Archive for the ‘Bone Marrow Stem Cells’ Category

HACKENSACK, N.J. and PETACH TIKVAH, Israel, May 1, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics Inc. (BCLI), a leading developer of adult stem cell technologies for neurodegenerative diseases, announced today that the Company will present data from its Phase 2 clinical study of NurOwn in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at the International Society for Cellular Therapy (ISCT) annual conference in London, England, and the World Advanced Therapy and Regenerative Medicine Congress in London, England.

International Society for Cellular Therapy Annual Conference

Date:

Thursday, May 4

Time:

3:30pm - 5:00pm CET

Location:

ExCeL London, London, England

Title:

Safety and Efficacy of Transplantation of NurOwn (Autologous Mesenchymal Stromal Cells Secreting Neurotrophic Factors) in Patients with ALS: a Phase 2 Randomized Double Blind Placebo Controlled Trial

Presenter:

Dr. Yael Gothelf, Chief Regulatory and Scientific Officer, BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics

Date:

Thursday, May 4

Time:

5:00pm - 6.30pm CET

Location:

ExCeL London, London, England

Title:

Poster presentation titled: In vivo modulation of neurotrophic and inflammatory factors in the CSF of ALS patients treated with NurOwn (MSC NTF cells)

Presenter:

Dr. Yael Gothelf, Chief Regulatory and Scientific Officer, BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics

World Advanced Therapies & Regenerative Medicine Congress 2017

Date:

Thursday, May 18

Time:

2:40pm CET

Location:

Business Design Centre, London

Title:

Brainstorm's NurOwn Treatment for Neurodegenerative Diseases

Presenter:

Chaim Lebovits, Chief Executive Officer, BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics

About the International Society for Cellular TherapyEstablished in 1992, the International Society for Cellular Therapy (ISCT) is a global society of clinicians, researchers, regulators, technologists and industry partners with a shared vision to translate cellular therapy into safe and effective therapies to improve patients' lives worldwide. ISCT is the global leader focused on pre-clinical and translational aspects of developing cell-based therapeutics, thereby advancing scientific research into innovative treatments for patients. ISCT offers a unique collaborative environment that addresses three key areas of translation: Academia, Regulatory and Commercialization. Through strong relationships with global regulatory agencies, academic institutions and industry partners, ISCT drives the advancement of research into standard of care. Comprised of over 1300 cell therapy experts across five geographic regions and representation from over 50 countries, ISCT members are part of a global community of peers, thought leaders and organizations invested in cell therapy translation. For more information about the society, key initiatives and upcoming meetings, please visit: http://www.celltherapysociety.org.

About the World Advanced Therapies & Regenerative Medicine Congress12 years ago when the World Stem Cells Congress was launched, the stem cells sector was one of scientific interest. Focusing on the challenges of how to transform these little precursor cells eventually into new tissues and organs. The first stem cells conference was relatively small with only 80 people attending the first event, but we knew we were on the verge of something huge and exciting. In May 2017 the newly named World Advanced Therapies & Regenerative Medicine Congress, will bring together 800+ attendees and explore the rapidly developing world of ATMPs (Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products). From process development to clinical translation this congress will bring you the most exciting case studies and new data. Experts in every area will help you tackle the process and regulatory hurdles of developing these new therapeutic formats all the way through manufacture and into the clinic.

About BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics Inc.BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics Inc. is a biotechnology company engaged in the development of first-of-its-kind adult mesenchymal stem cell therapies derived from autologous bone marrow cells for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. The Company holds the rights to develop and commercialize its NurOwn technology through an exclusive, worldwide licensing agreement with Ramot, the technology transfer company of Tel Aviv University. NurOwn has been administered to approximately 75 patients with ALS in clinical trials conducted in the United States and Israel. In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial conducted in the U. S., a clinically meaningful benefit was demonstrated by higher response to NurOwn compared with placebo. For more information, visit the company's website at http://www.brainstorm-cell.com.

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Safe-Harbor StatementStatements in this announcement other than historical data and information constitute "forward-looking statements" and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics Inc.'s actual results to differ materially from those stated or implied by such forward-looking statements. Terms and phrases such as "may", "should", "would", "could", "will", "expect", "likely", "believe", "plan", "estimate", "predict", "potential", and similar terms and phrases are intended to identify these forward-looking statements. The potential risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, risks associated with BrainStorm's limited operating history, history of losses; minimal working capital, dependence on its license to Ramot's technology; ability to adequately protect the technology; dependence on key executives and on its scientific consultants; ability to obtain required regulatory approvals; and other factors detailed in BrainStorm's annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q available at http://www.sec.gov. These factors should be considered carefully, and readers should not place undue reliance on BrainStorm's forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based on the beliefs, expectations and opinions of management as of the date of this press release. We do not assume any obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect actual results or assumptions if circumstances or management's beliefs, expectations or opinions should change, unless otherwise required by law. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements.

CONTACTS

Media:Uri Yablonka Brainstorm Cell Therapeutics Inc. Phone: (646) 666-3188 uri@brainstorm-cell.com

Investors:Michael Rice LifeSci Advisors, LLC Phone: 646-597-6979 mrice@lifesciadvisors.com

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BrainStorm to Present at Two Scientific Conferences in May - Yahoo Finance

Whether your adult mesenchymal stem cells come from bone marrow or from fat probably does not make a difference in terms of clinical results. Although some centers claim that bone marrow derived cells are superior to fat derived cells, there is no evidence to substantiate that. Recent studies show that fat derived cells make bone tissue much better than the bone marrow derived cells. Some studies are showing different outcomes but it is important to realize that these studies are all done in petri dishes and may not relate to living organism. Also, it is important that one is not mislead in some marketing materials by the word bone in bone marrow, possibly implying that since this is an orthopedic source it must be better for treating orthopedic conditions such as cartilage regeneration. In fact, the bone marrow is part of the reticulo-endothelial system (makes blood cells) and just happens to be found in the center of bone. The truth is, both bone marrow derived and stromal (from fat) derived stem cells are both effective for regenerative therapy and both have the potential to differentiate into mature functional cartilage. However, stem cells from fat are 100 to 1000 times more plentiful and this makes same day procedures (allowed in the US) much more effective with fat derived cells. The higher numbers of cells in fat leads to better clinical outcomes. Also, the quality of bone marrow declines with age and it has less numbers of cells and less healthy cells compared to the fat. The diminution in quantity and quality of bone marrow cells related to age and chronic illness is well documented. Last but not least, the ease of removing fat from under the skin using a mini-liposuction under local anesthetic is much less invasive and MUCH LESS painful than undergoing bone marrow aspiration to obtain bone marrow cells.

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Bone Marrow vs. Fat Derived Stem Cells Continued : Stem ...

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In my opinion, one of the hardest things to accept is a new type of medical treatment, particularly when it changes the philosophy, parameters and overall results that we are expecting and basically used to receiving. Stem cells are undoubtedly no exception to this rule.

About six weeks ago, Eduardo K (a Cuban doctor with a Masters Degree from the University of Pittsburg in internal medicine and nephrology), brought his wife Maria to our institute, in order to assess the possibility of using stem cells to cure the severe chronic pain in her ankle; a pain so severe that it was basically hindering her ability to walk. Dr. K also expressed his extreme hesitation and concerns about having his wife involved in an invasive ankle surgery at this stage of her adult life.

However, while conducting our usual examining process, reviewing her medical records and MRIs and thoroughly discussing my overall recommendations about a potential stem cell transplant, I quickly realized that Dr. K was not a true believer in Stem Cell therapies, since he thought that there was not much medical evidence of their actual effectiveness and he ultimately also confessed that his wife had basically dragged him to accompany her to this particular appointment.

As always, I respectfully explained the reality that stem cells actually repair the damaged cartilage in a microscopic type fashion and thus, while this repair process would not be clearly reflected immediately on future X-rays, I assured them that the pain she was suffering from will soon subside and possibly even completely disappear. In addition, I expressed that I was extremely confident that she would also regain her mobility skills after the procedure, even if this improvement could not be easily detected via a radiological image.

