Infinite Unknown

A stroke victim has regained the power of speech after doctors placed a device resembling a teabag filled with stem cells in his brain.

Genetically modified stem cells fitted into a kind of ‘tea bag’ are implanted to the patient’s brain where they are supposed to have an anti-inflammatory effect Photo: EPA

Walter Bast, 49, also regained the use of his right arm after the revolutionary treatment, which prevents brain cells from dying.

If further trials of the treatment are successful, it could be on the market in as little as five years, providing fresh hope for the 45,000 Britons each year who suffer a haemorrhagic stroke, where a blood vessel in the brain bursts.

Currently, the only option is surgery, which has a variable success rate. Half of surgery patients will die within a month and just one in 20 patients will recover to the extent of Mr Bast.

The pioneering treatment, called CellBeads, involves cutting away part of the skull to tie off leaking blood vessels and remove blood from the brain.

Surgeons then insert the 2cm by 2cm ‘teabag’ filled with capsules stuffed with around a million stem cells.

The stem cells, taken from bone marrow, have been genetically engineered to make a drug known as CM1 that protects brain cells from dying. This lets the cells rejuvenate and repair the damage done by the stroke.

After around two weeks, doctors at the International Neuroscience-Institute in Hanover, Germany, removed the ‘teabag’, resulting in Mr Bast regaining his speech and the use of his right arm.

Speaking a week after the operation, the first of its kind in the world, Mr Bast, a mechanic, said: “I feel a lucky guy.”

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Tags: Brain, cells, Health, Immune System, Medicine, Neuroscience, Science, stem cells, strokes

Claudia Castillo, the patient in the ground-breaking operation. Photo: AP

PARIS — Physicians at four European universities have completed what they say is the first successful transplant of a human windpipe using a patient’s own stem cells to fashion an organ and prevent its rejection by her immune system, according to an article in the British medical journal The Lancet. One of the physicians said the surgery could herald a “new age in surgical care.”

The transplant operation was performed on the patient, Claudia Castillo, in June in Barcelona, Spain, to alleviate an acute shortage of breath caused by a failing airway following severe tuberculosis. It followed weeks of preparation carried out at the universities of Barcelona, Spain, Bristol, England and Padua and Milan in Italy.

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Tags: cells, Doctors, Health, Medicine, Physicians, Science, Scientists, stem cells, transplant surgery

Doctors in Berlin are reporting that they cured a man of AIDS by giving him transplanted blood stem cells from a person naturally resistant to the virus.

But while the case has novel medical implications, experts say it will be of little immediate use in treating AIDS. Top American researchers called the treatment unthinkable for the millions infected in Africa and impractical even for insured patients in top research hospitals.

“It’s very nice, and it’s not even surprising,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “But it’s just off the table of practicality.”

The patient, a 42-year-old American resident in Germany, also has leukemia, which justified the high risk of a stem-cell transplant. Such transplants require wiping out a patient’s immune system, including bone marrow, with radiation and drugs; 10 to 30 percent of those getting them die.

“Frankly, I’d rather take the medicine,” said Dr. Robert C. Gallo, director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, referring to antiretroviral drugs.

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Tags: AIDS, Health, HIV, Immune System, Leukaemia, Medicine, Science, stem cells, UCLA, Virus

Eva was saved by a donation of cord blood like that donated by baby Darcey

A scheme to store blood taken from the umbilical cords of newborns and use it to save lives has been launched.

Cord blood, like bone marrow, can help patients survive deadly diseases such as leukaemia.

For now, the Anthony Nolan Trust Cord Blood Bank can take cord blood at just one hospital, with plans for more UK collection centres.

Even so, the charity predicted the 50,000 expected donations over the next five years would prevent many deaths.

Cord blood provides a way to give a patient the ability to produce new blood cells after this has been lost through illness or aggressive treatment.

As well as patients with blood cancers, those with sickle cell disease and immune problems could benefit.

The thing about cord blood is that it’s just thrown away - but it could save someone’s life Mark Behan parent of cord blood patient

It contains potent “stem cells“, which, if placed back into the bone marrow, can start producing the right sort of cells.

The umbilical cord is normally thrown away after birth, so, unlike bone marrow donation, there is no discomfort or risk to the donor.

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Tags: Cancer, cells, Health, Leukaemia, Medicine, Science, stem cells, U.K.

Deaf people could one day have their hearing restored through a groundbreaking gene therapy technique, a new study suggests.

The transfer of a specific gene is shown today by a milestone experiment to trigger the growth of new hair cells in the inner ear - the usually irreplaceable sensory cells that pick up sound vibrations and that are lost as a result of ageing, disease, certain drugs, and by excessive exposure to loud sound.

