The ‘White Room’ at Meyer pediatric hospital in Florence needs to complete a few more procedures to become completely functional. This stem cell and cellular product ‘factory’ will allow cells to be manipulated for therapies used in bone marrow treatments against leukemia and tumors and in reconstructive medicine to reproduce bone, cartilage, fat, and nervous tissue in metabolic and neurological diseases and treatments for serious autoimmune disorders.

“The certification procedures are very long,” explained the head of transfusions and cellular therapy, Franco Bambi, “because we will be considered a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility, but we are planning to finish the procedures by the end of the year.” The facility is made up of three laboratories, including a quarantine area, a sterilization and decontamination lab, a filter area and as a cryopreservation lab, which will store cells and tissues in containers with liquid nitrogen at -193 degrees. This morning the White Room was given a 300 thousand dollar donation collected from 15,000 Unicoop Florence and Coop members.
The check was delivered this morning by the president of the Unicoop Florence management council Golfredo Biancalani to the president of the Meyer Foundation and the commissioner of pediatrics Tommaso Langiano.

Already 1,500 Coop members have visited the White Room at Meyer after making their donation. Yesterday morning 35 Unicoop sectional presidents were taken on a guided visit by Doctor Franco Bambi together with Regional Health Councilman Enrico Rossi, Meyer President Tommaso Langiano, Unicoop Florence management council president Goffredo Biancalani, and president of the Medical Department at the University of Florence Gianfranco Gensini. “Citizens know that when faced with an important health-care problem, our system is capable of responding,” commented councilman Rossi during the delivery of the check to Meyer by Unicoop Florence. “Initiatives like this one make citizens more involved in their health-care.”

At the event, the ‘Meyermeo’ experimental project for TV and radio for the children at Meyer, done by the students of the Florence art institute and coordinated by director Giovanni Micoli, was also inaugurated.

In the upcoming weeks, all of the hospital rooms will be given multimedia stations, radio ethernet in every room, and areas where videos will be played in playrooms for the children and in the oncohematology unit.
The White Room at Meyer, which should be fully functioning by the end of the year, is already working on several activities. Today, the stem cell manufacturing facility directed by Franco Bimbi received bone marrow from a donor in Honolulu, which was used in a transplant in a child with leukemia.
The marrow arrived to the cellular therapy laboratory through the international donor registry and was requested by Meyer’s oncohematology unit directed by Maurizio Aricò, who currently is treating a patient for leukemia.

If you need more information about STEM CELLS please visit Latest Stem Cells News

Because18 months ago, the thought of getting on a bicycle was too much exertion for the Michigan native. In 2006, at the young age of 34, James suffered a major heart attack, which damaged his heart muscle.

The heart damage left James fatigued, exhausted and short of breath. It was increasingly difficult to meet the demands of his job as an automotive engineer. He was gasping for breath and sweating all the time. His ejection fraction (EF) had sunk to 20-25%. Feeling depressed, James had given up hope of ever improving his quality of life. However, hope was restored when James found Vescell ™ adult stem cell therapy on the internet.

“I was in Class III congestive heart failure and had given up, but the amount of research and patient success stories I found on Vescell™ gave me new hope. I contacted them immediately,” James said.

On November 14, 2007, James flew to Bangkok, Thailand and received 41 million of his own stem cells via catheter to heal his ailing heart muscle. James exclaimed, “I didn’t feel a thing, it was just a simple catheterization!”

James raved about his experience and the care he received in Bangkok, “I have never been so well cared for in all my years going in and out of multiple hospitals for congestive heart failure. The doctors really listened to me and gave me confidence that they were my partners in improving my heart.”

After the treatment, James was thrilled with the results of the Vescell ™. “I had an echocardiogram only 2 weeks after my stem cell therapy and my completely dead apex was beating again. I was shocked and ecstatic at the same time.”

Since then, James has continued to improve and 18 months after treatment, he says, “I can do anything, the sky is the limit. I am now in Class I heart failure. My ejection fraction is at 50% and my doctors have lifted all restrictions.”

