New treatments to amplify the success of cord blood and bone marrow transplants in humans could be developed thanks to a new discovery related to zebrafish. Blood-forming stem cell production is enhanced due to a natural chemical that is produced by the fish.

The finding was published in the June 21, 2007 issue of the journal Nature. At the Children’s Hospital in Boston, Leonard Zon, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher, led the team. The lead author of the study was a postdoctoral fellow in Zon’s laboratory named Trisha North.

The premiere orthopedic practice in the Raleigh-Durham area, Triangle Orthopedic Associates, is trying to see if cartilage in the knee, the torn meniscus specifically, can be repaired using stem cells. Developed by Osiris Therapeutics, a stem cell product called Chondrogen for the treatment of this common knee injury is being evaluated by Triangle Orthopedics as part of a clinical trial.

The debate over stem cell research is enough for people to think that the science is tinted

Thanks to a breakthrough stem cells treatments being offered in India, those individuals who have complete paralysis of the lower half of the body could potentially walk once again.

Many paraplegics have been able to return to normal life after being treated at the Lifeline Multi-Specialty Hospital (LMSH). The hospital has nearly perfected the treatment they use to give paraplegics that ability to walk.

The U.S. was among the technologically advanced countries that deemed the use of autologous bone marrow fluids containing stem cells as a futile treatment for paraplegics. But the research and development division of LMSH, The Lifeline Institute of Stem Cell Therapy and Research (LISTR), was able to achieve this very “impossibility” using the self generated stem cells.

The treatments provide a path away from embryonic stem cells and away from controversy.

It was not long ago that the lack of a cure for paralysis confined the man who once played “Superman” on the big screen to a wheelchair. Hollywood star Christopher Reeves supported the research while waiting and hoping during the last part of his life for a cure.

“Using the money provided by the late movie icon to improve the lot of paraplegics throughout the world, we have turned four ordinary people who faced a dismal future into supermen,” said J. S. Raj Kumar, the chairman of LMSH.

After losing the ability to be mobile as a result of rare medical disorders or due to accident, all four of these men had no hope.

But now, with no signs remaining of his debilitating condition, 25-year-old Akbar has made a full recovery. After being involved in a construction accident in Dubai last year, he was brought to LMSH on a stretcher while in a coma. His parents are now searching for a bride so that Akbar can be wed because his recovery has been so encouraging.

“We harvest between 100 and 200 ml of stem cells in fluid form from the afflicted patients themselves and inject them into their spinal cords carefully to bring about this ‘miracle’ that has been cleared by statutory health bodies not only in India, but also in all major premier medical institutions abroad including the US.”

“We have the highest global rate of success of 34 percent after sustained treatment to 50 select patients,” said Raj Kumar.

More remarkable results can be found when one studies the cases of Transverse Myelitis (a devastating inflammation of the spinal cord that can cause irreversible paralysis) sufferer Srinivas, who an aspiring accountant from Chennai, and also Prabhdeep, a musician from Punjab who was paralyzed following a motor accident. Both patients are 19-years-old.

“I had no feeling from the chest downwards after the mishap. Now I can walk with a little help,” said Singh, whose legs were encased in braces and moved with the assistance of attendants and a metal contrivance.”

In his lower abdomen, Srivnivas has now regained feeling. He has also regained bladder control.

The treatment has not been limited to only the young either despite Dr. Kumar’s preference to treat “quicker and better healing” younger patients. After falling on his back from a height of 11 feet about two months ago, 46-year-old A. R. K. Reddy opted for the treatment. He was rendered completely immobile after his lumbar spine was fractured in multiple places.

Today, after the stem cell treatment, the engineer who was employed in a multinational company, has regained sensation in the lower body as well as control over his bladder. He can now stand up and move using a walker.

Paraplegics aren’t the only patients who can benefit from stem cell treatment.

Stem cells can be a viable alternative for cardiac bypass surgeries and liver transplants. LISTR worked on developing stem cell treatments for these other conditions in conjunction with Japan’s Nichi Centre for Regenerative Medicine (NCRM).

“Stem cell therapy can cure disabled livers, rejuvenate tired hearts, and make the pancreas of chronic diabetes patients secrete insulin to reduce dependency on injections and pills for a lifetime,” said Raj Kumar.

