Stem Cell Research

Researchers Find Newborn Heart Muscle Can Regenerate Itself

In a promising science-fiction-meets-real-world juxtaposition, researchers have discovered that the mammalian newborn heart can heal itself completely.

Working with mice researchers found that a portion of the heart removed during the first week after birth grew back wholly and correctly – as if nothing had happened.

“We found that the heart of newborn mammals can fix itself; it just forgets how as it gets older," said Dr. Hesham Sadek, assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. "The challenge now is to find a way to remind the adult heart how to fix itself again.”

GE Healthcare To Collaborate In Research Seeking To Expand Cord Blood Stem Cells In The Laboratory As Cord Blood Transplants Move Toward Regenerative Medicine Mainstream

Cord blood stem cells are a growing substitute for bone marrow stem cell transplants in a number of diseases of the blood and are increasingly considered to have therapeutic poential for other diseases.

Writing in Politics.co.uk, a british political web journal, David Burrowes, a conservative member of parlaiment, said, "A further advantage is the readiness of the stem cells retrieved from umbilical cords. They are collected, tissue-typed and frozen after the birth of the child and then are made available as soon as a patient requires them. This radically reduces the waiting time before a patient can access a transplant. Currently the average time it takes for a patient to receive their transplant is 160 days. Over those 160 days, many patients become progressively weaker, as do the chances of a successful transplant."

Speaking of the British Medical System he added, "For an investment of £50 million, spread over five years, Britain can have that 50,000 unit cord blood bank. A 50,000 unit blood bank would provide economies of scale that would reduce the cost to the NHS for every treatment as well as radically reducing the need to import stem cell units from abroad, which is a common and expensive practice today. We often talk about investing to save but in this case it would save not just £6 million but 200 lives a year. In a parliament that will be characterised by the difficult decisions it makes, this is one decision I believe we can't afford not to take."

In the stem cell theraply biotech arena, where so much is expected while so much remains unproven, cord blood stem cells are defining a stem cell therapy that not only works but may be more cost effective than the method being used now. In another act of stem cell therapy recognition via both cord blood stem cells and bone marrow, Nordstrom's has offered up to $75,000 to raise awareness in the African American community of the need for umbilical cord blood collection and bone marrow doners.

Erg Gene Key To Blood Stem Cell Self Renewal

In an attempt to understand how blood stem cells are made, researchers have begun to unravel how blood stem cells regenerate themselves, identifying a key gene required for the process.

Blood stem cells are required to produce and maintain the blood system throughout an organism's lifetime. They are multipotent cells, meaning they are able to form any cell of the blood system (but not other cells), and they self-renew, so they are a source of endless supply. However, one major barrier to their therapeutic use is that the cells can only be isolated in numbers too low for practical use and efforts to expand the number of cells often causes them to turn into more mature cells.

"At the moment, if you take stem cells from a person and try to expand them, many of the stem cells lose their ability to regenerate," said Dr. Samir Taoudi of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute's Molecular Medicine and Cancer and Haematology division. "The practical aim of our research is to find ways in which you could take stem cells collected from bone marrow or cord blood and 'switch on' expression of particular sets of genes, encouraging the stem cells to expand, essentially creating your own endless supply of blood stem cells."

Overabundance Of A Particular Protein Expands Breast Cancer Stem Cells

An essential protein for normal stem cell renewal also promotes the growth of breast cancer stem cells when it's overproduced in those cells. Researchers have also discovered that two drugs block the cascade of molecular events, thwarting formation of breast tumor-initiating cells.

"Overexpression of the EZH2 protein has been linked to breast cancer progression, but the molecular details of that connection were unknown," said Mien-Chie Hung, Ph.D., professor and chair of MD Anderson's Department of Molecular and Cellular Oncology.

"Tumor-initiating cancer cells that arise from the primary cancer stem cells also are thought to drive cancer progression," Hung said. "Our research connects EZH2 to the growth of breast tumor-initiating cells."

Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells From Blood Cells May Expose Cancer At Earliest Stage

By coaxing healthy and diseased human bone marrow to become embryonic-like stem cells researchers have laid the groundwork for observing the onset of the blood cancer leukemia in the laboratory dish.

"This is the first successful reprogramming of blood cells obtained from a patient with leukemia," said Igor Slukvin, University of Wisconsin-Madison stem cell researcher, who directed the research aimed at generating all-purpose stem cells from bone marrow and umbilical cord blood. "We were able to turn the diseased cells back into pluripotent stem cells. This is important because it provides a new model for the study of cancer cells."

Researchers used banked healthy and diseased bone marrow and cord blood. They employed a technique developed in 2009 by Wisconsin stem cell pioneer James Thomson that sidesteps the problems posed by the genes and viral vectors used to induce mature cells to regress to a stem cell state.

The new research points out that the reprogramming blood cells to become induced stem cells is many times more efficient than the reprogramming of skin cells, the first mature cells to be guided back to an embryonic stem cell-like state.

Adult Kidney Stem Cells Found In Zebra Fish

It has long been a given that adult humans -- and mammals in general -- lack the capacity to grow new nephrons, the kidney's delicate blood filtering tubules. This has meant that dialysis, and ultimately kidney transplantation, is the only option for the more than 450,000 Americans who have kidney failure.

Now researchers may turn this paradigm on its head with a find that may someday lead to a new treatment for those suffering from kidney disease.

Researchers from Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Regenerative Medicine have identified adult kidney stem cells in the zebrafish that can generate new nephrons. These cells can be transplanted from one fish to another fish, whereby they grow into functional nephrons in the transplanted recipient.