Since Marias options were somewhat limited, added to the fact that months of traditional physical therapy, injections, medications and previous surgeries had completely failed her, Dr. K finally agreed to grant his wifes wishes to have her stem cell transplant (from her own bone marrow and fat) performed, although he was still very skeptical about the process and was showing little enthusiasm.

This morning, both of them attended our follow up appointment (six weeks after the procedure) and surprisingly, Maria and Dr. K happily confirmed that she felt at least 60 percent better, something that no previous traditional medical treatments had been able to accomplish. It was then that I explained to them that her stem cells had acted much faster than expected (something that possibly taught Dr. K an interesting lesson).

As we began to say our goodbyes, the doctor told me (first in English, then in Spanish) that: in spite of my skepticism about stem cell therapies, I can personally attest that the successful results seen on my wife have been irrefutable, and with a smile on both of their faces, they gratefully thanked my staff and I for this amazing improvement.

As I continued to replay the words expressed by this doctor over and over in my mind, I quickly realized how truly incredulous human beings tend to be, with most of us often needing to fail several times at accomplishing something before being able to realize and accept that we were truly mistaken in the first place!

So if you, a friend or relative would like to receive Stem Cell or PRP treatments, please call us at 305-598-7777. For information visit: http://www.stemcellmia.com (available in both English and Spanish), or watch our amazing video-testimonies on our YouTube Chanel and also please follow us on Facebook and Twitter. If you would like to ask a question directly to Dr. Castellanos, please do so via his direct email: stemdoc305@gmail.com.

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The irrefutable success of stem cell treatments Miami's Community ... - Miami's Community Newspapers

Jewish Chronicle

Bone marrow donor forgot he'd registered Jewish Chronicle My phone rang and when I answered they said someone needed my stem cells. They asked me would I still like to donate? I went in the next day for tests and when I was deemed fit and healthy they got me to come back in for the procedure. On Tuesday the ...

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Bone marrow donor forgot he'd registered - Jewish Chronicle

DUARTE >> Evan Braggs, a 32-year-old from Rancho Cucamonga, could not contain his emotions Friday when, for the first time, he met the man who saved his life more than a decade ago.

Its a humbling experience, Braggs said of meeting and embracing his bone marrow donor, Mike Cook, a 49-year-old Marine from Virginia. Braggs and Cook were one of two pairs of donors and recipients meeting for the first time at City of Hopes 41st annual Bone Marrow Transplant Reunion at the hospitals Duarte campus.

Its overwhelming, said Cook. To think that just me saying yes to what I thought was a little thing, turned into such a big thing. I want to thank you (Evan), because you make me a better person.

Sergio Ramirez, 34, of Los Angeles also got to meet and thank in person his donor, Michael Palacios, a 27-year-old from Silver Lake.

My sons were also excited to meet him, especially my youngest who wrote him a poem, and they all have thank-you cards for him, Ramirez said.

Youre a blessing, he said to Palacios.

The yearly event celebrates the work of City of Hope doctors and staff, as well as the success of their transplant program, which has performed more than 13,000 bone marrow, cord blood and stem cell transplants.

More than 4,000 City of Hope transplant recipients, donors, their families and others reunited Friday and were treated to a picnic-style gathering at the campus.

Braggs was a strong young athlete competing in hurdles at Mt. San Antonio College when he was diagnosed with aplastic anemia. The disease prevents a persons blood marrow from making an adequate amount of new blood cells, and can eventually lead to severe heart problems.

The diagnosis was a shock; hed never so much as broken a bone in his life. After several treatments to try to boost his bone marrow production, as well as weekly blood transfusions, doctors determined he needed a bone marrow transplant.

A match was made and Braggs underwent the transplant operation in 2005, while he was on summer break.

Braggs wife, Melina Fregoso, is also a cancer survivor. The couple rode on the City of Hope Rose Parade float together in 2015. She said meeting her husbands donor was an emotional experience.

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Im grateful that I got to meet him today, and to give thanks, Braggs said.

Cook, after serving in the Marines for more than two decades, is now a reverend in charge of the mens ministry at Shiloh New Site Baptist Church in Virginia. He said meeting his recipient for the first time Friday allowed him to understand what his donation truly meant.

Cook was stationed at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia when he attended a blood drive and was offered to register for bone marrow donation. When he signed up, Cook thought of his nephew, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor when he was just a toddler.

I thought, if I ever have the chance to save someone, I would, he said.

Just like Cook, the act of giving came naturally to Palacios. He was a volunteer at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles when representatives from Be The Match registry visited. He signed up as soon as he could.

Its just something I do, Palacios said. We dont feel like heroes. If were in a position to help, were happy to do it.

Sergio Ramirez was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Even after three years of treatment, the disease returned with even greater strength.

Knowing the chances of survival for all patients after relapsing were slim, Ramirez was more concerned with what would happen to his family his wife and three sons.

Ramirez took part in an immunotherapy trial at City of Hope. He responded well to the treatment, and he went into remission. But a bone marrow transplant would be the only thing to prevent the cancer from returning.

Its an amazing feeling every morning I wake up, to hear my kids, to see the sunshine, Ramirez said.

Palacios said he will follow up to make sure he is still on the donor registration list with the hopes that he could have the chance to save another life in the future.

I want to continue to inspire others to donate, he said. After meeting (Ramirez), he can finally say he doesnt have to worry about cancer, and be with his family; that makes me happy and gives me hope.

For more information about City of Hope and bone marrow donor registry, go to http://www.cityofhope.org.

Continued here:
City of Hope brings together bone marrow transplant recipients and donors for first time - The San Gabriel Valley Tribune

Ten years ago, the bones currently in your body did not actually exist. Like skin, bone is constantly renewing itself, shedding old tissue and growing it anew from stem cells in the bone marrow. Now, a new technique developed at Caltech can render intact bones transparent, allowing researchers to observe these stem cells within their environment. The method is a breakthrough for testing new drugs to combat diseases like osteoporosis.

The research was done in the laboratory of Viviana Gradinaru (BS '05), assistant professor of biology and biological engineering and a Heritage Medical Research Institute Investigator. It appears in a paper in the April 26 issue of Science Translational Medicine.

In healthy bone, a delicate balance exists between the cells that build bone mass and the cells that break down old bone in a continual remodeling cycle. This process is partially controlled by stem cells in bone marrow, called osteoprogenitors, that develop into osteoblasts or osteocytes, which regulate and maintain the skeleton. To better understand diseases like osteoporosis, which occurs when loss of bone mass leads to a high risk of fractures, it is crucial to study the behavior of stem cells in bone marrow. However, this population is rare and not distributed uniformly throughout the bone.

"Because of the sparsity of the stem cell population in the bone, it is challenging to extrapolate their numbers and positions from just a few slices of bone," says Alon Greenbaum, postdoctoral scholar in biology and biological engineering and co-first author on the paper. "Additionally, slicing into bone causes deterioration and loses the complex and three-dimensional environment of the stem cell inside the bone. So there is a need to see inside intact tissue."

To do this, the team built upon a technique called CLARITY, originally developed for clearing brain tissue during Gradinaru's postgraduate work at Stanford University. CLARITY renders soft tissues, such as brain, transparent by removing opaque molecules called lipids from cells while also providing structural support by an infusion of a clear hydrogel mesh. Gradinaru's group at Caltech later expanded the method to make all of the soft tissue in a mouse's body transparent. The team next set out to develop a way to clear hard tissues, like the bone that makes up our skeleton.

In the work described in the new paper, the team began with bones taken from postmortem transgenic mice. These mice were genetically engineered to have their stem cells fluoresce red so that they could be easily imaged. The team examined the femur and tibia, as well as the bones of the vertebral column; each of the samples was about a few centimeters long. First, the researchers removed calcium from the bones: calcium contributes to opacity, and bone tissue has a much higher amount of calcium than soft tissues. Next, because lipids also provide tissues with structure, the team infused the bone with a hydrogel that locked cellular components like proteins and nucleic acids into place and preserved the architecture of the samples. Finally, a gentle detergent was flowed throughout the bone to wash away the lipids, leaving the bone transparent to the eye. For imaging the cleared bones, the team built a custom light- sheet microscope for fast and high-resolution visualization that would not damage the fluorescent signal. The cleared bones revealed a constellation of red fluorescing stem cells inside.

