Stem Cell Therapy Lessens Damage Caused By Stroke

Until recently, the promise of stem-cell therapy has centered on stem cells’ ability to morph into virtually any kind of cells. But researchers are finding that stem cells may have other healing effects. In recent studies, scientists have observed stem cells acting as anti-inflammatory agents, reducing swelling and even scarring when administered to injured tissue.
However, while stem cells’ anti-inflammatory effects have been observed in a number of disease models, it has been difficult to pinpoint exactly how stem cells have this effect. Now a group at Tulane University, led by Darwin Prockop, director of the Center for Gene Therapy, has found that injecting human stem cells into the brains of stroke-induced mice triggers immune cells to produce chemicals that protect nerve cells, thereby reducing swelling and scarring. Prockop, now director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Texas A&M Health Science Center, says that understanding the mechanism behind stem cells’ anti-inflammatory effect could help researchers develop therapies for stroke and related diseases.
“In diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s disease, there is an excessive early inflammatory response, and stem cells can sense that,” says Prockop. “If you can turn that inflammation down, everything improves.”
 

Stem Cells Cure Cerebral Palsy,
 
 
12 Sept, The Denver Post
 
 

 
In their experiments, described in a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Prockop and his team induced a stroke in mice by blocking blood flow to their brains for 15 minutes. They then injected bone-marrow-derived human stem cells into the oxygen-deprived portion of the brains of some of the mice and observed the interactions between stem cells and the neural environment over a period of about two weeks.
Although the injected stem cells disappeared after just five days, the researchers found that they had a lasting effect on surrounding brain cells. Mice treated with stem cells experienced 60 percent less cell death compared with mice who did not receive the treatment. Furthermore, when placed in an open environment, the treated mice behaved much like healthy mice, actively exploring the space around them, unlike their more lethargic untreated counterparts.
With one simple word from the back seat of a car cruising between North Carolina and New York, 2-year-old Chloe Levine signaled a great leap forward.
"Coco," the Colorado toddler said, uttering her nickname for the first time.
Those two syllables marked a milestone in stem-cell therapy, helping prove that infusing a baby with its own stem cells can repair a brain ravaged by cerebral palsy.
Before a one-time treatment at Duke University in May, Chloe had speech problems, and the right side of her body was nearly paralyzed. Now she's jumping off beds, applying doll barrettes with her right hand and learning new words every day. The Duke experiments expand again the remarkable range of bodily failures that stem cells can repair.
Chloe Levine, 2, jumps on her bed recently, a simple action that she could barely do a year ago with cerebral palsy that affected her right side. An experimental stem-cell procedure, using her own stem cells, helped improve the toddler's mobility. (Joe Amon, The Denver Post )
But even more, the word "Coco" made a mom and dad ecstatic. For Jenny Levine, Chloe's recovery is equal parts science, magic and miracle.
"It's like somebody unlocked the door on her personality, and it just charged through," said Jenny, as Chloe and her 4-year-old sister, Shayla, thumped and squealed from bed to floor in a room upstairs. In between jumps, Chloe used her relaxed right hand — which for two straight years had been balled up in a nearly useless fist — to turn up the volume on a "Barney" episode.
Just two days after Chloe's stem-cell infusion, "things started happening that she could never do before, and we finally let ourselves stop thinking it was a coincidence," Levine said.
 
Cochlear Repair After Transplant Of Human Cord Blood Cells May Make Hearing
 
Sept 5, Medical News Today
 
Restoration PossibleAccording to an Italian research team publishing their findings in the current issue of Cell Transplantation (17:6), hearing loss due to cochlear damage may be repaired by transplantation of human umbilical cord hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) since they show that a small number migrated to the damaged cochlea and repaired sensory hair cells and neurons.

For their study, the team used animal models in which permanent hearing loss had been induced by intense noise, chemical toxicity or both. Cochlear regeneration was only observed in animal groups that received HSC transplants.

Researchers used sensitive tracing methods to determine if the transplanted cells were capable of migrating to the cochlea and evaluated whether the cells could contribute to regenerating neurons and sensory tissue in the cochlea.
"Our findings show dramatic repair of damage with surprisingly few human-derived cells having migrated to the cochlea," said Roberto P. Revoltella, MD, PhD, lead author of the study.

Cord blood can be used to treat adult leukemia
 
Posted: Aug. 21, 2008, WRAL.com
 
Durham, N.C. — For the past 20 years, cord blood stem cell transplants have been used to treat leukemia and other blood diseases.

Cord blood is most often used in children because the blood comes from the umbilical cord, which holds a limited quantity, according to the National Marrow Donor Program. Cord blood also doesn't have to be as close a blood or tissue match as bone marrow does.

Duke University Medical Center is a pioneer in cord blood stem cell transplants. Doctors have worked mainly with children, but not entirely.

Gayle Searls is proof the treatment can be used in adults as well. Twelve years ago, Searls was Duke’s first adult cord blood transplant patient.

In 1996, Searls began feeling unusual fatigue. She would bruise easily, and her lymph nodes were swelling.

