Finishing book reports and other homework may seem daunting to most 14-year-old boys. But when Matthew Baremore woke up and finished his assignments on Tuesday morning, the school work was cake compared to the medical history he made.

Matthew has scoliosis, and using a concentrated cocktail of his own stem cells and those donated from bone, he became the first in the state to undergo spinal fusion surgery.

New bone growth is facilitated by the stem cell technology and healing is also accelerated. The process of harvesting a piece of Matthews bone, which involves a second procedure, is also avoided with this method.

“Right now he has a fairly large bump on his back (and) his rib cage is being forced out of position,” Matthew’s mother, Becky, said as she ran her hand along his back.

With the potential to eventually interfere with Matthews breathing, the 50 percent curvature would have likely worsened if left untreated. That would result in a serious modification in his life, one that involves a passion for playing basketball.

Bone marrow was harvested from the teen’s pelvic bones by Dr. Mark Flood, a pediatric spine surgeon, at Banner Desert Children’s Hospital. The procedure took approximately four hours. Using centrifuge technology patented by an Austin, Texas firm, stem cells were extracted from the marrow.

Flood straightened and bolstered Matthew’s spine with a series of rods and pins _ a typical surgical treatment for severe scoliosis.

Crushed bone marrow from the hospital bone bank was combined with Matthew’s own stem cells which had been concentrated to 10 times the levels normal with traditional methods.

Between the rods, the puttylike mixture was injected into the upper-middle section of Matthew’s spine. The spine will be protected against further curvature with the mixture growing into bone in the injected location.

“What’s revolutionary is the use of the concentrated stem cells,” Flood said before the surgery. “We can avoid the pain of taking bone, and increase fusion.”

There is no cure for Scoliosis. The condition affects about two to three percent of the population and results in the spine curving in an “S” shape from side to side.

Curvatures of 25 to 40 degrees in adults and children may require a back brace, however, most individuals require no treatment. If the curve is more severe or the brace fails to correct the problem, surgery is recommended.

Until now, the surgical option usually required a bone graft, a second surgery and longer recovery.

Often diagnosed between the ages of 10 and 14, scoliosis can develop gradually. As Matthew hit puberty, he quickly grew to 6-foot-1, marking a fast development in his scoliosis. During a physical exam last spring, his condition was first noted.

Matthew was looking forward to getting the procedure over with on Tuesday. The eighth-grader and his twin brother Jordan, may have been a bit camera shy as well, with a media entourage following them around in the hospital.

Matthew’s strong bones made the procedure a bit more challenging, but Flood said that the surgery was a success.

“Everything went fine. Now it’s up to him to get through these next few days,” he said.

Matthew will return to school at Villa Montessori in Phoenix after a four to five day recovery stay in the hospital. He must wait at least one year before he can play basketball again, but rehabilitation therapy will start in about six weeks to improve strength and flexibility in his muscles.

“He’ll bounce back quickly,” Flood said. “That’s how kids are.”

With the ultimate goal of being able to use stronger chemotherapy treatment with less severe side effects, Ireland Cancer Center researchers have recently made great strides in stem cell gene therapy research by transferring a new gene to cancer patients, via their own stem cells. In order to protect cells from the damage of chemotherapy regimens, a drug-resistance gene called MGMT isadded into purified hematopoietic stem cells.

Eight patients were enrolled in a trial where theywere infused with their own stem cells which were engineered to carry the MGMT gene. Two of the eight patients received a placebo. This presentation, which was made byStanton Gerson, MD, and colleagues from Ireland Cancer Center atthe annual American Society of Hematology meeting. It was one of 24 presentations that were made. Gerson and his team revealed significant new findings with this gene and drug combination. The gene was identified in three of the patient’s bone marrow or blood. Up to 28 weeks following administration, one of the patients still carried the gene.

Dr. Gerson, who is the Director of the Ireland Cancer Center and Case Comprehensive Cancer Center, said that “this study is the first to show the success of treatment with evidence that stem cells now carry the new gene.”