The group collaborated with researchers at the biotechnology company Amgen to use the method, named Bone CLARITY, to test a new drug developed for treating osteoporosis, which affects millions of Americans per year.

"Our collaborators at Amgen sent us a new therapeutic that increases bone mass," says Ken Chan, graduate student and co-first author of the paper. "However, the effect of these therapeutics on the stem cell population was unclear. We reasoned that they might be increasing the proliferation of stem cells." To test this, the researchers gave one group of mice the treatment and, using Bone CLARITY, compared their vertebral columns with bones from a control group of animals that did not get the drug. "We saw that indeed there was an increase in stem cells with this drug," he says. "Monitoring stem cell responses to these kinds of drugs is crucial because early increases in proliferation are expected while new bone is being built, but long-term proliferation can lead to cancer."

The technique has promising applications for understanding how bones interact with the rest of the body.

"Biologists are beginning to discover that bones are not just structural supports," says Gradinaru, who also serves as the director of the Center for Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience at the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience at Caltech. "For example, hormones from bone send the brain signals to regulate appetite, and studying the interface between the skull and the brain is a vital part of neuroscience. It is our hope that Bone CLARITY will help break new ground in understanding the inner workings of these important organs."

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Transparent Bones Enable Researchers to Observe Stem Cells Inside - Laboratory Equipment

A local stem cell study is changing the future of orthopedics.

A new study taking place at the Andrews Institute in Northwest Florida could shape the future of orthopedic surgery.

The goal of the study, spearheaded by Dr. Adam Anz and already eight years in the making, is to use stem cells to regrow cartilage.

If approved, it will be the first orthopedics study of its kind done in the United States and only the second in the entire world.

Stem cells are currently utilized most in cancer research and treatments, but Dr. Anz of the Andrews Institute wants to change that by putting regenerative medicine to the test, using stem cells to regrow knee cartilage.

The Andrews Institute already uses stem cells in certain therapies, but this new method could be a game changer.

"The bone marrow aspirate, which we're studying for knee arthritis and we can offer to patients, is the 1990's technology of stem cells," Dr. Anz said. "What we're studying is the modern way to harvest many more stem cells. That's the reason the FDA has said you need to bring this through our process before you just offer it to people."

Through a process called apheresis, stem cells are harvested from the patient with help from a synthetic hormone that promotes the body to generate more stem cells.

"Through this process we can collect millions of cells," Dr. Anz said. "Just 140 milliliters -- about a half of a coke can -- will have 140 million stem cells."

The stem cells will then be sorted, divided and injected into the patient's knee. Excess cells are stored in a nitrogen freezer at negative 181 degrees Celsius until the next round of injections, a process to be repeated over the next two years.

"If this study is successful, this will be the first approved in orthopedics in the United States," said Dr. Anz.

The study begins in May. Dr. Anz believes it will take about another five to seven years before the FDA can approve it for use in patients.

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Groundbreaking stem cell study kicks off in Northwest Florida - WEAR

N

ow you see it, now you dont: Scientists have used a chemical technique to make mouse bones turn transparent. The technique has been used in the past to make brains and kidneyssee-through, but this marks the first time its been used in hard tissues.

The ability to see within a bone couldhave implications for research into bone diseases, by letting researchers get a more accurate picture of bones internal structure.

The technique is called CLARITY, and since 2013, when it was first described, it has been deployed on a wide variety of mammalian tissues and inplants. Caltech neuroscientistViviana Gradinaru, an original developer of the technique, even cleared an entire mouses body in 2014 (except for its bones, which were unaffected, she said).

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The approach works by chemically locking proteins and DNA in place with a hydrogel, after which researchers wash away fats within the tissue. Lipids refract light, so this washing step makes CLARITY-treated tissues transparent.

Flexible 3-D printed scaffolds could mend broken bones

In this case, Gradinaruwanted to look at bone marrow and count the number of stem cells that could ultimately produce new bone cells.

Bone is not a static organ. It iscontinuously changed. The bones we have in our body, we didnt have them 10 years ago, she explained. Acontinuous process of bone cell death and bone cell growth ishappening, spurred by progenitor cells in a bones soft, spongy marrow.

But looking for these cells can bechallenging. There arent that many progenitor cells, soextrapolating the number and distribution based ona small sample isnt ideal. Researchers can slice the bone, but cuttingcan damage the edges. Putting images of the sliced bones back together into a coherent, 3-D picture is very difficult, too.A clear bone avoidsslicing altogether.

Doug Richardson, director of imaging at the Harvard Center for Biological Imaging, said the paper represented a step forward in bone clearing. (Richardson was not involved in this research.)

This technique has the potential to monitor bone health or disease progression over larger volumes with greater accuracy, he said.

Gradinarus team has already demonstrated one possible application. They found that a drug for osteoporosis, currently being developed by Amgen, triggered an increase in the number of stem cells in CLARITY-treated bone.Some Amgen scientists were coauthors of the paper.

Using CLARITY let the team more effectively measure the rate of this increase.This is very important, because you want a controlled increase too much of an increase can lead to tumors, Gradinarusaid.

Other uses could be on the horizon. Being able to make a mouse or rat skull see-through could be useful for Gradinarus fellow neuroscientists who use implants in their research and want to establish the exact position of the impact after experiments are done.

Theres still more work to be done. For instance, finding a way to tagthe samples with antibodies without having to cut a bone in half, as researchers did in this paper would be ideal.Gradinaru also wouldnt mind some speed improvements:In this case, the CLARITY process took nearly a month.

Its not a fast method, by any means, Gradinaru said. However, the result theres no substitute for getting 3-D access to the intact bone marrow.

Kate Sheridan can be reached at kate.sheridan@statnews.com Follow Kate on Twitter @sheridan_kate

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Scientists turn bones transparent to let them see into marrow - Stat - STAT

Caroline, 11, Elizabeth, 3, Jon Thomas, 13 and James Christopher Allums, 20, do everything as a family. James Christopher and Elizabeth both have a rare medical condition. Their mother, Ellen Allums, said they all go through the process together and support each other with faith and love.(Photo: Courtesy)

Learning that your child has a rare, life-threatening illness is difficult for any family. Everything changes. One family learned that two of their children share the same rare blood disorder.

"That news that we heard was the worst news that we could hear, but it was the best thing that's ever happened to us. It really changed our perspective. It changed our priorities," Chris Allums said.

"We're no longer the same people we were," Ellen Allums said.

Ellen and Chrishave four childrenJames Christopher, 20,Jon Thomas, 13,Caroline,11, andElizabeth, 3.

James Christopher and Elizabeth have Fanconi anemia, a disease that affects the bone marrow's ability to produce blood. Bone marrow or blood stem cell transplants are considered the best treatments, andthey have not yet found a match for either child.

James Christopher was diagnosed 12 years ago and told he had about 18 monthsto live. The family was told he must received a bone marrow transplant.

"We immediately decided that, first of all, we're going to pray and expect a miracle and grow our faith, and next, we're going to try and see if we can find him a bone marrow match and help others along the way, see how many lives that we can affect, that we can save both spiritually and physically," Ellen said.

More than 16,000 people have been added to the worldwide bone marrow registry as a result of drives held on behalf of the Allums. Ellen said they know of at least 41 lives that have been saved because of those efforts, and they're asking more people to commit to donate.

'Looking for a double miracle'

Ellen said a doctor said someone with FA can be like a duck gliding on the water the surface appearance is calm, but people can't see all the effort that goes into staying in motion.

It has a variety of symptoms such as fatigueand can lead to bone marrow or organ failure. Ellen and Chris said FA patients are 500 times more likely to develop some cancers, such as leukemia. James Christopher is subject to constant screenings.

The disease is genetic. According to the National Organization for Rare Disorders, the incidence rate is 1 in 136,000 births. Ellen said her children are two ofsix in Louisiana affected by FA.

Elizabeth's blood counts have been OK, but doctors have said James Christopher has an immediate need for a transplant. DNA needs to be close to an exact match, and many families find a relative who can donate.Elizabeth is a 100 percent match, but she's ineligible because of her FA.

One donor, once found, could help both.A bone marrow transplant won't cure someone with FA, but it can help prolong life.