Today, James devotes his spare time to help other patients, as a patient volunteer, “I shudder to think how my life would have turned out if I hadn’t found the Vescell website. I was lucky. I want others to get the same second chance that I had.”

James is one of more than 500 patients who have had the Vescell ™ treatment. VesCell™ harnesses and enhances stem cells’ unique abilities, enabling the patient’s own body to heal itself.

from TransWorldNews

If you need more information about STEM CELLS please visit Latest Stem Cells News

Everyone knows about the potential of stem cells in the medical field, but until today, no one had found a way to recognize them in an organ or tissue. Thanks to a new study published in the ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’ by 2007 Nobel Prize winner for Medicine, Mario Capecchi and researcher at Cattolica University in Rome, Eugenio Sangiorgi, this obstacle has been overcome. Experts have found a new technique to find stem cells hidden in the pancreas.

“Although the journals talk a lot about this topic,” said Sangiorgi, who has collaborated with Capecchi for years, “in reality, we experts don’t understand them very well. For example, we don’t have a method to distinguish between a stem cell and another cell a priori in the same tissue. By observing the cell’s behavior we can then figure it out.”
In other words, when a researcher observes a particular tissue, it is not immediately possible to identify the cell with certainty and isolate it.
In some cases, like in the pancreas, until a few years ago, it was doubted if these cells were even present in the organ.

“Together with Professor Capecchi,” continued Sangiorgi, “some time ago we created a method to mark stem cells in tissues. A sort of little flag that could help us label the cells that we were looking for.” To arrive at this conclusion, they used a portion of DNA, which in an animal model, is activated with the use of a drug. Once the marker is ‘turned on’, a special fluorescent protein is produced (which won its discoverers, Osamui Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Tsien, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2008) and is able to illuminate the stem cells. “To understand if they were actually stem cells,” continued Sangiorgi, “we just had to wait: a normal cell will die sooner or later, while a stem cell maintains its capacity to divide and replicate.”
In the new article, Sangiorgi and Capecchi demonstrated with their new technique that certain cells located in the pancreas, called acinar cells, are stem cells in reality. These cells are responsible for the production of an important digestive enzyme.

This is an interesting discovery from another point of view: “In general,” said Sangiorgi, “it was thought that stem cells were cells without a precise function, and that they were undifferentiated and had no set objectives other than tissue regeneration. Instead we have learned that acinar cells, although they are stem cells, have a precise role in the pancreas. They are like soldiers who perform their job normally for the army, but if they are needed they are also available to work for the government too.”

This work has paved the way for new studies on stem cells including their potential risks: “Thanks to their extraordinary reproductive power, they can even become carcinogenic. But if we manage to discover a way to isolate and study them in other organs, we will be able to analyze their properties in-depth and provide many responses on how they function.”(...) Read the rest of ITALY – New technique to recognize pancreatic stem cells discovered

If you need more information about STEM CELLS please visit Latest Stem Cells News

Arndt, a Vancouver resident,  first became interested in stem cell therapy for his multiple sclerosis when he read a story about fellow Canadian Louis Zylstra, a professional golfer who was able to return to the golf course after her multiple sclerosis had forced her to give it up.

Adult Stem Cell Treatment in Israel

Zylstra was helped after seeking stem cell research in Israel where Dr. Shimon Slavin was treating patients with their own Adult Stem Cells.  Arndt saw the stem cell success story and was inspired to seek out the same stem cell treatment as his multiple sclerosis was getting worse.

Stem Cells for Multiple Sclerosis Experience

Here is the whole stem cell experience  in Arndt’s own words–

“I wouldn’t call it success just yet, as I am careful not to report a reversal when it is still early.

I had a bone marrow extraction performed on me in Tel Aviv in late December, 2008. This procedure was quick and I suffered no side effects at all after my butt healed. Dr. Slavin’s team then did their magic which took approx. 2.5 months to grow the needed stem cells from my bone marrow donation. The experience then really started in Istanbul, as non Israeli citizens are not allowed to receive stem cell treatment in Israel as of yet.