Gerson, along with his team of researchers, led the Phase I study.

By tweaking stem cells from patients’ muscles, European scientists today announced that it may be possible to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Muscles weaken over time in patients afflicted with Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Despite only affecting boys, Duchenne’s is one of the most common forms of muscular dystrophy out of a total of nine major types.

The muscle function in mice was improved with the use of their stem cell technique reported the European scientists.

The technique “represents a promising approach for Duchenne muscular dystrophy” but needs more work, write the researchers. They included Rachid Benchaouir of Italy’s University of Milan.

A sample of adult stem cells was extracted from the muscles of the mice afflicted with Duchenne muscular dystrophy as an initial step.

Dystrophin, which is a protein needed for muscle development, is limited in patients with the condition due to a genetic glitch. The scientists moved to correct this error in the next step.

Lastly, the mice were “re-introduced” to the corrected cells via injection.

Allowing the mice to run longer in a treadmill test and improving the mice’s muscles overall, the tweaked stem cells made more dystrophin within 45 days following the stem cell treatment.

Stem cell scientists are careful even though the process sounds simple. There are many challenges that must be considered and monitored during treatment and cell preparation prior to injection.

Dogs with Duchenne muscular dystrophy were treated last year by another team of scientists.

The journal Cell Stem Cell has published the details of the new experiments in their December issue.

Scientists have now provided a conclusive demonstration of their huge therapeutic potential with the production of stem cells from human skin and the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine: stem cells have had a fantastic year. A humanized sickle cell anaemia mouse model has been successfully treated with a combination of gene and cell therapy, as reported in the online advanced edition of Science.

By using a retrovirus to insert four transcription factor genes into the cells, human, monkey and mouse skin cells can be developmentally reprogrammed in vitro into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS). Any of the specialized cell types that are present in the body can be created from the iPS cells. Using gene therapy in order to correct any disease causing mutations, the cells can also be genetically reprogrammed in vitro. Then before transplantation back into the patient, the cells can be differentiated into the appropriate cell type. By avoiding issues of immune-mediated tissue rejection since the cells are derived from the patient, the therapeutic potential is huge.

Mouse hemoglobin genes were replaced with human counterparts, with the homozygous sickle cell anaemia variant that causes the mice, which are called ‘knock-in’ mice, to exhibit typical symptoms of the disease. iPS cells were created with skin cells that were removed from the mice. The cells were differentiated into hematopoetic (blood) progenitor cells before being transplanted back into the mice, but first, the sickle cell mutation in the genome of these cells was then corrected by gene targeting. The red blood cell count had returned to within the normal range with significantly fewer misshapen cells after 12 weeks. The iPS cells also were responsible for for producing around 70% of the peripheral blood cells present in the mice. The treatment also substantially reduced the problems with renal function associated with sickle cell anemia.

While avoiding any tricky ethical snares by using iPS instead of embryonic stem cells, the study underlines the therapeutic potential of stem cells combined with gene therapy. With further refinement, the technology could potentially be used in humans as well.

Practicing tricks on his skateboard and attempting new wrestling moves while jumping of his couch last night, six-year-old Bretton Kinslow is not unlike other boys his age.

But the similarities end at the activities. Bretton is waiting on news that there’s a stem-cell match for the grade school student in his family’s Hatchet Lake home. His parents sit by the phone waiting for a call from Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto.

Zachary Hall, Bretton’s brother, was killed at the age of ten last year by the same genetic disease Bretton was diagnosed with on November 8th.

Causing damage to the myelin sheath that insulates the nerve cells in the brain, Adrenoleukodystrophy or ALD is a rare disease that was depicted in the 1992 film Lorenzo’s Oil.

Men are most severely affected since the most common type of ALD is linked to the x-chromosome. And men, with only one x-chromosome, are at a disadvantage.

Leading to dementia, blindness, loss of co-ordination, deafness, and ultimately death, a progressive deterioration of the nervous system characterizes the condition. Young boys are the most common victims.