“I was literally at work that day and in the hospital that night with leukemia,” Searls said.

Searls was diagnosed with acute lymphacytic leukemia that required a matching bone marrow donor, but none could be found.

At the time, doctors at Duke were just learning how to use the blood transplant and figuring out who it would best work for, said Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg, director of the Stem Cell Program at Duke.

Only 14 percent of donor units have enough cells to treat an adult, Kurtzberg said. Chemotherapy and radiation kill bone marrow, which allows the new stem cells to work.

“The transplant actually rescues the bone marrow after the therapy kills it,” Kurtzberg said.

After seven weeks in the hospital, Searls went home. A month later, she was off all medication and has stayed that way.

“I would have died if I had not had the stem cells – the cord blood stem cells,” Searls said.

Searls now works at Carolina's Cord Blood Bank – the source of her cure.

“She really is an example that cord blood can help adults,” Kurtzberg said.

Besides treating blood diseases, doctors have learned that stem cells from umbilical cord blood also help repair tissue damage in several organs like the heart. Researchers are trying to better understand how that happens.

Can stem cells save patients from amputation?
 

August 11th, 2008 @ 6:14pm
By Ed Yeates
 

Utah doctors want to know if a patient's own stem cells might save them from amputation.
The University of Utah is starting a unique clinical trial using volunteer patients who are at a critical stage of their vascular disease.
Surgeons may have to amputate a limb for a number of reasons. Patients might be soldiers, or victims of an accident, or they might have what is called peripheral vascular disease. Diabetes, age, smoking, high cholesterol and genetics all play a role in how this disease blocks vessels going to the lower limbs. In critical stages, patients are at the end of their rope.
Dr. Larry Kraiss, a vascular surgeon for University Health Care, said, "There is really nothing else that is available to them. The bypass is not going to work. Angioplasty isn't going to work, or that has been tried and failed. So we're talking about people who have no other options to consider except an amputation."
This unique clinical trial is about to give them one more option. It's experimental, but it's an option that in animal studies has shown how stem cells injected into areas affected by the disease re-grow blood vessels.
Stem cells from study volunteers will be brought to the University of Utah's cell therapy lab. There they'll be purified and concentrated. The cells will be drawn from the blood stream of patients who have been given a medication. That medication literally mobilizes the stem cells out of the bone marrow.
Once prepared in the lab, the concentrated cells go back to those same patients.
Dr. Kraiss said, "We're hopeful that taking a lot of these cells from the patient's own bone marrow and then injecting it into the areas where there's poor blood supply that these cells will basically manufacture new blood vessels."
The University of Utah was selected as part of a nationwide clinical trial that in total is looking for a select group of 75 patients.
If you're interested in these clinical trials, or to see if you are eligible, see the link on this page.
EVERY time three-year-old Bethanie Thomson looks at her little brother, she will be staring at the boy who saved her life.
 

Aug 11, 2008, SmartCells 
 
The young leukaemia sufferer is recovering after receiving a life-saving stem cell transplant from her baby brother – without which she would have faced certain death.

Now she is taking her first steps on the road to recovery and, although she still requires 15 different types of medication and regular trips to the Sick Kids hospital in Edinburgh, and Yorkhill in Glasgow, the future is looking bright – thanks to seven-month-old Joshua.

Her dad Stuart Jackson, 31, said: "The bond between her and her brother is just amazing. We've always told Bethanie what a special boy he is and what he has done for her. They're like two peas in a pod and I have never seen her look so healthy.

"She has even been able to go on rides at a funfair, which she's never been able to do before. That was so nice to see.

"There's a whole new world out there for her now, and that's all because of Joshua.

"She's still not able to stand – the doctors are looking into that – but we stand Joshua in front of her as motivation because she wants to teach him to walk.

"In many ways he is like her big brother – a mini version."

Bethanie was diagnosed with leukaemia when she was just six months old. She bravely fought her way through it, started to learn to walk and was looking forward to a normal childhood when she relapsed aged two – just before Joshua was born on Boxing Day.

When doctors told her parents, Stuart and Vicky Thomson, from Wallyford, East Lothian, that cells from the umbilical cord were a perfect match making them suitable for a transplant they could not believe it.

Stuart said: "I didn't really think it would work – I always had doubts. When it did work it took a few days to sink in.

"There was the possibility of a lot of side-effects afterwards, but Bethanie has breezed through it, she's really done well."

The operation itself happened in June, around the time of Bethanie's third birthday, and for safety reasons Joshua was not allowed in her hospital room.

Her parents would hold him at the door window and she would hold up pictures she had drawn for him to see.

With Bethanie undergoing such intensive treatment, Joshua has spent much of his short life in hospital waiting rooms, and the bubbly young lifesaver has become a favourite with nurses.

Stuart said: "He is a lovely little boy. All the nurses love him and give him lots of hugs."

Taking blood rich in stem cells from the umbilical cord is still a relatively new procedure. But experts believe future medical advances will lead to stem cells being used to treat illnesses such as Alzheimer's.