I arrived in Istanbul on Friday afternoon on March 6th 2009. As I was advised to stay an additional day after my planned procedure, which was booked for Saturday, I was booked to fly home on Monday morning, thinking this would leave me plenty of time to recover from the stem cell infusion. As it turned out, it is very common to feel nauseous, have headaches and be vomiting for several days after the infusion. I experienced all three symptoms, which felt like a really terrible case of food poisoning. As I arrived, the service that picked me up stated I will be receiving the stem cells that evening, so a day early. Sure enough, as soon as I checked in to the Florence Nightingale Hospital there, I was wheeled into the radio room where the Spinal surgeon quickly administered the anesthesia into my spine, about half way up my back. Within minutes following, I received the stem cells. The whole procedure was about 15 minutes long and involved no serious pain. I was wheeled back into my room and ate dinner. That was the last food for three days, as I felt very nauseous and vomited without sleep for three days. I did hear however, another patient that received the same treatment that day never vomited, just had a terrible headache for three days, so everyone reacts differently to the treatment in terms of side effects.

Monday morning came by and I was still feeling terrible, so after another visit across the street to the hospital, I received some more IV help so I could get on the plane. As I had a layover in London for 3.5 hours, I found a couch where I actually slept for two hours for the first time in three days. When I awoke, I felt a sensation I never have had before. It felt like the whole pressure from my MS dissipated and almost like a massive weight off my shoulders, wow. Then as I got home and slept in my bed, I noticed that my usual cramps that I have at night time also went away completely. Although, I must say that the cramps did come back since then, however not as strong as they once were. My experience since then has been quite good, to date (~2.5 months since infusion), I have recorded MS attacks, however, they are no where near as overwhelming as opposed to my continuous attack prior to infusion. My masseuse (once a week treatment) reports my back, which used to be riddled full of knots and tension is now normal and soft.

As for the progression of my disease, I think the disease is still affecting me, especially I notice symptoms on my left leg may have gotten a bit worse. However, I am just as of late feeling some potential improvement in my ability to walk a straight line without dragging my right leg behind me. Also, some parts have gotten better for example, I can get my right leg into my pants while standing again. This could just be a calm part before the disease progresses, or it could be the potential of nerves growing back and hence ability is better. It is obviously still too early to say for certain, but so far I am feeling very positive and according to the stem cell specialist Dr Slavin in Tel Aviv, I am not to feel much potential in the first three months anyway.

This experience so far has given me back my life as I was suffering a dramatic downward shift in mobility just before the infusion and thus can plan my life a little bit better as compared to before the infusion.

I would so far definitely endorse my treatment and advise people to try it. There is no downside risk except for lost money. There is no chemo therapy.

I hope I explained my experience well enough and will update my experiences again in the near future.”

Best regards,

Arndt Roehlig
Email: arndt@trivello.com

If you want more details on Arndt’s stem cell research experience with his own Adult Stem Cells, please email him at the above email address.

Arndt is just the latest Multiple Sclerosis patient to be helped by stem cell research using his own stem cells. See other stem cell success stories for Multiple Sclerosis here

If you need more information about STEM CELLS please visit Latest Stem Cells News

The Pentagon has made its first significant development with ‘induced’ stem cells (stem cells not obtained from embryos) to regenerate the limbs of amputees who fought in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Researchers were successful in transforming epithelial cells, which were manipulated to regress to their primordial state, into blastemas. A blastema is a mass of undifferentiated cells, which can develop into new body parts. In nature, blastemas are present in salamanders, and newts, animals, which are capable of restoring their own limbs with functionality after amputation.

The final goal, which is still far away, is to replicate this extraordinary capability in humans. Before the final objective, reports Wired, researchers are now targeting a second phase: transforming these cellular masses into molecular tissues. The researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute involved in the discovery received 570,000 dollars from DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The objective is to effectively replace lost muscle,” explained Professor Raymond Page. The DARPA project, “Restorative Injury Repair”, aims to “fully recover the functionality of muscular and nervous tissue that has been damaged or amputated due to injuries suffered during combat”.