"Just because you're having to wait doesn't mean the miracle's not going to come. We've been waiting 12 years, but we still have faith that that miracle's coming. Just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean it's not going to. The timing needs to be right," Ellen said. "In our lives, we're looking for an even greater miracle because we're looking for a double miracle, with two children."

FA patients can require blood and platelet transfusions, after which they may become dependent and need additional rounds, which would require a bone marrow transplant quickly.

James Christopher received his first blood transfusion three weeks ago.

"Chris gave. His daddy gave blood to him, and we felt like it was his heavenly father and his earthly father that gave him that blood, and now we're praying and believing that he never has to receive it again," Ellen said.

She said they've dealt with some scary bleeding issues "like Niagara Falls," and James Christopher has almost lost his life a few times. His parents call him a survivor, a warrior. He gets up and stays active daily, even with low blood counts that doctors thinkwould cause fatigue.

"I love to prove doctors wrong. If they give me a boundary, I want to cross it, definitely, when it comes to that," he said. He likes to tell people "keep calm and carry on," like the World War II posters.

Every bump, scratch, scrape and bruise for the siblings is noteworthy, and the whole family works to avoid germs. A simple cough or cold could be devastating, so they're all in tune to notice illness.They're very aware of the importance of handwashing and staying home if ill. Chris said during cold and flu season, they often come in, shower and change clothes before interacting with the others.

Ellen said they respect people who choose not to vaccinate, but all of her children have been vaccinated because measles or chicken pox can kill someone with FA.

All the children home school to help prevent illness. When James Christopher was diagnosed, doctors said it could help him live longer. Chris said all four have excelled fromthe one-on-one time, and they've enjoyed getting to know other families inthe Christian Homeschool Association.

The Allums know their lives are different than those of many other families, but they are running their own race.

"I have to tell you that we have a wonderful life. Sure it's full of hard work, but it's wonderful because of what the Lord has done with it," Chris said.

Read more:Mom says prayer pulled her through transplant|Facing the storm: Mother shares unbelievable story|Big brother to the rescue: Man gives sister half of liver|Man saves 10 in life, death

Joy in the journey

The couple did their homework on hospitals that specialize in the disease and settled on Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital's cancer center in New York. It had the best survival rates, and they've been going for 12 years.

James Christopher's and Elizabeth's immunity is low, the family cannot travel with the general public. They either have to make the almost 20-hour drive or arrange for a private plane. Ellen said they've had to go there, at times, every three to six months.

The whole family travels to medical appointments.

"Although they don't have the disease, they go through it with them," Ellen said of Jon Thomas and Caroline. She said all of her children have gone to hospitals and played with and prayed for children were facing terminal diagnoses. It's been a blessing to them and a ministry to others.

James Christopher said they try to find fun in the journey. Ellen said they do something fun every time they go to the hospital and embrace John 10:10Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly.

James Christopher Allums, 20, holds his sister Elizabeth Allums, 3. The siblings both have a rare medical condition called Fanconi anemia.(Photo: Courtesy)

What happens if there's a match?

"We would be moving to New York for six to eight months for the bone marrow transplant," Ellen said.

Ellen said the a bone marrow recipient with FA will have to go through chemotheraphy for two weeks to kill off the patient's natural bone marrow.

"When the cells are dead, then they receive someone else's bone marrow. It's a liquid, it looks just like an IV, and they lie there and you just pray to God that it's going to take," she said.

After the transplant, the patient is in isolation for 30-40 days. They stay at the transplant hospital for six to eight months and keep a medical mask on for one year. Chris said you hope graph vs. host disease isn't an issue.

Saving lives

She said she used to look at missions that dig wells in other countries and wish they could go save lives, but, after prayer, she realized they are saving people. With the help of family and friends, efforts to add bone marrow donors have helped dozens of people.

"I like to tell people 'You could be the reason someone lives.' ... And I think those words are pretty powerful" Ellen said.

She said the process to donate blood stem cells, which is the most common donation method, involves a needle in each arm for four to six hours.

"It's not even a surgery. It's not like giving a kidney or a lung or a heart, even, but the benefits are that strong. It can truly save a life, but yet all you have to do is like giving blood," Ellen said.

To test for a match, she said, it's even less of a commitment. It takes about five minutes to fill out paperwork and provide a swap from inside the cheek. Anyone 18-55 in good health can register.

The community has come together to help organize a drive for May 1, National Fanconi Anemia Day. A massive drive will take place at more than a dozen locations across northeastern Louisiana, and CenturyLink will be registering employees on-site.Anyone anywhere can order testing kitsonline atdkms.orgorbethematch.org.

A month after testing, people will get a phone call to confirm their position on the registry. Ellen said they pray people will make the commitment.Previous drives for the Allumshave set national records for most registered in one day. Over three days, they tested 5,000 people.

"When people come, we want to educate them on the processin hopes thatwhetherthey are a match in a month or a match in 20 yearsthat they will be committed to beingon that registry to help somebody," Chris said.

They heard of a woman who registered with her family at a previous event andlater developed leukemia. Her sister was found as an instant bone marrow match because theyalreadyhad been tested.

Ellen and Chris said knowing that 41 lives were saved as a result of their family'sefforts makes it all worth it, even though it hasn't been easy.

"But we believe that God is going to heal them both because He told us He would, and we believe that. We hold on to those promises of God. ... and we focus on that. That gives us strength," Ellen said.

Follow Bonnie Bolden on Twitter@Bonnie_Bolden_and on Facebook athttp://on.fb.me/1RtsEEP.

Want to register?

May 1 is National Fanconi Anemia Day, and a more than a dozen locations across northeastern Louisiana will be part of a single registration drive. Times vary and new locations may be added. Check The Friends of James Christopher and Elizabeth Allumson Facebook or visitcaringbridge.organd searchJames Christopher Allums.

Or order a testing kit online at dkms.org or bethematch.org.

Testing sites and times are:

Monroe

West Monroe

Surrounding parishes

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Family seeks 'miracle' for siblings, saves lives in the process - Monroe News Star

Ten years ago, the topic of stem cells was shrouded in mystery, but now they're at the forefront of some of the latest innovations in biologyand medicine. Stem cellshave yet to change into a specific type of cell, such as a brain or skin cell. As a result, doctors can manipulate them into, well, any type of cellthey want. However, the way that stem cells are being manipulated is anything but simple. Here is a run-downof fiveof the most fascinating stem cell innovations fromthe past year.

Teeth are necessary for helping uschew our food, but once they fall out. they're useless; or not? The practice of tooth saving, or cryopreserving, has gained popularity, and forgood reason. New research suggests the stem cells found in the pulp of teeth could be used to help people regrow their adult teeth (rather than needing a crown or dentures), and may even have other potentially life-saving regenerative medical benefits, CNN reported.

While still in its early stages, the idea behind tooth preservation is that no other stem cells work better than your own. By saving your baby teeth, oradult teeth that need to be removed through surgery, you may later harvest stem cells that may be used to fight certain cancers or even astherapy for brain injuries.

Read: Stem Cell Research: What Are Stem Cells And Why Is There So Much Controversy

Leukemia is a type of cancer of the blood, and it starts in the bone marrow, which is where our stem cells originate. Traditional leukemia treatment involves a combination of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, but earlier this year doctors at Londons Great Ormond Street hospital believe theycured two babies of leukemia using a new stem cell treatment, Technology Review reported.

The treatment involves taking stem cells from a donor and genetically altering them before injecting them into a patient. These cells are altered so that they are able toattack cancer.

Stem cells are at the forefront of many medical innovations. Photo Courtesy of Pixabay

According to Euro Stem Cell, in traditional stem cell treatments for leukemia patients, cells are taken from donors and then transformed into special cancer-fighting cells; however,this process takes time something many seriously illcancer patients do not have. The Great Ormond Street team hopes that taking stem cells from donors and genetically altering them into hundreds of doses of cancer-fighting cells will create a reserve oftreatments available toanyone who needs them.

According to a study released last year, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Harvard University were able to change stem cells derived from the skin of diabetes patients into insulin-secreting cells.

