Category Archives: Mesenchymal Stem Cells

Stem Cells: The Repairmen of the Body Stem cells are cells that can renew themselves and turn into other cells (differentiate). Most of what youve heard about stem cells is about embryonic stem cells. Despite ethical issues, the good thing about stem cells from embryos is that they have great growth potential. However,believe it or not, there is much much more published data on the properties of adult stem cells. What are adult stem cells? They are the Repairmen of the Body. They live inside all of us in various tissues, poised to leap into action to repair damage as it occurs. The problem is that as we age or get big injuries, we often cant muster enough of these cells to the site to fully repair the area. The most common is known as a hematopoetic stem cells (HSC-CD 34+). While these are easy to obtain from IV blood or bone marrow and are very plentiful, outside of a handfulof cardiac and vascular applications, they are not well studied as being effective in treating a broad range of disease. Despite this, the vast majority of what you see being billed as stem cells (where the cells are injected the … Continue reading →

Contact Information Available for logged-in reporters only Newswise Scientists from UCLAs Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research are bringing stem cell science funded by the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), the state stem cell agency, directly to patients in two exciting new clinical trials scheduled to begin in early 2014. The recipients of the Disease Team Therapy Development III awards were Dr. Dennis Slamon and Dr. Zev Wainberg, whose phase I clinical trial will test a new drug that targets cancer stem cells and has been approved to begin enrolling patients in the US and Canada, and Dr. Donald Kohn, whose first-in-human trial is on stem cell gene therapy for sickle cell disease (SCD). The announcement of the new awards came on December 12, 2013 at the meeting of the CIRM Independent Citizens Oversight Committee (ICOC) at the Luxe Hotel in Los Angeles. Dr. Owen Witte, Director of the UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center, highlighted that the The CIRM support demonstrates that our multidisciplinary Center is at the forefront of translating basic scientific research to new drug and cellular therapies that will revolutionize medicine. Targeting solid tumor stem cells The Disease Team … Continue reading →

Faculty, Graduate Program Associate Professor of Surgery, Department of Surgery, Tulane University Medical School Mesenchymal stem cells resident in adult bone marrow are characterized by their capacity to generate connective tissues, such as bone, cartilage, and adipose, as well as sustain hematopoiesis and other bone marrow functions via secretion of a large array of cytokines, adhesion molecules, and trophic factors. Research in our laboratory is focused on delineating the molecular and functional complexity inherent to MSC biology and using information gleaned from such studies to develop optimized cellular vectors for treating chronic inflammatory and neuro-degenerative diseases. Currently our focus in the lab is on deciphering the molecular signaling pathways that maintain MSCs in an undifferentiated state, regulate expression of anti-inflammatory proteins, and modulate engraftment and migration of MSCs within the central nervous system. Advances derived from basic scientific investigation are incorporated into design and optimization of cellular vectors to treat inflammatory lung disease and neurodegenerative disorders in both rodent and non-human primate models. Ph.D., Biochemistry, Temple University School of Medicine, 1990 B.A., Chemistry, Mathematics, The University of Vermont, 1984 Consultant, KM Pharmaceutical Consulting LLC (2008-2009) Lead Reviewer Award, Stem Cells (2006) Planning committee, International Society of Stem Cell Research (2002-2005) … Continue reading →

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 12-Dec-2013 Contact: Shaun Mason smason@mednet.ucla.edu 310-206-2805 University of California - Los Angeles Stem cell researchers from UCLA have published the first study to identify the origin cells and track the early development of human articular cartilage, providing what could be a new cell source and biological roadmap for therapies to repair cartilage defects and damage from osteoarthritis. Such transformative therapies could reach clinical trials within three years, said the scientists from UCLA's Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research. The study, led by Dr. Denis Evseenko, an assistant professor of orthopedic surgery and head of UCLA's Laboratory of Connective Tissue Regeneration, was published online Dec. 12 in the journal Stem Cell Reports and will appear in a forthcoming print edition. Articular cartilage, a highly specialized tissue formed from cells called chondrocytes, protects the bones of joints from forces associated with load-bearing and impact and allows nearly frictionless motion between the articular surfaces the areas where bone connects with other bones in a joint. Cartilage injury and a lack of cartilage regeneration often lead to osteoarthritis, which involves the degradation of joints, including cartilage and bone. Osteoarthritis currently affects more than 20 million … Continue reading →

Researchers in Sweden have successfully grown functioning neural tissues in lab, which has opened up significant new possibilities in medical science including new ways of treating cases of brain damage. Scientists have already developed sophisticated techniques to grow tissues of other visceral organs such as kidney, liver, trachea, lymph nodes, and veins, and have even performed tissue transplantations in body for organ regeneration. However, growing neural tissues in the lab is itself tricky as neurons are the most complex cells in our body, and imitating the functional biology of brain has been the most challenging task for scientists trying to unlock the mysteries of human body. Neural tissues have been grown before in labs, but there is still a long way to go before researchers can achieve in vivo nerve regeneration and differentiation. But Paolo Macchiarini and Silvia Baiguera at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm may have identified a way forward. Organic tissue is grown in a scaffold which replicates the protein-rich environment of tissues in the body, known as extracellular matrix (ECM). The in vitro scaffold thus provides nutrients and biochemical cues to the embedded stem cells to help them grow into differentiated cells. The researchers contrived a gelatin … Continue reading →