Zach’s mother Lisa Kinslow knew it was too late by the time doctors realized what was wrong.

The IWK kept a close eye on Bretton after he became sick.

“They monitored Bretton every six months,” Kinslow said.

It was confirmed Bretton had developed ALD at his last six-month checkup.

Now he is waiting for a stem cell transplant. The cells will come from either bone marrow, or a umbilical cord blood.

Hopefully staving off the deterioration of his nervous system, the transplant will renew every cell in Bretton’s body.

“He won’t even have the same blood type anymore,” Kinslow said.

Kinslow and her husband Mark explained that Bretton has a better chance than his older brother who was diagnosed too late, but that there were no guarantees that the transplant would work. Meanwhile, Bretton showed off for the photographer, bouncing on and off the couch.

“With Zach, it was different; we knew the outcome,” she said.

“With this one, we’re fighting for it.”

Kinslow said Bretton has some understanding of what’s going on.

He knows he’s probably going to lose his hair because of the chemo-therapy before transplant. He knows that he will need to take a lot of medication. And he is more than aware of the doctors that surround him, trying to make him feel better, every time he goes to Toronto.

At one point last night, grinning and rubbing his head he exclaimed, “I don’t want to be bald.”

It’s been difficult for the family admitted Kinslow.

She’s trying not to let his illness become a focus, trying to keep things normal for Bretton.

“We spend every day with him, we play with him, we talk with him,” she said.

“There’s nothing that he wants to do that we don’t try.”

Proving in principle that a new form of stem cell could be used as a therapy, on Thursday, U.S. researchers treated mice with sickle cell anemia using the cells which were made from ordinary skin cells.

Possessing the same characteristics as embryonic stem cells, skin cells were reprogrammed by Japanese and U.S. researchers last month. The cells were named “iPS” cells, short for “induced pluripotent stem cells”.

Using mouse skin cells, the Japanese researchers had initially accomplished the same feat prior to using human skin cells.

A defect in a single gene causes the blood disease called sickle cell anemia. Mice were engineered to have this condition by a research team at the Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They team successfully treated these mice withe the new iPS cells.

“This is the first evaluation of these cells for therapy,” said Dr. Jacob Hanna, who worked on the study. “The field has been working for years on strategies to generate customized stem cells,” he added in a telephone interview.

Hanna said that the need for immune suppression or donor matching would be eliminated by creating stem cell therapies from a person’s own cells since that would make them genetically identical.

“Now, with the breakthrough of this new method for generating stem cell-like cells, can we try to substitute a diseased tissue in a living animal?”

Four genes were inserted into the mice skin cells by Hanna and colleagues working in Rudolf Jaenisch’s lab at Whitehead Institute. This action transformed them into iPS cells.

“We call it the magic four factor,” Hannah said.

Cells that can morph into any type of cell in the human body are called multipurpose or pluripotent. Examples of these cells are embryonic stem cells and the new iPS cells.

The researchers substituted the faulty gene that causes sickle cell anemia with a working one after coaxing these mouse master cells into becoming blood-forming stem cells.

The journal Science reported on Friday that tests showed normal blood and kidney function after the scientists transplanted these cells into the diseased mice.

“This demonstrates that iPS cells have the same potential for therapy as embryonic stem cells, without the ethical and practical issues raised in creating embryonic stem cells,” Jaenisch said in a statement.

Still, much work remains in order to perfect the technique.

A type of virus called a retrovirus is used to deliver the four genes needed to turn skin cells into master cells.

“Once they enter the genome, there is the danger that they can silence some genes that are important or they can activate some dangerous genes that shouldn’t be activated,” Hanna said.

c-Myc, which is one of the genes, is known to cause cancer, and this presents another obstacle for researchers to overcome.

After the gene had completed it’s task of transforming the skin cells into iPS cells, Hanna and colleagues actually removed the c-Myc gene to get around the potential problem.

The new technique will make stem cells much easier to study. Spinal injuries, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, and other conditions could all be treated someday using the new iPS cells.