Type 1 diabeticscannot create insulin, which is why patients must inject themselves with this hormone throughout the day. Although this new treatment is still being researched, injecting these stem-cell derived insulin-secreting cells into diabetes patients could control blood sugar without the need formedication.

Stem cellstheoretically can be turned into any type of cell, and as suggested by a 2016 project, this includes brain cells. The project, headed by a team at Bioquark Inc and Revita Life Science India,intendsto regenerate the brain cells of 20 patients that have been declared brain dead from a traumatic brain injury to see whether or not their central nervous systems can be restored, The Telegraph reported.

The team hope the stem cells will grow into new brain cells to replace thedead cells in the brain. While the treatment wouldn't restore these brain-dead patients back to life, the research may lead the way tonew therapies for patients in vegetative states or with certain degenerative conditions.

Brain balls are basically what they sound like;tiny little brains in the shape of balls. According to Wired, they are one of the newest innovations in stem cell research and could hold the answer to treating a variety of medical conditions.

These brain balls are created by coaxing a bunch of stem cells into becoming brain cells, and then using these mini brains to better understand how different diseases affect the brain. For example, according to Wired, these brain balls are ideal for studying conditions such as the Zika virus as scientists can see what's actually happening in an infected brain, but on a much smaller scale.

See Also:

Stem Cells Of Type 1 Diabetes Patients Transformed Into Insulin-Secreting Beta Cells; Research May Lead To New Therapy

Scientists Discover Method To 'Expand' Stem Cells In The Laboratory That Could Lead To New Cancer Treatments

More here:
5 Stem Cell Innovations From The Past Year, From Cancer Treatment To Diabetes Therapy - Medical Daily

April 26, 2017 A mouse tibia that has been rendered transparent with Bone CLARITY. Stem cells appear distributed throughout the bone in red. The ability to see bone stem cell behavior is crucial for testing new osteoporosis treatments. Credit: Science Translational Medicine, Greenbaum, Chan, et al; Gradinaru laboratory/Caltech

Ten years ago, the bones currently in your body did not actually exist. Like skin, bone is constantly renewing itself, shedding old tissue and growing it anew from stem cells in the bone marrow. Now, a new technique developed at Caltech can render intact bones transparent, allowing researchers to observe these stem cells within their environment. The method is a breakthrough for testing new drugs to combat diseases like osteoporosis.

The research was done in the laboratory of Viviana Gradinaru (BS '05), assistant professor of biology and biological engineering and a Heritage Medical Research Institute Investigator. It appears in a paper in the April 26 issue of Science Translational Medicine.

In healthy bone, a delicate balance exists between the cells that build bone mass and the cells that break down old bone in a continual remodeling cycle. This process is partially controlled by stem cells in bone marrow, called osteoprogenitors, that develop into osteoblasts or osteocytes, which regulate and maintain the skeleton. To better understand diseases like osteoporosis, which occurs when loss of bone mass leads to a high risk of fractures, it is crucial to study the behavior of stem cells in bone marrow. However, this population is rare and not distributed uniformly throughout the bone.

"Because of the sparsity of the stem cell population in the bone, it is challenging to extrapolate their numbers and positions from just a few slices of bone," says Alon Greenbaum, postdoctoral scholar in biology and biological engineering and co-first author on the paper. "Additionally, slicing into bone causes deterioration and loses the complex and three-dimensional environment of the stem cell inside the bone. So there is a need to see inside intact tissue."

To do this, the team built upon a technique called CLARITY, originally developed for clearing brain tissue during Gradinaru's postgraduate work at Stanford University. CLARITY renders soft tissues, such as brain, transparent by removing opaque molecules called lipids from cells while also providing structural support by an infusion of a clear hydrogel mesh. Gradinaru's group at Caltech later expanded the method to make all of the soft tissue in a mouse's body transparent. The team next set out to develop a way to clear hard tissues, like the bone that makes up our skeleton.

In the work described in the new paper, the team began with bones taken from postmortem transgenic mice. These mice were genetically engineered to have their stem cells fluoresce red so that they could be easily imaged. The team examined the femur and tibia, as well as the bones of the vertebral column; each of the samples was about a few centimeters long. First, the researchers removed calcium from the bones: calcium contributes to opacity, and bone tissue has a much higher amount of calcium than soft tissues. Next, because lipids also provide tissues with structure, the team infused the bone with a hydrogel that locked cellular components like proteins and nucleic acids into place and preserved the architecture of the samples. Finally, a gentle detergent was flowed throughout the bone to wash away the lipids, leaving the bone transparent to the eye. For imaging the cleared bones, the team built a custom light- sheet microscope for fast and high-resolution visualization that would not damage the fluorescent signal. The cleared bones revealed a constellation of red fluorescing stem cells inside.

The group collaborated with researchers at the biotechnology company Amgen to use the method, named Bone CLARITY, to test a new drug developed for treating osteoporosis, which affects millions of Americans per year.

"Our collaborators at Amgen sent us a new therapeutic that increases bone mass," says Ken Chan, graduate student and co-first author of the paper. "However, the effect of these therapeutics on the stem cell population was unclear. We reasoned that they might be increasing the proliferation of stem cells." To test this, the researchers gave one group of mice the treatment and, using Bone CLARITY, compared their vertebral columns with bones from a control group of animals that did not get the drug. "We saw that indeed there was an increase in stem cells with this drug," he says. "Monitoring stem cell responses to these kinds of drugs is crucial because early increases in proliferation are expected while new bone is being built, but long-term proliferation can lead to cancer."

The technique has promising applications for understanding how bones interact with the rest of the body.

"Biologists are beginning to discover that bones are not just structural supports," says Gradinaru, who also serves as the director of the Center for Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience at the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience at Caltech. "For example, hormones from bone send the brain signals to regulate appetite, and studying the interface between the skull and the brain is a vital part of neuroscience. It is our hope that Bone CLARITY will help break new ground in understanding the inner workings of these important organs."

The paper is titled "Bone CLARITY: Clearing, imaging, and computational analysis of osteoprogenitors within intact bone marrow."

Explore further: Growing new bone for more effective injury repair

More information: Alon Greenbaum et al, Bone CLARITY: Clearing, imaging, and computational analysis of osteoprogenitors within intact bone marrow, Science Translational Medicine (2017). DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aah6518

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Transparent bones enable researchers to observe the stem cells inside - Medical Xpress

It's based on experimental research that suggests stem cells extracted from the pulp of these teeth might someday regrow a lost adult tooth or offer other regenerative medicine benefits -- some potentially life-saving.

"So I'll try not to get emotional here, but my husband was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in 2011," said Bassetto, of Naperville, Illinois, head of a sales team at a software company.

In 2012, her husband, James, had a stem cell transplant to restore his bone marrow and renew his blood.

"He was very fortunate. He was one of six kids, and his brother was a perfect match," she said. She noted that her two children, Madeline, 23, and Alex, 19, may not be so lucky if they develop health problems, since they have only each other; the chance of two siblings being a perfect stem cell match is only 25%.

Unfortunately, her husband's stem cell transplant was not successful. He developed graft-versus-host disease, where his brother's donated stem cells attacked his own cells, and he died shortly afterward.

However, she says, the transplant had given him a chance at a longer life.

Last year, when her son saw a dentist for wisdom tooth pain, a brochure for dental stem cell storage caught Bassetto's eye and struck a chord.

"I know stem cells have tremendous health benefits in fighting disease, and there's a lot ways they're used today," she said. "Had my husband had his own cells, potentially, his treatment could have been more successful."

Medical breakthroughs happen all the time, said Bassetto. "Who knows what potential there is 20 years, 40 years down the road, when my son is an adult or an aging adult?

"Almost like a life insurance policy, is how I viewed it," she said.

Some scientists see storing teeth as a worthwhile investment, but others say it's a dead end.

"Research is still mostly in the experimental (preclinical) phase," said Ben Scheven, senior lecturer in oral cell biology in the school of dentistry at the University of Birmingham. Still, he said, "dental stem cells may provide an advantageous cell therapy for repair and regeneration of tissues," someday becoming the basis for reconstructing bone tissue, retinas and even optic neurons.

Dr. Pamela Robey, chief of the craniofacial and skeletal diseases branch of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, acknowledges the "promising" studies, but she has a different take on the importance of the cells.