The approach, which one day could help millions of people worldwide with deafness and inner-ear disease, is made possible by a technique that is demonstrated in the journal Nature by an American team lead by Dr John Brigande of the Oregon Hearing Research Centre, Portland, who himself is profoundly hard of hearing.

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Tags: Blindness, Deafness, Health, Liver, Nature, Science, stem cells

Scientists transform one type of cell into another in living mice

Talk about an extreme makeover: Scientists have transformed one type of cell into another in living mice, a big step toward the goal of growing replacement tissues to treat a variety of diseases.

The cell identity switch turned ordinary pancreas cells into the rarer type that churns out insulin, essential for preventing diabetes. But its implications go beyond diabetes to a host of possibilities, scientists said.

It’s the second advance in about a year that suggests that someday doctors might be able to use a patient’s own cells to treat disease or injury without turning to stem cells taken from embryos.

The work is “a major leap” in reprogramming cells from one kind to another, said one expert not involved in the research, John Gearhart of the University of Pennsylvania.

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Tags: ALS, cells, diabetes, insulin, Science, Scientists, stem cells, Virus

Tiny thread like cilia on brain cells act as sort of an antennae that directs signals telling stem cells to create new neurons. (Credit: Image courtesy of Yale University)

ScienceDaily (Aug. 25, 2008) - Yale University scientists today reported evidence suggesting that the tiny cilia found on brain cells of mammals, thought to be vestiges of a primeval past, actually play a critical role in relaying molecular signals that spur creation of neurons in an area of the brain involved in mood, learning and memory.

The cilia found on brain cells of mammals until recently had been viewed as a mysterious remnant of a distant evolutionary past, when the tiny hair-like structures were used by single-celled organisms to navigate a primordial world.

“Many neuroscientists are shocked to learn that cells in the brain have cilia. Thus it was even more exciting to show that cilia have a key function in regulating the birth of new neurons in the brain,” said Matthew Sarkisian, post doctoral fellow in the department of neurobiology and co-first author on the study.

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Tags: Biology, Brain, brain tumor, Neurons, Neuroscience, Science, stem cells

The treatment uses umbilical and marrow cells to help develop normal skin. Doctors say it may move his genetic disorder, recessive epidermolysis bullosa, ‘off the incurable list’ for other patients.

Using stem cells from umbilical cord blood and bone marrow, researchers have apparently cured a fatal genetic disease in a 2-year-old Minneapolis boy, which could open the door for other stem cell treatments.

For the first time in his life, Nate Liao is wearing normal clothes, eating food that has not been pureed, and playing with his siblings.

“Nate’s quality of life is forever changed,” said Dr. John Wagner of the University of Minnesota Medical School, who performed the treatment. “Maybe we can take one more disorder off the incurable list.”

(Stem cells are the cure for all disease, including cancer, thats why the elite does not want the public to know about it. - The Infinite Unknown) Continue reading »

Tags: Disease, Health, stem cells

Scientists are to be permitted to use tissue from dead people to create cloned human stem cells for research, under a legal change put forward by the government.

Health ministers have proposed that laboratories should be allowed to use stored human tissue to create cloned embryonic stem cells without the explicit consent of the tissue donor. This would allow research to be done on tissue donated for medical research as long as 30 years ago. Scientists would also be able to use cells from people who have died since they donated their tissue or who cannot be contacted.

Many laboratories have banks of stored tissue which act as DNA libraries that can play a vital role in finding cures for serious disorders such as diabetes and motor neurone disease.

Ministers have until now insisted that scientists contact tissue donors to gain explicit consent before DNA can be used to create cloned embryonic stem cells.

Leading scientists, including three Nobel prize winners, say gaining such consent is sometimes impossible because the donors have died, donated anonymously or cannot be contacted. They say the ban on using DNA without consent could hold up vital research. Continue reading »

Tags: DNA, embry, Science, stem cells

Scientists serve up leaner beef, tastier cheddar and healthier ketchup

The Annotated Hamburger: Photo by Colin Smale; Schnare & Stief/Getty Images; illustration: Mitch Romanowski Design

If the biotech industry has its way, ordering a hamburger might soon sound something like this: “one charbroiled cloned-beef patty, with genetically modified cheese, lab-grown bacon and vitamin-C-fortified lettuce, on a protein-spiked bun.” The burger of the future is delicious, nutritious and contains more engineering than a stealth bomber. Continue reading »

Tags: Biotech, DNA, Hamburger, stem cells