Banking on stem cells

Biotechnology’s potential includes economic benefits for area

By Lisa Eckelbecker TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
leckelbecker@telegram.com

Gary S. Stein, chairman of the University of Massachusetts Medical School Department of Cell Biology, says a stem cell bank could help the Worcester area. (T&G Staff/JIM COLLINS)Enlarge photo

WORCESTER— Some of the biggest hopes for economic development in Massachusetts lie in some very small cells.

Yet as Gov. Deval L. Patrick pushes for a 10-year, $1 billion investment in life science research and development, including money for a stem cell bank in Worcester, some university and business officials say they are still trying to project the economic impact of such an investment.

There could be intellectual property benefits and the formation of new companies, said Dr. Michael F. Collins, interim chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Medical School. But as for

numbers, he said, he’s still working on that.


“What I’m attempting to assess is really the impact on the statewide economy, because we view the medical school as a statewide resource,” Dr. Collins said.

Coming up with a projection could be no easy task. When California voters approved a 10-year plan to issue $3 billion in bonds to fund stem cell research, competing projections came up with different outlooks. One group suggested the state would reap income tax and sales tax revenues of at least $240 million from spending on research and facilities, additional tax revenues of $2.2 billion to $4.4 billion if the initiative brought additional private investment into California and up to $1.1 billion in royalty revenues from products developed through the initiative.

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An eye institute in India has developed a way to grow new corneas from adult stem cells and restore sight to the blind.

By David Ewing Duncan, Fortune
October 24 2007: 6:54 AM EDT

(Fortune Magazine) -- Eye surgeon Virendar Sangwan has perfected a procedure so cutting-edge that most who have tried it have failed. In an operating theater in the central Indian city of Hyderabad, he surgically implants corneas grown in a petri dish from stem cells by his colleague Geeta Vemuganti in patients with damaged eyes. Together they perform about 80 corneal regeneration procedures a year, making the L.V. Prasad Eye Institute where they work one of the most prolific facilities in the world using stem cells to regenerate tissue of any kind.

The Sangwan-Vemuganti team uses stem cells found in the tissues of living adults, not ones derived from embryos. Teams all over the world are working with adult stem cells, trying to coax them to regrow cells in hearts, brains, livers, and other organs, but progress is slow.

Besides corneas, scientists have had some success regrowing skin cells and bone tissue, but those procedures remain experimental. "A number of programs around the world have tried to perfect this treatment, but they have had bad outcomes," says University of Cincinnati eye surgeon and stem cell specialist Edward Holland.

"It's impressive what they are doing at Prasad." In addition to the Hyderabad project, only Holland's program and a half-dozen others in the world conduct operations using corneas grown from stem cells.

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Usually discarded, cord blood is a rich source of stem cells

By Joe Fahy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

When she considered ways to honor the memory of her husband, Daniel, Carol Berger thought about a lecture or scholarship. But she and her family finally settled on a novel effort to promote the use of stem cells in treating disease.

Mr. Berger, a local attorney known for championing liberal causes, benefited from a stem cell transplant to treat his lymphoma. He died in July 2006 at age 73.

This morning, officials at Magee-Womens Hospital will announce the Dan Berger Cord Blood Program. It is aimed at expanding options for new mothers to bank umbilical cord blood, a rich source of stem cells that can be used to treat certain cancers, sickle cell anemia and immune deficiencies.

The program will inform women about storing cord blood for their family's use or donating it to others or for research. It also will educate patients and health professionals about cord blood banking.

"We believe this is a very unique program in the country in that it addresses the whole collection process," said Dr. Dennis English, Magee's vice president for medical affairs. He said officials hope to significantly increase cord blood collections at the hospital.

"No one else is doing it quite this way," said Mrs. Berger, whose family is making a financial pledge for the new program.

Additional support is expected from UPMC Health Plan and Highmark, Dr. English said.

Other partners in the effort include the Institute for Transfusion Medicine, the parent organization of the Central Blood Bank, and three private cord blood banks: Viacord, CorCell and CBR.

Cord blood can be collected from the umbilical cord and the placenta after a baby is born. Stem cells also can be extracted from bone marrow and the bloodstream.

Stem cell transplants from cord blood have been increasing, particularly in the past few years, Dr. English said. Yet cord blood is discarded following the vast majority of births.

Nationwide, cord blood is stored after about 4 percent of deliveries, he said. In Western Pennsylvania, the figure is just 1.5 percent.

One reason, he said, is that a public banking option hasn't been available locally. And many obstetricians have had little interest in advising patients to use private cord blood banks that store the blood for a fee -- usually, about $1,700 to $2,000 initially and another $100 to $200 per year.

Pennsylvania lawmakers likely will consider legislation that would require doctors to give women information about cord blood banking, Dr. English said. Similar legislation has been adopted in other states, he said.

The American Academy of Pediatrics encourages families to donate cord blood to public banks, if available in the area, to benefit others in need. But the group discourages parents from storing blood at private banks unless they have an older child with a condition that could potentially benefit from a transplant. Cord blood banked privately seldom is used, and therefore wasted, the group noted.

The new program at Magee calls for developing educational materials to inform mothers about cord blood banking several months before they give birth.