The cost is another appealing aspect. With a success rate of below 15 percent and a cost of almost 20 times more, regular treatments like transplants are a waste considering only Rs.150,000 ($3,700 U.S. dollars) is needed for a stem cell treatment.

17 patients have shown marked improvement out of the 50 who are under intensive treatment. Another 100 are waiting in line to benefit from the remarkable stem cell treatments after being inspired by the recovery of so many other patients.

According to Singapore-based pediatric hematologist-Oncologist consultant Dr. Anselm Chi-wai Lee, stem cell transplant therapy has made the treatment of cancer affected children less complicated.

Dr. Anselm told a press conference over the weekend that “Children with leukemia or other cancers, as well as some severe inherited immunodeficiency diseases and blood disorders, may benefit from a transplant of hematopoietic stem cells commonly known as a bone marrow transplant. The term hematopoietic stem cell transplant acknowledges the fact that the stem cells that are necessary to regenerate blood and immune functions can now be obtained from peripheral or umbilical cord blood as well as from bone marrow.”

Claiming to be the first person who used a person

A new study has found that the regeneration of tissue is enhanced when stem cells from the muscles from female mice are used as opposed to male mice.

The development of stem cell treatments for many conditions and diseases could be affected by this new discovery.

After almost exclusively using stem cells from female mice without giving it a second thought, scientists who had been conducting numerous studies with the cells made the interesting connection. They decided to investigate if there was any disparity between male and female cells and designed an experiment based on this premise.

Capable of developing into any type of cell in the body, embryonic stem cells are versatile. But more limited in what they can become, muscle stem cells are more specialized and instead of coming from an embryo, they are derived from adult tissue.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, out of 3,500 to 5,000 young boys in the United States, at least one is affected by Duchene muscular dystrophy. Using mice that had been engineered to have a similar disease, researchers injected stem cells from healthy mice into those that were sick.

In humans, the muscle’s cell structure collapses because the disease involves the deficiency of a crucial protein called dystrophin.

The early aging and loss of stem cell reservoirs in adult mice is dependent on the deletion of a gene important in embryo development. The discovery was made by researchers at the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute of the University of Pennsylvania.

Specific varieties of cancer and other disorders in humans are consequences of protein mutations that transpire during DNA damage response. Critical for this response to damaged DNA is a gene called ATR. The inaugural issue of Cell Stem Cell has published the new findings.

“The reason we’re seeing the early signs of aging in these mice is that we’re exhausting their ability to renew tissues,” says Eric J. Brown, PhD, Assistant Professor of Cancer Biology. “We believe these findings may be helpful to the aging and oncology fields since premature aging syndromes and many cancers involve the loss of DNA repair genes.”

Within three to four months, the mice used in the study began to exhibit signs of osteoporosis, graying hair, and hair loss. These were obvious characteristics of premature aging. All the symptoms occurred when the researchers deleted ATR in the adult mice tissue.

A reservoir of specific adult stem cells exists in most tissues for the function of self-renewal. Since multiple divisions lead to natural breaks in DNA, in order to preserve the integrity of the DNA, these stem cells don’t divide as frequently as other cell types. However, to replenish tissue with new cells, they are capable of rapid division when necessary.

Initially, 10 to 20 percent of cells that escaped ATR deletion were able to reconstitute tissues in the engineered mice explained Brown. But overall, the majority of mouse cells without ATR had an overwhelming amount of DNA damage and could not contribute to tissue renewal.

“Think of aging as a slow loss of stem cells, a deterioration of pools of cells that reside in each tissue type,” says Brown. We accelerated the aging process by wiping out a large fraction of these cells prematurely, in one fell swoop. Essentially, these mice start their young adulthood with two strikes against them in terms of long-term tissue maintenance, and so, they subsequently age before their time.”

Brown, first author Yaroslava Ruzankina, and Amma Asare will be using the new knowledge of how stem cells, DNA repair, and the aging process interconnect in the mouse model to discover compounds that preserve stem cells and may, consequentially, suppress aging.

Observing bone-marrow-derived stem cells, separate groups of U.S. and British scientists have shown that premature aging is caused by DNA damage.

The practice of adult stem cell transplantations will be affected by the discovery.

Small pools of slowly dividing stem cells are something that long-lived multi-cellular organisms depend on to replenish lost tissue. With negligible mutations throughout life, it is imperative that the reserves are maintained and self-renewed.