The program was launched on April 20th by the Pentagon, which invested 250 million dollars over a 5-year period. The researchers built a new facility, the Military Institute for Regenerative Medicine (AFIRM) to develop the new Japanese technique, which is not the subject ethical controversy, since stem cells are generated with the regression of adult epithelial cells obtained from the patients.
This technique of obtaining stem cells removes the risk of rejection and gives cells the possibility to change into 271 types of tissue in the human body.

If you need more information about STEM CELLS please visit Latest Stem Cells News

For patients who suffer a major heart attack, get treatment at the hospital but are left with a damaged heart, Dr. Roger Gammon of the Heart Hospital of Austin is testing a new process to reverse that damage.

Just as a Houston hospital is investigating stem cells to repair the brains of stroke patients (see yesterday’s blog), the Heart Hospital is trying out a new stem cell therapy to fix the hearts of patients who suffered their first attack.
It is one of the nation’s first hospitals to test the new therapy.

Gammon, an interventional cardiologist, is leading the clinical trial in which patients are injected with donated adult stem cells from the bone marrow of others. The stems cells are purified by Osiris Therapeutics, Inc., which markets them as a product called Prochymal. Osiris is financing the research project, which is being done in the gold-standard way: Half of the patients are getting stem cells, and half are getting a placebo (a harmless product that looks the same). The researchers and patients don’t know which patients are getting the stem cells and which one aren’t.

(...) Read the rest of Austin hospital among first to test stem cells to fix broken hearts

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In an article by Forbes Magazine, they took a fair look at stem cell treatments abroad. Yes, there is the obligatory quote from Irving “they won’t work now- more research more research” Weismann. However, the author tries to show it from a patient’s perspective.

Parkinson’s Disease Treated With Adult Stem Cells

The first Parkinson’s patient she featured was Carlene Victor, who traveled to the Xcell Center in Germany. Carlene suffering from Parkinson’s for 7 years says ” I am not waiting for the FDA to rule to get treatments,” She went to Germany 5 months ago to get stem cell treatment for her Parkinsons. The results???

Victor is underwhelmed by her improvement. While she says she has more control over her feet, and the pain in her stomach that made it hard to sit has abated, her walking has not improved, her right arm still shakes, her wrist hurts continuously and her right foot still tends to numb up.

What if Adult Stem Cell Treatment was Available in the USA

So in this case, all of you can’t accuse Don Margolis of only focusing on the success stories. However, let’s take a closer look at this. What if the FDA wasn’t slowing down progress and made adult stem cell treatment available in the United States. Victor did improve a little bit. Therefore, if the treatment center wasn’t half way across world and cost prohibitive, and her own Adult Stem Cells were available for use in the United States- she could get another treatment here and then probably get a little more improvement with a second treatment and then even more with a third– why not? They are her own cells, her own repair kit- there is no downside to putting them in, just some discomfort. And the FDA isn’t allowing you to use your own stem cells thus making people like her suffer and “wait until the 10 years of clinical trials are done” which haven’t started for Parkinson’s by the way.

Parkinson’s Patient Improved With Adult Stem Cells- Michael J Fox Pay Attention

There was another Parkinson’s patient who went to the same stem cell treatment center as Victor and at the same time. His name was Aubra Phillips, 50, who had suffered from Parkinson’s for 22 years. The Adult Stem Cells worked for him!

From the stem cell article: he’s “60% to 70% better” than he was. He used to drag his legs and have trouble mustering the strength to sign credit card bills; post stem-cell treatment, he can jog and take notes. His stutter is gone too. Says Phillips, “If I can improve the quality of my life for what I have left to live, that is all I am after.”

Stem Cell Research for Congestive Heart Failure

Lastly, the article takes a look at Andy Jordan, who was in congestive heart failure. He came to Bangkok for stem cell treatment with Vescell. Before the “Vescell stem cell treatment“, Andy had an ejection fraction of 19%. After– his ejection fraction was 30-35%– even his doctor was impressed!

All of that included in just one mainstream media article on stem cell research. Maybe things are changing? I sincerely hope so. There are a lot of patients who can be helped right now with Adult Stem Cells!