Mothers who are interested in storing cord blood for their families could choose to bank it, for a fee, through one of the private companies, Dr. English said.

They also could donate it to the Magee-Women's Research Institute, which focuses its studies on women and infants, or for public use through the Central Blood Bank. Dr. English said the blood bank will work to coordinate its donations through the National Marrow Donor Program, which operates a federally funded U.S. registry of adult donors and cord blood units.

As part of the new Magee program, technicians will be available to collect cord blood following deliveries, Dr. English said.

The program also will hire an educator to discuss public and private cord blood banking with obstetricians, family doctors and midwives, he said.

Efforts also will be made to speak to patients about cord blood banking at health fairs and similar events. Reaching minority populations is especially important, Dr. English said, because blacks are much less likely than whites to find a match through a public cord blood bank. Relatively few specimens for blacks are available.

Mary Halet, manager of cord blood operations for the National Marrow Donor Program, said the new program appears to be designed to educate women ahead of time about the various options available for storing or donating cord blood.

"I think that's really interesting and good advocacy for women's health," she said.

Mrs. Berger said her husband developed lymphoma in the 1990s. An avid Pirates fan and Yale Law School graduate, he had chaired the Western Pennsylvania presidential campaign of Sen. Eugene McCarthy in 1968 and had been general counsel to the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Chemotherapy held the cancer in check for about six years, Mrs. Berger said, and her husband was able to practice law with their son, Joshua, and to go horseback riding, ski and travel.

But when the therapy stopped working, the family frantically searched for other options.

An initial stem cell transplant at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston failed, but a second was successful, Mrs. Berger said.

Stem cells are "the way of the future in medicine," she said, noting that they are used to treat many serious diseases and show potential for curing others.


Original  Article : http://www.post-gazette.com

Stem Cell Therapy Could Regrow Heart Cells

A new study conducted by University of Florida doctors attempts to treat patients with coronary artery disease by injected stem cells into the heart. The researchers believe that stem cell injections will restore more blood flow to the organ and encourage blood vessel growth, healing the heart.

This experimental treatment is being conducted on volunteers with severe coronary artery disease who have daily chest pains. Volunteers for the study have tried other methods such as medication or surgery procedures to restore blood flow but have not responded. The results of this study could affect almost half a million Americans with severe coronary artery disease.

Coronary artery disease occurs when the heart muscle becomes affected by plaque deposits or clots that prevent blood from reaching the heart. The blockages can initiate small heart attacks that can go undetected but cause damage to the heart that cannot be reversed. Over time, this can cause progressive heart failure or death.

In the study, researchers will use a person's own stem cells to try to improve the flow of blood to the heart. They hope that the treatment will prevent some of the symptoms of severe coronary artery disease, as well as increase the quality of life for the patient. The study will also measure exercise tolerance and heart function before and after treatment.

"The general idea is that by providing these cells of blood vessel origin, we hope to either generate new blood vessels from the growth of these implanted cells or stimulate the heart to regenerate new blood vessels from the cells that reside in it," said study investigator Carl J. Pepine, M.D., chief of cardiovascular medicine at UF's College of Medicine in a press release.

Despite their high hopes for the results of the study, researchers are unsure how this transformation will occur. "It's not completely clear whether it's the actual cell itself that would do this or whether it's just the milieu and the chemical signals that occur from the cells that would result in this," concluded Pepine in a press release.

Another trial is divided into three patient groups, one focusing on patients with heart attacks within the week preceding the treatment, one on people with heart attacks two or three weeks before treatment, and those patients with severe coronary disease that has not responded to any treatment. In those studies, stem cells removed from the bone marrow will be removed and injected into the heart.

"There's a lot of enthusiasm in the cardiovascular community about the potential of cell-based therapies for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases,"

aid Douglas E. Vaughan, M.D., chief of the division of cardiovascular medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in a press release, "and there is increasing experience around the world in using bone marrow-derived stem cells in patients with cardiovascular disease. There is growing confidence this is going to be a safe form of therapy, but there are continuing questions about how effective it will be and what its impact will be in individual patients."


Original Article :http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/404970/stem_cell_therapy_could_regrow_heart.html?page=2

The big deal in stem cell Therapy video on you tube

Stem cell therapy cut liver transplants

LONDON: Imagine needing an urgent liver transplant, but instead of waiting for a donor, you can just repair your own organ.

Yes, scientists have discovered a new way of treating liver failure -- the technique involves inserting stem cells into the damaged organ so that it is encouraged to repair itself and create new tissue, The Daily Telegraph reported on Wednesday.

"We have identified a non-hepatic source of cells that can easily be expanded to the scale required for clinical application," Dr Martin Yarmush, who led the study published in the Public Library of Science journal, was quoted by the daily as saying.

The liver is known to be one of the few major organs able to regenerate itself when parts have been removed. The scientists came to the conclusion after they found they could encourage this natural tendency by inserting stem cells into the damaged livers of rodents. In fact, they used Mesenchymal stem cells found in the bone marrow.

According to the researchers, the treatment will allow patients to live long enough for a new organ to found and could even enable the liver to completely heal itself so a transplant is no longer needed. The demand for new organs is currently so high that many patients die on the waiting list or are taken off because their condition deteriorates to the extent that they would not survive the operation.

original Article from:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/