An Alternative to Stem Cells for Treating Chronic Brain diseases!

With ethical issues concerning use of discarded embryos and technical problems hindering development of stem cell therapies, scientists in Korea are reporting the first successful use of a drug-like molecule to transform human muscle cells into nerve cells. This advance could lead to new treatments for stroke, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and other neurological disorders.

In the study, Injae Shin and colleagues point out that stem cell research shows promise for repairing or replacing damaged nerve cells to treat such diseases. However, many barriers hinder efforts to move those therapies from lab to clinic. The use of "small molecules" -- compounds that include most drugs -- to generate new nerve cells from easily available cells or tissues would provide a more convenient and attractive approach to stem cell therapies, the new study notes.

The researchers exposed immature mouse muscle cells (myoblasts) growing in laboratory cell cultures to neurodazine, a synthetic small molecule. After one week, 40-50 percent of the myoblasts were transformed into cells that resembled both the structure and function of nerve cells, including expression of neuron-specific proteins. Additional studies showed a similar transformation in a group of human skeletal muscle cells that were exposed to the same chemical for several days, they add.

"In conclusion, we have developed the first small molecule that can induce neurogenesis of non-pluripotent myoblasts and the cells derived from mature, human skeletal muscle," the report states. "These studies build upon recent research illustrating the value of chemical approaches for providing tools that differentiate lineage-committed cells into other cell types."

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Advances in Telomere Therapy Outstrip Stem Cell Therapy Without Raising Ethical Concerns

The debate over stem cell research and its ethical and moral implications continues to rage on even though there seems to be an alternative to stem cell therapy that is decidedly better.
Among politicians in Washington an effort is being made to block scientists from using embryonic stem cells in research, which is where the future of stem cell therapy seems to be headed, despite the promises such research holds for curing cancer and other serious diseases. Because embryos from which stem cells are cultivated necessarily die, research in this direction has come under fire as unnecessarily killing potential lives.
Regardless of the ethics and morality behind embryonic stem cell research, both sides of the debate have ignored emerging technologies that are likely to make embryonic stem cell research a mute point. Nanotechnologies involving chromosomal telomeres, such as those acquired and developed by Rancho Cordova, California-based Telomolecular, can achieve everything that stem cell therapies achieve but without many of the drawbacks.
Telomeres are protein compounds that act like caps on the ends of chromosomes and make sure that the DNA replication process ends the way it’s supposed to when a cell divides. But every time a cell divides the telomeres shorten and eventually they become exhausted. Telomere exhaustion has been linked with numerous age-related diseases and with cancer. Stem cell therapy attempts to address this problem by growing new tissue with renewed telomeres in place of the tissue with exhausted telomeres. But stem cell therapy can lead to development of cancerous or abnormal tissues.
Telomere therapy, combined with Notch 1 therapy (used in treating regeneration abnormalities in non-dividing cells), regenerates exhausted tissues comprehensively and does not just grow new tissue in the presence of old tissue. This results in a significantly lower chance of growing cancerous and abnormal cells. Additionally, telomere therapy can be administered via non-invasive drugs to treat disease in targeted locations, which is not true of stem cell therapies.
“By combining telomere therapy with Notch 1 therapy we can accomplish everything that stem cell therapy can,” said Telomolecular chief executive officer Matthew A. Sarad. “Plus these technologies can be administered in sensible, non-invasive ways.”
Telomolecular is using its proprietary technologies in research that shows strong promise of treating and preventing cancer, reversing age-related diseases, and regenerating bone and other tissues. The treatments being developed by Telomolecular do not involve the cultivation of stem cells, therefore ethical and moral considerations linked to embryonic stem cell research do not apply to the research being done by Telomolecular and other biotechnology firms investigating telomere therapies.
Without a doubt, the promise of combating cancer and other diseases with telomere therapy outweighs the moderate success of stem cell therapies. It’s time that scientists and politicians turn their attention to this developing technology and forget the ethics-challenged hope of embryonic stem cell research.

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Adult Stem Cell Regulation - New Theory !!

Forsyth Institute scientists have discovered an important mechanism for controlling the behavior of adult stem cells. Research with the flatworm, planaria, found a novel role for the proteins involved in cell-to-cell communication. This work has the potential to help scientists understand the nature of the messages that control stem cell regulation -- such as the message that maintain and tells a stem cell to specialize and to become part of an organ e.g.: liver or skin.

In recent years, planarians have been recognized as a great model system to molecularly dissect conserved stem cell regulatory mechanisms in vivo. Planarians have powerful regeneration capability that makes them ideal for studying this process. The Forsyth team uses planarians and other animal models to study development and regeneration.

The Forsyth team will publish this research in the August 16 issue of Development. According to the paper's lead author, Nestor J. Oviedo, a postdoctoral fellow in the Forsyth Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology, this work, highlighting the importance of direct cell-cell transfer of small molecules between stem cells and their neighbors, provides an important roadmap for learning about regeneration. "These findings suggest that similar mechanisms may be extraordinarily relevant for controlling the behavior of migratory, plastic cells. Further analysis in both planarians and in vertebrates will provide crucial opportunities for understanding what drives stem cell behavior and may help medical science identify novel therapeutic targets."

