Until recently, when a patient suffering a heart attack arrived at a hospital, doctors could open the blocked blood vessel and restore blood flow to prevent further damage. But there was nothing they could do to reverse the harm already done. That damage — scarring that can kill up to 50 percent of the heart — leaves patients with difficulty breathing, loss of energy and the inability to do things such as walk up stairs. Some patients need transplants. And some end up with hearts so weak they die.

The solution: Now doctors can repair that damage. In U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved trials, a number of hospitals across the country have been injecting the patient’s stem cells into the heart and watching as the damaged muscle is restored to its previously healthy state. The weakened heart becomes pliable again. It contracts normally. And it pumps blood closer to the way it did before the heart attack. That research also found that the earlier the stem cells are injected, the better the heart repairs itself.

But there’s a downside to the treatment.

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Stem cell researchers have a lot of big dreams, and one is to someday regenerate damaged hearts. That is still many years away from becoming a commercial reality, if ever, but a few University of Washington scientists have formed a new company that hopes to make cells that can replace pacemakers, and someday rebuild damaged heart tissue that people are left with after heart attacks.

The company, Bellevue, WA-based Beat BioTherapeutics, is the brainchild of Chuck Murry and Michael Laflamme, a pair of UW stem cell researchers, and UW bioengineering professor Buddy Ratner. It has roots in about a decade of research, with $20 million of funding from the National Institutes of Health, Ratner says. No venture capitalists have chipped in to carry this work forward through the early phases of development, although the fledgling company has found another way forward through a partnership with the Bellevue, WA-based Hope Heart Institute, that will provide it with services and support, says CEO Stephen Quinn.

The basic concept of BeatBio, as it’s known for short, is a marriage of stem cell biology and biomedical engineering. Murry and Laflamme’s work has at least partly paved the way for the company to reprogram adult skin cells, to give them vast potential to become other types of cells, like those of the heart. BeatBio specifically wants to direct these cells to become cardiac pacemaker cells, and also cardiomyocytes, the cells that make up heart ventricles. Importantly, scientists have shown the cells can be kept proliferating over time in live animals, Ratner says (…)

“Somebody’s got to be crazy enough to take stem cell therapies to the market,” Quinn says.

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Expectant parents must make several important medical decisions. Among them: whether to have prenatal genetic testing, request pain medication during labor, strive for a natural birth or circumcise a male baby?
Perhaps one of the most overlooked parts of childbirth preparation is whether to save or donate the infant’s umbilical cord blood.

Umbilical cords are usually discarded as medical waste. But the potential uses for cord blood are growing, making it imperative that families understand their options, including whether to pay to have the blood stored for possible use in the event of their child’s illness or to donate it to a public bank so it’s available to any child who may need it.
“I think every couple who is pregnant should look into this and make a decision for themselves about what to do,” says Dr. Charles Sims, co-founder of the California Cryobank, which offers private storage. “Every doctor treating them should also be informed.”

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The Phase 1 trial, will assess the safety of stem cells, and the surgical procedures and devices required, for multiple injections of the cells directly into the spinal cord.

“This is the first U.S. clinical trial of stem cell injections into the spinal cord for the treatment of ALS,” says principal researcher Jonathan Glass, professor of neurology in the School of Medicin, and director of the Emory ALS Center. “Our main goal in this early phase is to determine whether it is safe to inject stem cells into the spinal cord and whether the cells themselves are safe.”

Three patients with ALS have received injections since the trial began in January. Up to twelve individuals will be enrolled at in this phase of the trial.

Nicholas Boulis, assistant professor of neurosurgery I the School of Medicine and a pioneer in developing surgical methods for delivery of therapeutics to the spinal cord, is performing the surgical procedures.

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When most groups of mammalian cells are faced with a shortage of nutrients or oxygen, the phrase “every man for himself” is more apt than “all for one, one for all.” Unlike colonies of bacteria, which often cooperate to thrive as a group, mammalian cells have never been observed to help one another out. But a new study led by a researcher at the Stanford University School of Medicine has shown that certain human embryonic stem cells, in times of stress, produce molecules that not only benefit themselves, but also help nearby cells survive.

“Altruism has been reported among bacterial populations and among humans and other animals, like monkeys and elephants,” said Stanford postdoctoral scholar Bikul Das, MBBS, PhD. “But in mammalian cells — at the cellular level — the idea of altruism has never been described before.” Das is the lead author of a paper, published online June 11 in Stem Cells, documenting altruistic behavior by human embryonic stem cells, or hESCs.

While altruism is generally thought of as a virtue, it can have a downside for hESCs: The altruistic cells appear to be more prone to accumulating mutations, a sign that they could lead to cancers. A better understanding of hESC altruism could provide new insights into cancer therapies, as well as improving scientists’ ability to develop safe and effective stem cell treatments for other diseases.

(...) Read the rest of Unusual ‘altruistic’ stem cell behavior with possible link to cancer

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