"There are studies with dental pulp cells being used to treat neurological disorders and problems in the eye and other things," Robey said. The research is based on the idea that these cells "secrete factors that encourage local cells to begin the repair process."

"The problem is, these studies have really not been that rigorous," she said, adding that many have been done only in animals and so provide "slim" evidence of benefits. "The science needs a lot more work."

Robey would know. Her laboratory discovered dental stem cells in 2003.

"My fellows, Songtao Shi and Stan Gronthos, did the work in my lab," Robey said. "Songtao Shi is a dentist, and basically he observed that, when you get a cavity, you get what's called 'reparative dentin.' In other words, the tooth is trying to protect itself from that cavity, so it makes a little bit of dentin to kind of plug the hole, so to speak."

Dentin is the innermost hard layer of tooth that lies beneath the enamel. Underneath the dentin is a soft tissue known as pulp, which contains the nerve tissue and blood supply.

Observing dentin perform reparative work, Shi hypothesized that this must mean there's a stem cell within the tooth that's able to activate and make dentin. So if you wanted to grow an adult tooth instead of getting an implant, knowing how to make dentin would be the start of the process, explained Robey.

Pursuing this idea, Shi, Gronthos and the team conducted their first study with wisdom teeth. They discovered that pulp cells in these third molars did indeed make dentin, but the cells found in baby teeth, called SHED (stem cells from human exfoliated deciduous teeth), had slightly different properties.

"The SHED cells seem to make not only dentin but also something that is similar to bone," Robey said. This "dentin osteogenic material" is a little like bone and a little like dentin -- "unusual stuff," she said.

There is a meticulous process for extracting stem cells from the pulp.

"We very carefully remove any soft tissue that's adhering to the tooth. We treat it with disinfectant, because the mouth is not really that clean," Robey said, laughing.

Scientists then use a dental drill to pass the enamel and dentin -- "kind of like opening up a clam," said Robey -- to get to the pulp. "We take the pulp out, and we digest it with an enzyme to release the cells from the matrix of the pulp, and then we put the cells into culture and grow them."

According to Laning, even very small amounts of dental pulp are capable of producing many hundreds of millions of structural stem cells.

Harvesting dental stem cells is not a matter of waiting for the tooth to fall out and then quickly calling your dentist. When a baby tooth falls out, the viability of the pulp is limited if it's not preserved in the proper solution.

American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry President Dr. Jade Miller explained that "it's critical that the nerve tissue in that pulp tissue, the nerve supply and blood supply, still remain intact and alive." Typically, the best baby teeth to harvest are the upper front six or lower front six -- incisors and cuspids, he said.

For a child between 5 and 8 years of age, it's best to extract the tooth when there's about one-third of the root remaining, Miller said: "It really requires some planning, and so parents need to make this decision early on and be prepared and speak with their pediatric dentist about that."

Bassetto found the process easy. All it involved was a phone call to the company recommended by her dentist.

"They offer a service where they grow the cells and save those and also keep the pulp of the tooth without growing cells from it," she said. "I opted for both." From there, she said, the dentist shipped the extracted teeth overnight in a special package.

Bassetto said she paid less than $2,000 upfront, and now $10 a month for continued storage.

So is banking teeth something parents should be doing?

In a policy statement, the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry "encourages dentists to follow future evidence-based literature in order to educate parents about the collection, storage, viability, and use of dental stem cells with respect to autologous regenerative therapies."

"Right now, I don't think it is a logical thing to do. That's my personal opinion," said Robey of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research. As of today, "we don't have methods for creating a viable tooth. I think they're coming down the pike, but it's not around the corner."

Science also does not yet support using dental pulp stem cells for other purposes.

"That's not to say that in the future, somebody could come up with a method that would make them very beneficial," Robey said.

Still, she observed, if science made it possible to grow natural teeth from stem cells and you were in a car accident, for example, and lost your two front teeth, you'd probably be "very happy to give up a third molar to use the cells in the molar to create new teeth." Third molars are fairly expendable, she said.

Plus, Robey explained, it may not be necessary to bank teeth: Another type of stem cell, known as induced pluripotent stem cells, can be programmed into almost any cell type.

"It's quite a different story than banking umbilical cord blood, which we do know contains stem cells that re-create blood," Robey said.

"So cord blood banking -- and now we have a national cord blood bank as opposed to private clinics -- so there's a real rationale for banking cord blood, whereas the rationale for banking baby teeth is far less clear," Robey said.

And there's no guarantee that your long-cryopreserved teeth or cells will be viable in the future. Banking teeth requires proper care and oversight on the part of cryopreservation companies, she said. "I think that that's a big question mark. If you wanted to get your baby teeth back, how would they handle that? How would they take the tooth out of storage and isolate viable cells?"

Provia's Laning, who has "successfully thawed cells that have been frozen for more than 30 years," dismissed such ideas.

"Cryopreservation technology is not the problem here," he said. "Stem cells from bone marrow and other sources have been frozen for future clinical use in transplants for more than 50 years. Similarly, cord blood has a track record of almost 40 years." The technology for long-term cryopreservation has been refined over the years without any substantial changes, he said.

Despite issues and doubts, Miller, of the pediatric dentistry academy, said parents still need to consider banking baby teeth.

A grandparent, he is making the decision for his own family.

"It's really at its infancy, much of this research," he said. "There's a very strong chance there's going to be utilization for these stem cells, and they could be life-saving."

He believes that saving baby teeth could benefit not only his grandchildren but also their older siblings and various other family members if their health goes awry and a stem cell treatment is needed.

"The science is strong enough to show it's not science fiction," Miller said. "There's going to be a significant application, and I want to give my grandkids the opportunity to have those options."

Aside from cost, Miller said there are other considerations: "Is this company going to be around in 30, 40 years?" he asked. "That's not an easy thing to figure out."

Having taken the leap, Bassetto doesn't worry.

"In terms of viability, you know, if something were to happen with the company, you could always get what's stored and move it elsewhere, so I felt I was protected that way," she said. She feels "pretty confident" with her decision and plans to store her grandchildren's baby teeth.

Still, she concedes that her circumstances may be rare.

"Not everybody's going to be touched by some kind of disease where it just hits home," Bassetto said. "For me, that made it a no-brainer."

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Are baby, wisdom teeth the next wave in stem cell treatment? - CNN

Using video microscopy in the living mouse lung, UC San Francisco scientists have revealed that the lungs play a previously unrecognized role in blood production. As reported online March 22, 2017, inNature, the researchers found that the lungs produced more than half of the platelets blood components required for the clotting that stanches bleeding in the mouse circulation.

In another surprise finding, the scientists also identified a previously unknown pool of blood stem cells capable of restoring blood production when the stem cells of the bone marrow, previously thought to be the principal site of blood production, are depleted.

This finding definitely suggests a more sophisticated view of the lungs that theyre not just for respiration but also a key partner in formation of crucial aspects of the blood, said pulmonologistMark R. Looney, a professor of medicine and of laboratory medicine at UCSF and the new papers senior author. What weve observed here in mice strongly suggests the lung may play a key role in blood formation in humans as well.

The findings could have majorimplications for understanding human diseases in which patients suffer from low platelet counts, or thrombocytopenia, which afflicts millions of people and increases the risk of dangerous uncontrolled bleeding. The findings also raise questions about how blood stem cells residing in the lungs may affect the recipients of lung transplants.

The new study was made possible by a refinement of a technique known as two-photon intravital imaging recently developed by Looney and co-authorMatthew F. Krummel, a UCSF professor of pathology. This imaging approach allowed the researchers to perform the extremely delicate task of visualizing the behavior of individual cells within the tiny blood vessels of a living mouse lung.

Looney and his team were using this technique to examine interactions between the immune system and circulating platelets in the lungs, using a mouse strain engineered so that platelets emit bright green fluorescence, when they noticed a surprisingly large population of platelet-producing cells called megakaryocytes in the lung vasculature. Though megakaryocytes had been observed in the lung before, they were generally thought to live and produce platelets primarily in the bone marrow.

When we discovered this massive population of megakaryocytes that appeared to be living in the lung, we realized we had to follow this up, saidEmma Lefranais, a postdoctoral researcher in Looneys lab and co-first author on the new paper.