Stem cell researchers from UCLA have published the first study to identify the origin cells and track the early development of human articular cartilage, providing what could be a new cell source and biological roadmap for therapies to repair cartilage defects and damage from osteoarthritis. Such transformative therapies could reach clinical trials within three years, said the scientists from UCLA's Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research. The study, led by Dr. Denis Evseenko, an assistant professor of orthopedic surgery and head of UCLA's Laboratory of Connective Tissue Regeneration, was published online Dec. 12 in the journal Stem Cell Reports and will appear in a forthcoming print edition. Articular cartilage, a highly specialized tissue formed from cells called chondrocytes, protects the bones of joints from forces associated with load-bearing and impact and allows nearly frictionless motion between the articular surfaces - the areas where bone connects with other bones in a joint. Cartilage injury and a lack of cartilage regeneration often lead to osteoarthritis, which involves the degradation of joints, including cartilage and bone. Osteoarthritis currently affects more than 20 million people in the U.S., making joint-surface restoration a major priority in modern medicine. While … Continue reading →

BIOENGINEERS dream of growing spare parts for our worn-out or diseased bodies. They have already succeeded with some tissues, but one has always eluded them: the brain. Now a team in Sweden has taken the first step towards this ultimate goal. Growing artificial body parts in the lab starts with a scaffold. This acts as a template on which to grow cells from the patient's body. This has been successfully used to grow lymph nodes, heart cells and voice boxes from a person's stem cells. Bioengineers have even grown and transplanted an artificial kidney in a rat. Growing nerve tissue in the lab is much more difficult, though. In the brain, new neural cells grow in a complex and specialised matrix of proteins. This matrix is so important that damaged nerve cells don't regenerate without it. But its complexity is difficult to reproduce. To try to get round this problem, Paolo Macchiarini and Silvia Baiguera at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, and colleagues combined a scaffold made from gelatin with a tiny amount of rat brain tissue that had already had its cells removed. This "decellularised" tissue, they hoped, would provide enough of the crucial biochemical cues to enable … Continue reading →

Division of Hematology, Department of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, 200 1st Street SW, Rochester, MN 55905, USA Copyright 2011 Yi Lin and William J. Hogan. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) represent a heterogeneous population of stromal cells with pluripotent mesenchymal differentiation potential. They have been found to have immunosuppressive properties and the ability to modulate angiogenesis and endogenous tissue repair by in vitro and animal studies. Clinical trials have examined the utility of these cells in autoimmune and inflammatory conditions. In particular, in allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT), multiple studies have been conducted to explore the use of MSC to treat acute and chronic graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) and for cotransplantation with HSCT to promote HSC engraftment and prevent GVHD. We review here the results of these studies and discuss some challenges of this treatment modality in this disease setting. Mesenchymal stem cell and multipotent mesenchymal stromal cells are both designated MSC nomenclature by the latest consensus statement from the International Society for Cellular Therapy (ISCT) [1]. This is a group of … Continue reading →

Djouad F, Bouffi C, Ghannam S, Noel D, Jorgensen C: Mesenchymal stem cells: innovative therapeutic tools for rheumatic diseases. Nat Rev Rheumatol 2009, 5:392-399. PubMedAbstract | PublisherFullText da Silva Meirelles L, Chagastelles PC, Nardi NB: Mesenchymal stem cells reside in virtually all post-natal organs and tissues. J Cell Sci 2006, 119:2204-2213. PubMedAbstract | PublisherFullText Pittenger MF, Mackay AM, Beck SC, Jaiswal RK, Douglas R, Mosca JD, Moorman MA, Simonetti DW, Craig S, Marshak DR: Multilineage potential of adult human mesenchymal stem cells. Science 1999, 284:143-147. PubMedAbstract | PublisherFullText Dominici M, Le Blanc K, Mueller I, Slaper-Cortenbach I, Marini F, Krause D, Deans R, Keating A, Prockop D, Horwitz E: Minimal criteria for defining multipotent mesenchymal stromal cells. The International Society for Cellular Therapy position statement. Cytotherapy 2006, 8:315-317. PubMedAbstract | PublisherFullText Krampera M, Cosmi L, Angeli R, Pasini A, Liotta F, Andreini A, Santarlasci V, Mazzinghi B, Pizzolo G, Vinante F, Romagnani P, Maggi E, Romagnani S, Annunziato F: Role for interferon-gamma in the immunomodulatory activity of human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells. Stem Cells 2006, 24:386-398. PubMedAbstract | PublisherFullText More: Stem Cell Research & Therapy | Full text | Immunosuppression ... … Continue reading →

Multiple Myeloma Stem Cell Therapy mp4 By: Drmeena Shah … Continue reading →