SACRAMENTO, CA. - A drug used to treat diabetes encourages the brain to grow and repair itself, afinding with far-reaching implications for the treatment of Alzheimers and brain injury, a new study published in Cell: Stem Cell reports. The widely used diabetes drug metformin comes with the unexpected side effect of causing the growth of new neurons in the brain and makes mice smarter, the July 6th issue of Cell Stem Cell, a Cell Press publication, said. The study has potentially wide-reaching implications for the treatment of Alzheimers in humans and brain related injury. The discovery has important implications for brain repair because it works not by introducing new stem cells but rather by spurring those that are already present into action, said the study's lead author Freda Miller of the University of Toronto-affiliated Hospital for Sick Children. And since the drug is already so widely used and so safe it means doctors could quickly begin using the drug for brain therapy treatment. Earlier work by Miller's team highlighted a pathway known as aPKC-CBP for its essential role in telling neural stem cells where and when to differentiate into mature neurons, the report said. Other researchers had found before them … Continue reading →

ScienceDaily (July 5, 2012) Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes have discovered that environmental factors critically influence the growth of a type of stem cell -- called an iPS cell -- that is derived from adult skin cells. This discovery offers newfound understanding of how these cells form, while also advancing science closer to stem cell-based therapies to combat disease. Researchers in the laboratory of Gladstone Senior Investigator Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD, have for the first time shown that protein factors released by other cells affect the "reprogramming" of adult cells into stem cells known as induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells. The scientists -- who collaborated on this research with colleagues from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) -- announce their findings July 5 online in Cell Stem Cell. In 2007, Dr. Yamanaka discovered a recipe of specific proteins to add to human skin cells as a way to induce them into becoming iPS cells -- which act very much like embryonic stem cells. Many see iPS cell technology as a new platform for drug discovery and the study of disease fundamentals -- while avoiding the ethical issues surrounding research involving embryonic stem cells. But questions remain about … Continue reading →

LABELLE, Fla.- Two-year old Madeline Conner was born with the inability to hear. But new advances in medical science could offer hope in the form of a stem cell research study. "I really wanted her in it. It was our one shot," said her mother, Stephanie Conner. Conner heard about a new FDA-approved stem cell study for hearing loss. She knew right away her little girl was the perfect candidate. "It's a group of ten kids and she's the first one and the only one so far," she said. The trial is a collaboration between Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston and the California-based Cord Blood Registry. "This is the first study FDA regulated looking at the safety and benefit of cord blood stem cells for treatment of acquired sensorineural hearing loss. Which is loss that has to do with the damage of the inner ear and nerve fibers that go to the brain," said Principal Investigator, Dr. Fakhri. Stem cells, saved from Madeline's own umbilical cord, were injected into her arm. "We expect that it will be safe. You are using your own blood stem cells as if it was your own transfusion," stated Dr. Fakhri. "It was actually … Continue reading →

Patients in a clinical trial who received Osiris Therapeutics stem cell treatment within a week after experiencing their first heart attack showed "significantly less" damage and arrhythmia than those who received a placebo. The interim one-year results are from a phase 2 trial of Prochymal involving 220 heart attack patients, ages 21 to 85. "This study is the largest of its kind and provides key insights into the mechanism of action of mesenchymal stem cells in the setting of acute myocardial infarction," Lode Debrabandere, senior vice president of therapeutics at the Columbia company, said in a statement. "These important mechanistic observations are consistent with data obtained from our preclinical models and from the first placebo-controlled human trial with Prochymal published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Given the quality of the data and highly encouraging results observed thus far, we are extending the trial's duration to capture a better understanding of the long-term clinical benefits ..." Furthermore, the trial showed that the treatment is safe, with no toxicities seen in patients who received it. So far, there have been five deaths in the trial: two in the Prochymal group and three in the placebo group. "For interventional … Continue reading →

Queensland scientists have moved a step closer to new treatments for a rare degenerative brain disease. Ataxia telangiectasia is an inherited disease causing severe disability, a weakened immune system, susceptibility to infection and an increased risk of cancer. It affects between one in 100,000 and one in 300,000 people and is ultimately fatal. Patients are frequently confined to a wheelchair by their early teenage years and generally die by their 20s. People with the disease can develop cancer and brain degeneration because a gene that recognises and repairs DNA damage is defective. Researchers from the University of Queensland's Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology have found a way to develop brain cells to study in the lab from the skin cells of children. By reprogramming the skin cells into stem cells, then brain cells, researchers hope to be able to correct the genetic mutations and demonstrate that they can replace the defective cells that cause the problems in the disease. Replacing the defective cells with corrected cells, or developing new drugs using the cells in the study, could help treat the disease. The researchers could start screening medicines in one to two years, but testing in animals would have to … Continue reading →

Background Many people with epilepsy in low-income countries do not receive appropriate biomedical treatment. This epilepsy treatment gap might be caused by patients not seeking biomedical treatment or not adhering to prescribed antiepileptic drugs (AEDs). We measured the prevalence of and investigated risk factors for the epilepsy treatment gap in rural Kenya. All people with active convulsive epilepsy identified during a cross-sectional survey of 232176 people in Kilifi were approached. The epilepsy treatment gap was defined as the percentage of people with active epilepsy who had not accessed biomedical services or who were not on treatment or were on inadequate treatment. Information about risk factors was obtained through a questionnaire-based interview of sociodemographic characteristics, socioeconomic status, access to health facilities, seizures, stigma, and beliefs and attitudes about epilepsy. The factors associated with people not seeking biomedical treatment and not adhering to AEDs were investigated separately, adjusted for age. 673 people with epilepsy were interviewed, of whom 499 (74%) reported seeking treatment from a health facility. Blood samples were taken from 502 (75%) people, of whom 132 (26%) reported taking AEDs, but 189 (38%) had AEDs detectable in the blood. The sensitivity and specificity of self-reported adherence compared with AEDs detected … Continue reading →