(...) Read the rest of Adult Stem Cell Research Helps Parkinson’s and Heart Failure Patients

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Patients suffering from blindness now need not wait for donors as doctors have found a way to treat many with the stem cells derived from the cornea of a dead body.
Doctors at the AIIMS and a private clinic in the national capital are using corneal surface stem cells from a cadaver’s (dead person) eye for curing corneal injuries in many.

“We have used the corneal surface stem cells of cadaver’s eye for patients with corneal injury and have been able to correct many vision,” Dr Radhika Tandon, Associate Professor, Department of Opthalmology, AIIMS said, adding “this has been done on over more than 100 patients of corneal injury.” Usually, the standard practice has been a corneal transplant from human cadaver. But due to shortage of donors, doctors have become more specific in their mode of treatment.

The technique has come as a divine blessing to many patients, Tandon said.
“Instead of a whole cornea for one patient, we check the level of injury and use stem cells instead. This way we can help even four patients with one cornea,” Dr Asim Kumar Kandar, Consultant, Centre for Sight, said.
Stem cells exist in various regions of the eye but so far, they can be found at the outer edges of the cornea, he said.

(...) Read the rest of India – Stem cells from single cornea of dead now treating many

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In a startling new interview on stem cell research and adult stem cells in the near future, Dr. Christopher Centeno warns that Big Pharma and the FDA are teaming to control the use of a person’s own stem cells thus slowing innovation and the use of Adult Stem Cells to help patients now.

American Stem Cell Therapy Association

Dr. Centeno has formed the American Stem Cell Therapy Association to challenge the FDA’s assertion that a person’s own stem cells are a drug and thus should be regulated as such ie. subject to 7-10 years of clinical trials for each particular disease and condition.  That is 10 years for heart patients, 10 years of trials for stroke patients etc.

The FDA is Killing People By Slowing Down Use of a Person’s Own Stem Cells

The article/interview in H+ magazine states:

If we’re not careful, these therapies could become the exclusive domain of the pharmaceutical industry, as regulated by the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This could push the availability of this tool kit 15 to 20 years into the future. The opportunity-cost in terms of morbidity and mortality could be catastrophic.

“The Opportunity-cost in terms of morbidity and mortality could be catastrophic? This is just the author’s nice PC way of saying that the FDA is killing people by trying to regulate the use of our own cells.  If the FDA slows down the use of Adult Stem Cells- each year millions will suffer and die needlessly.

More from the article:

To Dr. Centeno (a pioneer in Adult stem cell therapy), it is inconceivable that a person’s own cells could be classified as a drug —  but that’s exactly what the FDA wants to do. “The FDA is working to protect the interests of Big Pharma,” he says. “If we wanted to insert some kind of new genes into these cells, we might all agree that could be a drug  — a new entity. But what we’re doing is simply culturing a person’s own cells. Most of the cells are bone-marrow derived; you can get them from synovial fluid in the knee or from other locations.”

I recommend you read the whole article carefully and see how the FDA is not helping and protecting and serving us-  but in reality, is hurting us.

Here is the link to the Adult Stem Cell article

If you are a doctor and interested in joining forces with Dr. Centeno in taking on the FDA- go to the http://www.stemcelldocs.org

If you are a patient or just interested in fighting the FDA for the use of our own stem cells- go to http://www.safestemcells.org

original post by Don Margolis

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The study – conducted by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and published May 9 – found stem cell gene therapy could protect blood cells from damage by chemotherapy in patients suffering from glioblastoma (malignant brain tumors), thereby extending life expectancy.

The WSU laboratory of co-author Grant D. Trobridge, assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences, developed bioinformatics software that aided the Fred Hutchinson researchers in evaluating the safety of the procedure. The approach was to remove blood stem cells, add a gene that shields them from chemotherapy used to treat the brain tumor, and then reintroduce these protected stem cells.

Trobridge noted the co-lead authors of the Fred Hutchinson study both received their Ph.D.s at WSU – Jennifer Adair in 2005 and Brian Beard in 2003 – in the School of Molecular Biosciences. Both now work at Fred Hutchinson in the laboratory of Hans-Peter Kiem, who was senior author on the paper.

(...) Read the rest of Stem cell shield may protect body from chemotherapy side effects

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