Using a mouse strain that had trouble repairing DNA damage, Richard Cornall and colleagues at Oxford University studied the bone-marrow-derived stem cells taken from the mouse. The scientists determined that un-repaired DNA damage in stem cells can lead the way to an age-dependent decline in their numbers.

Determining that the blood-forming stem cells from the bone marrow of mice build up DNA damage with age was Stanford University

The equivalent of embryonic stem cells have been produced in mice with the use of skin cells. This advance in stem cell research does not entail the controversial destruction of embryos. The findings were reported Wednesday be three independent teams of scientists.

Without the controversial political and ethical debates surrounding the use of embryos, the method could show the way to breakthrough medical treatments if it can be duplicated in humans. However, that would be a considerable leap.

None the less, the achievement impressed many experts.

Helping his significant other with the daily chores would be a dream come true for Andrew. This may seem odd, but running out for groceries, mowing the lawn, even a day spent cleaning the gutters would be ideal.

It was these activities, or work as most would put it, that Andrew took for granted a year and a half ago. Not surprisingly, most of us probably feel the same way. But then a motorcycle crash left the 41-year-old paralyzed, and unable to experience even the mundane things in life.

But a private Indian hospital has accepted him as a patient, and on June 20th he will receive stem cell treatment that will potentially restore his ability to walk.

When a driver changed lanes without checking, he swerved his motorcycle to avoid an accident, but lost control of his bike changing his life forever on October 1, 2005.

“I’ve gone down a big ditch on the shoulder of the round-about and I don’t remember this, but I ran through a tree and came back onto the road. All I remember is coming to and trying to get up and then it was like, ‘hang on, I can’t move my legs’.”

He was told that he would be paralyzed from the chest down after being flown to the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane. He had damaged his spinal cord between the T6 and T7 vertebrae.

At the hospital Andrew met an important woman. Following stem cell therapy, Sonya regained sensation in her legs and her control over her bowel and bladder as well. After being treated by Dr. Geeta Shroff at the Delhi Nu-Tech Medicare facility, she made international headlines due to her amazing progress.

Sonya’s life was similar to Andrew’s once. She was told that she would need to figure out a way to live with her disability, and Andrew knew her when she was in the same state. After stem cell therapy, when she was once again wiggling her toes, Andrew watched a news story about her on television. By this time, Andrew had already talked to her about her stem cell treatment after tracking her down while she was still in India.

“She told me about Dr. Shroff and her treatment and obviously she was over the moon,” he said.

“She had gone from being in a wheelchair for the rest of her life, to standing again. In two years she has been told she will be walking, unassisted. It may not be a normal gait, but who cares? It’s something.”

Andrew ended up booking his own procedure after doing extensive research on stem cell therapy and contacting Dr. Shroff himself.

He will start his first series of stem cell injections a day after he arrives in India with the rest of his young family. His household partner, Sarah-Jayne Matthews will fly with him as well on June 19th.

He will need to stay in India for 2-3 months to complete the entire course of treatment. They are admittedly a bit short on cash for the entire endeavor despite numerous fundraising efforts and the help of friends and family.

They want to be able to afford a camcorder to track Andrew’s progress. So they can keep in touch with friends and family, a 3G phone would also be nice. And the children need to continue their school work while overseas so purchasing a notebook computer is also in order.

Within the medical community, Dr. Shroff refuses to publish her results and this has drawn criticism from medical professionals. Andrew understands he is taking a risk, but he has seen all the proof he needs.

Andrew has seen and talked to patients who have gotten better, dramatically in some cases. So the fact that Shroff has been labeled as a quack by experts is irrelevant to Andrew, and misleading.

Any chance he has to regain the part of his life he lost is worth taking according to Andrew. He spent his life before the accident being active and will travel to India to potentially restore his body.

“I’ve never ever given up hope that I will walk again and I never will,” he said.

“From day one, I have researched all the different stem cell procedures around the world and this is my best chance. This is the best chance that is available to me.”

“There is a fear factor in everything you do. That’s normal. There could be repercussions from it, but I’m willing to accept that.”

“I don’t expect to go in there and suddenly be able to walk out. That’s aiming too high. But it’s a ‘what if’ situation. What if I didn’t go and what if I was one of the ones who did get out of their wheelchair?”

“For that, I’m willing to take the risk. Because I have nothing to lose and any improvement is 200% on what I have now.”