of … Continue reading →

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 16-Feb-2014 Contact: Krista Conger kristac@stanford.edu 650-725-5371 Stanford University Medical Center STANFORD, Calif. Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have pinpointed why normal aging is accompanied by a diminished ability to regain strength and mobility after muscle injury: Over time, stem cells within muscle tissues dedicated to repairing damage become less able to generate new muscle fibers and struggle to self-renew. "In the past, it's been thought that muscle stem cells themselves don't change with age, and that any loss of function is primarily due to external factors in the cells' environment," said Helen Blau, PhD, the Donald and Delia B. Baxter Foundation Professor. "However, when we isolated stem cells from older mice, we found that they exhibit profound changes with age. In fact, two-thirds of the cells are dysfunctional when compared to those from younger mice, and the defect persists even when transplanted into young muscles." Blau and her colleagues also identified for the first time a process by which the older muscle stem cell populations can be rejuvenated to function like younger cells. "Our findings identify a defect inherent to old muscle stem cells," she said. "Most exciting is that we also discovered a … Continue reading →

LOS ANGELES, Cali. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Almost seven billion of us use one, and now researchers say that phone you talk, text, and tweet with could one day do much more for your health. Hannah Gooch is allergic to eggs. "We did a strict avoidance," Necia Joy Gooch, Hannah's mom, told Ivanhoe. Spike Loy has diabetes. "Since I was seven and a half, I had to take between two and 10 blood tests a day," Spike said. Both could one day benefit from a medical breakthrough that you carry around every day. "You can imagine your cell phone working like a very advanced microscope for looking at various different specimen," Aydogan Ozcan, PhD, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and BioEngineering, UCLA, told Ivanhoe. Researchers at UCLA created various attachments that fit on smart phones. One can perform an HIV screening. Another ONE detects allergens in food. A special tube measures allergens optically with the phone's camera. "You can do this for peanuts or you can do this for other kinds of allergens," Dr. Ozcan said. Other attachments measure the presence of E. coli in food, blood cell counts, and blood sugar levels. Cell phones are less expensive than a large … Continue reading →

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 13-Feb-2014 Contact: Joseph Caputo joseph_caputo@harvard.edu 617-496-1491 Harvard University Harvard stem cell scientists have a new theory for how stem cells decide whether to become liver or pancreatic cells during development. A cell's fate, the researchers found, is determined by the nearby presence of prostaglandin E2, a messenger molecule best known for its role in inflammation and pain. The discovery, published in the journal Developmental Cell, could potentially make liver and pancreas cells easier to generate both in the lab and for future cell therapies. Wolfram Goessling, MD, PhD, and Trista North, PhD, both principal faculty members of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI), identified a gradient of prostaglandin E2 in the region of zebrafish embryos where stem cells differentiate into the internal organs. Experiments conducted by postdoctoral fellow Sahar Nissim, MD, PhD, in the Goessling lab showed how liver-or-pancreas-fated stem cells have specific receptors on their membranes to detect the amount of prostaglandin E2 hormone present and coerce the cell into differentiating into a specific organ type. "Cells that see more prostaglandin become liver and the cells that see less prostaglandin become pancreas," said Goessling, a Harvard Medical School Assistant Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women's … Continue reading →

15:00 EST 12 Feb 2014 | PR Web Join Miami Stem Cell Treatment Center on an exciting educational seminar focusing on how adipose-derived stem cells have been shown to have a preferred differentiation capability, have a minimal and virtually painless ease of extraction, and have been scientifically proven to have strong immuno-modulatory effects. Boca Raton, FL (PRWEB) February 12, 2014 The Miami Stem Cell Treatment Center, PC, located in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, and Boca Raton, Florida, announces a series of free public seminars on the use of stem cells for various degenerative and inflammatory conditions. They will be provided by Dr. Thomas A. Gionis, Surgeon-in-Chief, and, Dr. Nia Smyrniotis, Medical Director. The seminars will be held on February 16th and March 2nd. On February 16th, the seminar will be held at the Marriott Boca Raton, at Boca Center, 5150 Town Center Circle, Boca Raton, Florida 33486, at 2pm; and on March 2nd at the Hampton Inn Fort Lauderdale Downtown, 250 N. Andrews Blvd., Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301, at 2pm. You can also join Miami Stem Cell Treatment Center at the Health and Wellness Experience Expo presented by WPEC Channel 12 and the Sun-Sentinel on March 1st at Mizner Park Amphitheater, … Continue reading →