More detailed imaging sessions soon revealed megakaryocytes in the act of producing more than 10 million platelets per hour within the lung vasculature, suggesting that more than half of a mouses total platelet production occurs in the lung, not the bone marrow, as researchers had long presumed. Video microscopy experiments also revealed a wide variety of previously overlooked megakaryocyte progenitor cells and blood stem cells sitting quietly outside the lung vasculature estimated at 1 million per mouse lung.

The discovery of megakaryocytes and blood stem cells in the lung raised questions about how these cells move back and forth between the lung and bone marrow. To address these questions, the researchers conducted a clever set of lung transplant studies:

First, the team transplanted lungs from normal donor mice into recipient mice with fluorescent megakaryocytes, and found that fluorescent megakaryocytes from the recipient mice soon began turning up in the lung vasculature. This suggested that the platelet-producing megakaryocytes in the lung originate in the bone marrow.

Its fascinating that megakaryocytes travel all the way from the bone marrow to the lungs to produce platelets, said Guadalupe Ortiz-Muoz, a postdoctoral researcher in the Looney lab and the papers other co-first author. Its possible that the lung is an ideal bioreactor for platelet production because of the mechanical force of the blood, or perhaps because of some molecular signaling we dont yet know about.

"Its possible that the lung is an ideal bioreactor for platelet production because of the mechanical force of the blood, or perhaps because of some molecular signaling we dont yet know about."

Guadalupe Ortiz-Muoz, postdoctoral researcher in the Mark Looney Lab

In another experiment, the researchers transplanted lungs with fluorescent megakaryocyte progenitor cells into mutant mice with low platelet counts. The transplants produced a large burst of fluorescent platelets that quickly restored normal levels, an effect that persisted over several months of observation much longer than the lifespan of individual megakaryocytes or platelets. To the researchers, this indicated that resident megakaryocyte progenitor cells in the transplanted lungs had become activated by the recipient mouses low platelet counts and had produced healthy new megakaryocyte cells to restore proper platelet production.

Finally, the researchers transplanted healthy lungs in which all cells were fluorescently tagged into mutant mice whose bone marrow lacked normal blood stem cells. Analysis of the bone marrow of recipient mice showed that fluorescent cells originating from the transplanted lungs soon traveled to the damaged bone marrow and contributed to the production not just of platelets, but of a wide variety of blood cells, including immune cells such as neutrophils, B cells and T cells. These experiments suggest that the lungs play host to a wide variety of blood progenitor cells and stem cells capable of restocking damaged bone marrow and restoring production of many components of the blood.

To our knowledge this is the first description of blood progenitors resident in the lung, and it raises a lot of questions with clinical relevance for the millions of people who suffer from thrombocytopenia, said Looney, who is also an attending physician on UCSFs pulmonary consult service and intensive care units.

In particular, the study suggests that researchers who have proposed treating platelet diseases with platelets produced from engineered megakaryocytes should look to the lungs as a resource for platelet production, Looney said. The study also presents new avenues of research for stem cell biologists to explore how the bone marrow and lung collaborate to produce a healthy blood system through the mutual exchange of stem cells.

These observations alter existing paradigms regarding blood cell formation, lung biology and disease, and transplantation, said pulmonologist Guy A. Zimmerman, who is associate chair of the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Utah School of Medicine and was an independent reviewer of the new study forNature. The findings have direct clinical relevance and provide a rich group of questions for future studies of platelet genesis and megakaryocyte function in lung inflammation and other inflammatory conditions, bleeding and thrombotic disorders, and transplantation.

The observation that blood stem cells and progenitors seem to travel back and forth freely between the lung and bone marrow lends support to a growing sense among researchers that stem cells may be much more active than previously appreciated, Looney said. Were seeing more and more that the stem cells that produce the blood dont just live in one place but travel around through the blood stream. Perhaps studying abroad in different organs is a normal part of stem cell education.

The study was supported the UCSF Nina Ireland Program in Lung Health, the UCSF Program for Breakthrough Biomedical Research, and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), a division of the National Institutes of Health (HL092471, HL107386 and HL130324).

It has been known for decades that the lung can be a site of platelet production, but this study amplifies this idea by demonstrating that the murine lung is a major participant in the process, said Traci Mondoro,project officer at the Translational Blood Science and Resources Branch of the NHLBI. Dr. Looney and his team have disrupted some traditional ideas about the pulmonary role in platelet-related hematopoiesis, paving the way for further scientific exploration of this integrated biology.

Additional authors included Axelle Caudrillier,Beat Mallavia,Fengchun Liu, Emily E. Thornton,Mark B. Headley,Tovo David, Shaun R. Coughlin, Andrew D. Leavitt, David M. Sayah, of UCLA; and Emmanuelle Passegu,a former UCSF faculty member who is now director of the Columbia Stem Cell Initiative at Columbia University Medical Center.

Cover photo:iStock/choja

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Surprising new role for lungs: Making blood - University of California

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A bone marrow drive for James Christopher Allums, 21, and his sister Elizabeth, 3, is Monday, May 1 at locations throughout northeast Louisiana.

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The News Star 11:33 a.m. CT April 26, 2017

University of Louisiana Monroe(Photo: Courtesy image)

A bone marrow drive for James Christopher Allums, 21, and his sister Elizabeth, 3, is Monday, May 1 at locations throughout northeast Louisiana.

University of Louisiana Monroe Medical Laboratory Science faculty and students are helping organize the drive. The drive on campus is 9 a.m.-5 p.m. in the SUB and Quad.

May 1 is National Fanconi Anemia Day. James Christopher and Elizabeth suffer from this disease, which is fatal without a bone marrow or stem cell transplant. They are the children of Chris and Ellen Allums.

Melanie Chapman, assistant professor to the School of Health Professions, said, "This is a wonderful opportunity for ULM Warhawks to fly high by working together and setting aside our busy agendas to give two great kids, and possibly others, the chance to live out their years. I am privileged to be a part of ULM and this community effort."

Bone marrow drive locations:

Times vary and new locations may be added. For information, check Facebook The Friends of James Christopher and Elizabeth Allums or visit caringbridge.org and search James Christopher Allums .

MORE NEWS;The Fabulous Equinox Orchestra takes the stage at ULM Friday

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Bone marrow drive for Allums siblings at ULM, other locations - Monroe News Star

Wade Watcher

A Perryville, Missouri, family is organizing a bone-marrow registration drive in hopes of finding a match for their 6-year-old son, who needs a bone-marrow transplant.

Wade Watcher's mother Jenni said for the most part, he's a regular 6-year-old.

"Active and funny and adorable," she said. "He's smart and loves to draw. He likes playing basketball. He's a pretty awesome kid."

But for him to continue leading a normal childhood, Watcher likely would need a bone-marrow transplant.

"We knew that he had a rare disease when he was a baby, and so yearly we have to get a bone marrow biopsy to see if his bone marrow is failing," Watcher said. "It had been fairly normal until December. ... It showed his bone marrow was in the stages of failing and that it was kind of like a waiting game to see if he needs to be sent for a bone marrow transplant or not."

Wade, who suffers from Shwachman-Diamond syndrome, a rare congenital disorder, is stable, but his mother said they don't know for how long.

So they're organizing a registration drive for members of the community to sign up to have their cheeks swabbed and see whether they may be a match. The drive will be from 3 to 7 p.m. Friday at the AMVETS Post 94 in Perryville.

Watcher said she's not sure how many people are scheduled to participate, but she to register as many people ranging in age from 18 to 55 years old people as possible.

"Anybody that can would be amazing," she said. "It would provide a lot of help for our family as well as other families."

Registration involves filling out a form and having a cheek swabbed for about 30 seconds. Donor recruitment coordinator Olivia Haddox said people typically shy away from such drives because they are unsure of what it may mean if they are "matched" with a person in need.

"People are surprised to find how easy it is just to register, but then the next question is always, 'What's going to happen if I get that call?'" she said. "We definitely get that a lot."

There are two ways for the donation to happen if a match is found, she said. About 80 percent of the time, donations are done via peripheral blood stem-cell donation, a four- to eight-hour session in which blood is taken from one arm and filtered through an aphoresis machine to separate the blood from the stem cells. After taking the stem cells, the blood is returned to the donor's body.

