News concerning the storage of umbilical cord blood stem cells and their potential use in treating diseases.
This section is updated according to the news Safetycord deemed relevant for the sector, taking into account families who are considering storing stem cells from umbilical cord blood of their baby.
Like snake oil salesmen, clinics claiming astonishing curative results from stem cell treatments often do not have licensed physicians administrating the treatments, no scientific evidence supporting their work, and they rely on testimonials for advertising and promoting the value of their product...
An experimental treatment for macular degeneration being tested in a clinical trial has the potential to stop the condition and potentially restore vision, researchers say. Multipotent cells from unbilical cord blood are being tested as a treatment for the most common form of macular degeneration, with the hope the treatment can stop progression of the disease early enough to prevent its worse effects...
Adult stem cells may skirt the pesky theological issues raised by embryonic stem cell research, but their unregulated marketplace is raising ethical issues of its own. A study released at the end of last month found hundreds of clinics across the country that are marketing “unapproved” stem-cell therapies directly to patients...
Writing in the March 28 issue of Nature Medicine, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System, with colleagues in Japan and Wisconsin, report that they have successfully directed stem cell-derived neurons to regenerate lost tissue in damaged corticospinal tracts of rats, resulting in functional benefit...
In 2013, the Indian Council of Medical research had introduced guidelines that said stem cell for most diseases, excluding cancer and thalassemia, should be considered experimental. The eye specialists are seeking a reversal of that policy. "We have submitted our results to the government, which have been on par with many developed countries, including Europe, where it´s now the standard of care," said senior scientist Dr D Balasubramanian, director of research at LV Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad...
If this human breakthrough had occurred with embryonic stem cells, the front page stories would have screamed around the world. But it was adult stem cells and so the reporting was muted. You see, the media still–after all these years–tend to judge the newsworthiness of a story based on whether a breakthrough is embryonic. The story is sensational, nonetheless. Adult stem cells have cured blindness and may provide a splendid treatment for cataracts...
Australian children with cerebral palsy will be infused with umbilical cord blood, in a world first medical trial at the Royal Children´s Hospital in Melbourne. The study hopes to find that stem cells from cord blood can repair brain injury that leads to cerebral palsy, the most common physical disability of Australian children. The trial, led by the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, has started recruiting children with cerebral palsy whose families have chosen to store a sibling´s cord blood at private banks...
A dozen infants who were born with cataracts have regained their sight after scientists used a radical new stem cell therapy to regenerate healthy lenses in their eyes. The children, all aged under two, are the first to receive the treatment for a condition that remains the most common cause of blindness in the world. The small-scale trial on babies and toddlers was approved soon after tests in animals found that the approach should both work and produce better results than conventional surgery...
Doctors say they are hopeful a player for a Chicago-area junior hockey team who suffered a spinal cord injury during a game last month will recover from his injuries. Matt Olson lost his balance and slammed into boards last month while playing for the Chicago Cougars. The 20-year-old, a native of Isanti, Minnesota, couldn’t move his arms or legs following the mishap. Doctors were optimistic Tuesday After Olson underwent surgery and experimental treatments...
Melbourne medical experts will conduct world-first trials involving the use of stem cells to regrow damaged knee cartilage, making the need for joint replacement surgery unnecessary. Doctors involved claim the procedure has ceased damage caused by degenerative conditions and has even reversed it...
Our nervous system is involved in everything our body does, from maintaining our breath to controlling our muscles. Our nerves are vital to all we do; therefore, nerve pain and damage can heavily influence our quality of life. In Discovery News latest video, "Why Can´t We Reverse Nerve Damage?" host Lissette Padilla explains the central nervous system (CNS) has certain proteins that inhibit cell regeneration, because each cell in the nervous system has a unique function on the pathway, like a circuit, and can´t be replaced.
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is conducting a clinical trial testing Newark, Calif.-based StemCells´ neural stem-cell treatment for traumatic spinal cord injury patients, according to Pittsburgh Post-Gazette...
Dr. Shinya Yamanaka won a Nobel Prize for his work with induced pluripotent stem cells. Based on that singular research, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill pharmacy scientists have transformed ordinary skin cells into cancer-hunting stem cells that are able to destroy glioblastoma. The UNC team say their experimental medical research may someday provide a more effective treatment for this type of brain tumor...
Richard M. Gronostajski, PhD, professor of biochemistry, has been awarded a three-year, $1 million grant to study neural stem cell (NSCs) therapies for a variety of brain insults and injuries...
Fernando Lavalle-González, MD, an endocrinologist at the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León in Mexico, and colleagues evaluated 16 children (median age, 12 years) with type 1 diabetes to determine the effect of simplified autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in the outpatient setting on long-term insulin independence, changes in HbA1c and the safety of the procedure. The median follow-up was 34 months.
A record number of 40.829 hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) in 36.469 patients (15.765 allogeneic (43%), 20.704 autologous (57%)) were reported by 656 centers in 47 countries to the 2014 survey. Trends include: continued growth in transplant activity, more so in Eastern European countries than in the west; a continued increase in the use of haploidentical family donors (by 25%) and slower growth for unrelated donor HSCT.
Dr. Andrew Goodman of the University of Rochester discussed the latest research and perspectives on stem cell strategies for people with multiple sclerosis (MS), saying in a presentation at the Americas Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ACTRIMS) Forum 2016 that such therapies, while promising, are not yet ready for widespread clinical use.
The data comes from the first cohort of a phase II trial of its mesenchymal precursor cell (MPC) product, which recruited RA patients who were refractory to treatment with biologic therapies including...
Select Biosciences South East Asia is pleased to present the Second Annual Clinical Applications of Stem Cells, taking place on the 24-25 February 2016. Working in partnership with Duke-NUS and The Stem Cell Society Singapore, we look forward to again bringing together researchers, clinicians, the regulatory bodies, academia and industry to discuss translating basic discoveries in the stem cells field into applications for regenerative medicine and cellular therapy...
Diabetes affects around 400 million people across the world. But a potential new treatment has now been identified that tricks stem cells from the stomach into becoming insulin-producing mini organs. The discovery could one day enable such mini organs to be transplanted into a diabetic's body, effectively curing them of the condition...
Stem cell therapy is the use of stem cells to treat or prevent a disease or condition. Stem cells are undifferentiated cells of an organism which are capable of giving rise to indefinitely more cells of the same type...
A new study will evaluate the use of whole umbilical cord blood to help the brain heal quicker after an ischemic stroke. “While previous studies have evaluated the safety of using certain types of stem cells from umbilical cord blood in stroke recovery, this is the first to study the use of whole umbilical cord blood in ischemic stroke patients,” said John J. Volpi, M.D., principal investigator for the study at Houston Methodist and co-director of the Houston Methodist Eddy Scurlock Stroke Center. “We believe that the primitive cells found in whole umbilical cord blood can help reduce swelling in the brain faster and rescue some brain cells that are on the brink of death.”
Now, an experiment in mice has shown the exact opposite. “We thought the baby cells were much tamer,” says team member Paul Veys of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London. “The assumption has been that they won’t fight but it’s the complete reverse,” he says. Veys and his colleagues compared the impact of injecting immune cells from adult or cord blood into mice with a form of human blood cancer called B-cell lymphoma. Tumours rapidly disappeared in the mice that received the fetal immune cells, but kept growing in those that got the adult cells...
Microvesicles can transfer their contents, proteins and RNA, to target cells and thereby transform them. This may induce apoptosis or survival depending on cell origin and the target cell. In this study, we investigate the effect of leukemic cell microvesicles on umbilical cord blood hematopoietic stem cells to seek evidence of apop-tosis or cell survival...