Category Archives: Stem Cell Research

Home > News > health-news Washington, Mar 26 : New stem cell research published by scientists from the University of Michigan Medical School, and fueled by the Heinz C. Prechter Bipolar Research Fund, open doors to potential new treatments for bipolar disorder. The team used skin from people with bipolar disorder to derive the first-ever stem cell lines specific to the condition. They reported how they transformed the stem cells into neurons, similar to those found in the brain - and compared them to cells derived from people without bipolar disorder. The comparison revealed very specific differences in how these neurons behave and communicate with each other, and identified striking differences in how the neurons respond to lithium, the most common treatment for bipolar disorder. It's the first time scientists have directly measured differences in brain cell formation and function between people with bipolar disorder and those without. The research team, are from the Medical School's Department of Cell and Developmental Biology and Department of Psychiatry, and U-M's Depression Center, used a type of stem cell called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs. By taking small samples of skin cells and exposing them to carefully controlled conditions, the team coaxed … Continue reading →

Researchers have grown embryonic-like stem cells from patients with bipolar disorder and transformed them into brain cells that are already answering questions about the condition. The cells, which carry the precisely tailored genetic instructions from the patients own cells, behave differently than cells taken from people without the disorder, the researchers report. Already, we see that cells from people with bipolar disorder are different in how often they express certain genes, how they differentiate into neurons, how they communicate, and how they respond to lithium," Sue O'Shea, a stem cell specialist at the University of Michigan who led the study, said in a statement. The work, described in the journal Translational Psychiatry, helps fulfill one of the big promises of stem cells research using a patients own cells to study his or her disease. Mental illness is especially hard to study. Getting into a living persons brain is almost impossible, and scientists cant deliberately cause it in people in order to study it. Creating animals such as mice with what looks like human mental illness is imprecise at best. The University of Michigan team turned instead to what are called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells. These are ordinary … Continue reading →

Gay marriage. Abortion. Stem cell research. Theres plenty for President Obama and Pope Francis to discuss when they meet Thursday at the Vatican. But beyond their doctrinal differences lies a mutual desire for social justice that likely will tamp down any friction in their first meeting, analysts say. Same-sex marriage and abortion might be points of contention, but the hope is that Mr. Obama and Francis can find a point of convergence on other topics, said Paul Manuel, director of the Institute for Leadership, a nonprofit that promotes the application of biblical wisdom in decision-making. Were looking at two global superpowers that have competing visions of justice, said Mr. Manuel, a political science professor at Mount St. Mary's University. Im sure the White House would like to have convergence with the Vatican. One area that might help them is the popes initiative on human trafficking. I think thats something the president would be happy to discuss. Francis this month announced his support of the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops Brotherhood Campaign, which aims to stem human slavery in Brazil. Mr. Manuel suggested that the persecution of Christians in the Middle East as another likely topic. He said the issue could … Continue reading →

Forever Young Peter Nygard- Stem Cell Research Interview with fashion mogul Peter Nygard about his research with stem cells, ..he tells how he's working with the medical community to develop a virtual fou... By: Seasons BeverlyHills … Continue reading →

Stem Cell Research- Curiosity Unleahed via YouTube Capture. By: AJR4188 … Continue reading →

Desperate patients are easy prey for unscrupulous clinics offering untested and risky stem cell treatments, says UW-Madison law and bioethics Professor Alta Charo, who is studying "stem cell tourism." Stem cells are cells that can form many types of cells in the body, and that makes them inherently promising and dangerous. "Stem cell tourism" refers to people traveling, both within the U.S. and abroad, in pursuit of advertised stem cell therapies to purportedly treat a variety of medical conditions. Alta Charo "The evidence for therapeutic use of stem cells is very limited, except for bone marrow stem cells, but patients all over the world are convinced stem cells will cure their disease," says Charo. "While there are some very promising results in the early clinical trials for stem cell therapies using embryonic and other kinds of stem cells, the 'treatments' being advertised by these clinics are dubious, mostly ineffective, and sometimes positively harmful. "Patients are being hoodwinked, but there are dilemmas about tackling (the 'treatments') at regulatory or political levels." The outrage over failures in stem cell tourism is limited, Charo says. Patients may pay tens of thousands of dollars for procedures that may carry no promise of success or … Continue reading →

As stem cells continue their gradual transition from the lab to the clinic, a research group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has discovered a new way to make large concentrations of skeletal muscle cells and muscle progenitors from human stem cells. The new method, described in the journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine, could be used to generate large numbers of muscle cells and muscle progenitors directly from human pluripotent stem cells. These stem cells, such as embryonic (ES) or induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, can be made into virtually any adult cell in the body. Adapting a method previously used to make brain cells, Masatoshi Suzuki, an assistant professor of comparative biosciences in the School of Veterinary Medicine, has directed those universal stem cells to become both adult muscle cells and muscle progenitors. Importantly, the new technique grows the pluripotent stem cells as floating spheres in high concentrations of two growth factors, fibroblast growth factor-2 and epidermal growth factor. These growth factors "urge" the stem cells to become muscle cells. "Researchers have been looking for an easy way to efficiently differentiate stem cells into muscle cells that would be allowable in the clinic," says Suzuki. The novelty of this technique … Continue reading →

Interview with David Schaffer on stem cell research The Daily Californian sits down with David Schaffer, director of the Berkeley Stem Cell Center at UC Berkeley, for an in-depth discussion on his research. By: thedailycal … Continue reading →

Hematopoietic stem cells are now routinely used to treat patients with cancers and other disorders of the blood and immune systems, but researchers knew little about the progenitor cells that give rise to them during embryonic development. In a study published April 8 in Stem Cell Reports, Matthew Inlay of the Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center, and faculty member of the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, and Stanford University colleagues created novel cell assays that identified the earliest arising HSC precursors based on their ability to generate all major blood cell types (red blood cells, platelets and immune cells). This discovery of very early differentiating blood cells, Inlay said, may be very beneficial for the creation of HSC lines for clinical treatments. "The hope is that by defining a set of markers that will allow us to make purer, cleaner populations of these precursor cells, we'll be able to reveal the key molecular events that lead to the emergence of the first HSCs in development. This could give us a step-by-step guide for creating these cells in a dish from pluripotent stem cell lines" added Inlay, who is an assistant professor of molecular biology & biochemistry … Continue reading →

For the first time, scientists have succeeded in coaxing laboratory cultures of human stem cells to develop into the specialized, unique cells needed to repair a patient's defective or diseased bladder. The breakthrough, developed at the UC Davis Institute for Regenerative Cures and published today in the scientific journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine, is significant because it provides a pathway to regenerate replacement bladder tissue for patients whose bladders are too small or do not function properly, such as children with spina bifida and adults with spinal cord injuries or bladder cancer. "Our goal is to use human stem cells to regenerate tissue in the lab that can be transplanted into patients to augment or replace their malfunctioning bladders," said Eric Kurzrock, professor and chief of the division of pediatric urologic surgery at UC Davis Children's Hospital and lead scientist of the study, which is titled "Induction of Human Embryonic and Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells into Urothelium." To develop the bladder cells, Kurzrock and his UC Davis colleagues investigated two categories of human stem cells. In their key experiments, they used induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), which were derived from lab cultures of human skin cells and umbilical blood … Continue reading →