The Forsyth team previously found that communication through gap-junctions (microscopic tunnels directly linking neighboring cells) controls the left-right asymmetric positioning of the internal organs during embryonic development. In this study, they turned to the role of gap junctional signals as regulators of adult stem cells in repair of injury.

Drs. Oviedo and Levin focused on direct cell-cell transfer of small molecules and ions as crucial signals that determine behavior of adult stem cells in vivo. They showed that when one of many specific gap junction channel types was abolished, the adult stem cell pool disappeared along with the regenerative capabilities, suggesting that gap junction-permeable signals are necessary to maintain stem cell state and tissue regeneration. This research demonstrates a novel role for gap-junction proteins and suggest gap junction-mediated signaling as a new and tractable control point for adult, somatic cell regulation

Most recent work in the stem cell field has focused on the secreted protein factors that control embryonic stem cell differentiation. However, no specific gap junction protein had been functionally linked to adult/somatic stem cell behavior in vivo or to organ regeneration. This work demonstrates that gap junction channels providing direct cell-to-cell communication are a critical component for development and normal physiology.

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New Adult Stem Cell Treatment A Possible Antidote For Dilated Cardiomyopathy

Cardiomyopathy is a term that means "heart muscle disease." It is also a term describing a series of disorders causing primary heart muscle dysfunction in both men and women, often leading to heart failure or sudden death. It is estimated that dilated cardiomyopathy, the most common form of cardiomyopathy is responsible for 10,000 deaths each year in the United States. There is no known cure.

Now, Theravitae, an international biotechnology company based in Thailand, claim they have a new possible panacea for dilated cardiomyopathy -- Theravitae's adult stem cell therapy. Theravitae's patented adult stem cell therapy, VesCell, is proving a lifeline to all those heart patients who do not wish their lives to be characterized by restricted activity, low energy, pain, cost and brevity. One of their biggest success stories is Michigan native, Jason Ludwick.

Jason Ludwick aged 34 from West Bloomfield, Michigan, counts himself a lucky man. Born with an atrial septal defect, by the time he was 15 he had a pacemaker; by 21 he was diagnosed as having cardiomyopathy and by 25 he had a defibrillator in place and an ejection fraction of just 8-10 percent. Heart failure dominated and restricted his life until he received adult stem cell therapy. Now he says that with training he could do a triathlon.

His mother searched for help after he was removed from a heart transplant list. He was then left only with medications, some of which had unpleasant side-effects and he felt constantly tired and depressed as he went back and forth to specialists having his medications reviewed. And then his mother found Theravitae, the Israeli-Thai researcher and developer of adult stem cell therapy, and Dr. Patel from the University of Pittsburgh. After being examined by Dr. Patel, Jason's life was about to change.

Dr. Patel felt that adult stem cells could help Jason, so he flew to Bangkok where a small amount of his blood was withdrawn and the stem cells that could help his heart were harvested in a laboratory then injected directly into his heart muscle at Bangkok Heart Hospital. Just one month later, Jason knew his life was going to change, "My heart was beating better, more rhythmically, and I had more energy," he said. "After six months I was up and flying, feeling 100 percent different. I could mow the lawns, take walks, ride a bike with my kids, lift weights -- do whatever I liked," he said. "I'm always on the go with our fifth child on the way and always busy as a full-time parent."

Jason has always enjoyed a huge level of support from his family and friends, but is very happy to spend time advising other cardiomyopathy sufferers of the power of positive thinking. "Always try to be positive," he counsels. "There is hope. Take care of your diet and help get the word out that adult stem cell therapy is worth getting done. It's nothing like what you would have thought." He loves helping Theravitae as a patient volunteer, talking to patients contemplating flying to Thailand for the help that is currently unavailable in the U.S.

The trend will continue to grow as more and more people become aware that they cannot be harmed by a therapy that uses their own adult stem cells and that the procedures are straightforward, effective and performed in world-class hospitals by skilled, often eminent, heart specialists. Most encouraging clinical outcomes are being supported by research findings as well as by patient report.

About TheraVitae

TheraVitae is a private, multinational company focused on using stem cells from the patient's own blood in order to treat a variety of disorders, especially cardiovascular diseases. The company has developed a proprietary stem cell technology, 'VesCell', that is currently being used by hospitals in Thailand and Singapore to treat patients with heart disease and peripheral artery disease.

VesCell -- A Natural Treatment for Heart Disease and Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD)

The body has natural ways of healing itself and the cardiovascular system is no exception. Angiogenic Cell Precursors (ACPs) originate in bone marrow and then circulate in the blood vessels. To manufacture VesCell, TheraVitae expands a small number of ACPs harvested from about 250cc of blood into a therapeutic quantity. VesCell is injected either through a coronary artery via catheter, or during surgery, directly into the heart muscle.

A key aspect of VesCell therapy is the advanced cell isolation and expansion technique that allows for the ACPs to be harvested from blood collected in a procedure similar to a common blood donation. VesCell uses a patient's own adult stem cells to treat Heart Disease and PAD and is a viable therapeutic possibility for heart or PAD patients without any other treatment option.

http://www.theravitae.com
http://www.vescell.com

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