"That can kind of be compared to a lengthier platelet or plasma donation," Haddox said. "You don't actually even lose any blood that day; you just lose some stem cells, and you regenerate those in about a week, so what you give you do get back," she said.

People usually watch Netflix while donating, she said, and minor side effects more often come from the series of injections donors receive before the procedure to boost the stem cells. Those injections can cause some fatigue or other side effects.

"Nothing so severe that it might keep anyone out of work," Haddox said. "It's just kind of your body preparing for the donation."

The other, less-common method is an outpatient procedure whereby liquid marrow from the lower back pelvic area is removed.

"And you're actually put under for this procedure, so you're not awake when it happens and you don't feel anything when it happens," Haddox said. "Afterwards, what most people tell me they feel is just a tenderness and a bruising around the site where they removed the marrow. A lot of people equate this to saying, 'I felt like I fell on some ice, and I had a bruise on my hip for a few days.'"

If people can't attend the drive, swab kits can be ordered at dkms.org.

tgraef@semissourian.com

(573) 388-3627

More:
Perryville family organizing bone-marrow drive Friday for ailing 6-year-old boy - Southeast Missourian

GETTY STOCK IMAGE

The way to the Red Planet and other mysterious worlds is being inspired by the villainous Khan from the blockbuster films, according to new research.

The use of stem cell technology may mean the difference between life and death on any attempt to travel beyond Earth into the wilderness of space.

So the first person to walk on Mars is likely to be selected from the growing group of people whose parents took the step to store their child's stem cells at birth.

Stem cells are 'blank' cells that can be reprogrammed to turn into any other cell in the body, enabling the replacement of damaged cells.

More and more British parents, including TV presenter Natalie Pinkham and dancer Darcey Bussell, are paying more than 2,000 to freeze samples from their babies' umbilical cords at birth.

Stem cells are also found in bone marrow and some body tissue, but the procedure to harvest them from umbilical cords is less risky.

Adventurous Mars pioneers will have to be especially prepared for the dangerous trip, which could expose them to cancer and other diseases, through carefully researched gene therapy.

1 of 16

We wince at the thought of genetically engineered humans

Mark Hall

Mark Hall, spokesperson for the UK's leading stem cell storage and diagnostics company StemProtect, said: "We wince at the thought of genetically engineered humans.

"And we are not going to create a Khan from Star Trek specifically to get to another planet. Getting humans to Mars and beyond will be both expensive and dangerous.

"But the scientific by-products - such as huge leaps in stem cell medicine - will benefit humanity for centuries to come."

Genetic engineering has featured in two Star Trek movies, and a number of TV episodes.

IG

1 of 14

This still image strikes an uncanny resemblance to a figure of a woman

Khan, who appeared in Space Seed and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, was modified to make him stronger and to give him greater stamina and intellectual capacity than a regular human.

Mr Hall said: "The first human to walk on Mars may not even be born yet - but that's an advantage."

StemProtect believes advanced medical techniques will be required to cope with the rigours of interplanetary space.

While a trip to Mars may appear "just around the corner" in galactic terms, it is highly possible exposure to radiation along the way could lead to the astronauts developing leukaemia and other cancers even before they arrived.

GETTY STOCK IMAGE

This means future travellers will have to be 'immunised' before they leave Earth.

Mr Hall said: "There was an article in The Times suggesting elephants would make ideal Martian travellers because they'd be largely immune to the radiation.

"But those laughing at the ridiculous sounding headline completely missed the point - the fact is scientists are already working on ways of getting humans there and back alive."

Recent research has shown radiation in deep space increase the risk of leukaemia while long term exposure to micro gravity may leave astronauts open to infection.

The three year round trip to Mars would affect humans at the stem cell level, leaving them with a drastically lowered immune system, NASA funded scientists say.

And NASA's own findings say stem cells may be crucial to the future of space travel, particularly how they respond in a low gravity environment.

One study showed stem cells flown in space and then cultured back on Earth had greater ability to self renew and generate any cell type, changing more easily into specialised heart muscle cells, for instance.

Mr Hall said an astronaut will have to be prepared for the journey "quite literally at the stem cell level."

He explained: "That means working with the best and most effective stem cells available to the patient - those harvested from the umbilical cord at birth."

GETTY STOCK IMAGE

The therapies required to 'immunise' humans to space travel are still being researched.

And with most space based science, it can only mean huge benefits to mankind back down on Earth when it comes to fighting otherwise deadly conditions and diseases.

Stem cells have the ability to treat a potentially infinite range of illnesses and diseases.

Stem cell therapy is already being used all over the world to treat some cancers and stroke victims - and there is fast progress being made in many other areas, including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease.

Read more from the original source:
SUPERHUMANS: Mars 'will be colonised by genetically engineered Star Trek-style beings' - Express.co.uk

It was Thursday afternoon, and the little girl from near Cologne, Germany, and the 40-year-old Duluth woman had known each other for less than 24 hours. But it was obvious that Edwards already had bonded with Ina and her little sister Mila.

They were together because the girls' mother had given Edwards a much greater gift: the gift of life.

"By your donation, I still get to be a mom," Edwards told Daniela Halfkann, 30. "(You're) a mom, so you completely understand how important it is to be here with your children."

Edwards, the mother of 15-year-old twin boys and the wife of Duluth Fire Chief Dennis Edwards, is alive because of the stem cell transplant she received at the Mayo Clinic on Oct. 31, 2014. As a result, she said, she is in remission from the rare and aggressive form of leukemia with which she had been diagnosed that June.

All she was told at the time of the transplant was that the donor was a woman from Germany.

Halfkann had registered as a potential stem cell or bone marrow donor at the large insurance company where she works in Cologne, she said. One day she received a call, saying her donation was needed.

After the six-hour procedure, Halfkann was told nothing more than that the recipient was a woman in the United States.

After a two-year waiting period required in Germany, the two women learned each other's identities last October and connected via Facebook.

Their meeting in Duluth was arranged by Amanda Schamper, Midwest donor recruitment coordinator for DKMS, the international organization that facilitated the donation.

Halfkann made the trip along with husband Stefan and their daughters, leaving their home at 3 a.m. on Tuesday and arriving at the Duluth International Airport at 5 p.m. on Wednesday.

Like Edwards, DKMS wants to raise awareness of the need for people to enter the registry, said Schamper, who also traveled to Duluth for the occasion.

She said 14,000 patients are in need of a peripheral blood stem cell or bone marrow donation, but fewer than half will get one because there's no match on the registry.

"We're looking for a particular protein in our DNA," she explained.

Only in 30 percent of cases are siblings a match. Edwards' brother and sister both had been screened, she said, and neither was a match for her.

Finding a match "is equated to finding your genetic twin, or winning the genetic lottery," Schamper said.

If more people were on the registry a process that only requires taking a swab from your cheek there would be more potential matches. But only 2 percent of eligible Americans are registered, Schamper said.

When the Halfkanns arrived at the gate on Wednesday, Dennis and Merissa Edwards, along with sons Caden and Jaxon, were waiting at the gate.

It was an emotional moment.

"It was hard for me," Merissa Edwards said on Friday, speaking to Daniela Halfkann. "I was crying. I was so emotional, so happy to meet you and hug you."

She wiped away a tear. "I still am."

"It was amazing," Halfkann responded. "I cried at the gate, too."

The Halfkanns, who are staying at the Edgewater, initially focused on recovery from jet lag. But Edwards is making sure they'll get a full taste of Duluth and Minnesota before beginning their return trip to Germany next Saturday. That includes visits to the Mall of America, the Great Lakes Aquarium and a trip up the North Shore.

A "thank-you party," open to the public, is planned on Sunday afternoon. Halfkann also will be recognized on Monday during the Saints Sports Awards ceremony at the College of St. Scholastica, where Edwards is an administrative assistant in the athletics department.

Recovery from the ravages of leukemia has been a long process, Edwards said, but she remains in remission. She gets a PET scan every six months to make sure that's still the case; the next one takes place next week.

Edwards shares her story, she said, not to call attention to herself but to highlight the need for people to take the simple step of registering as a potential donor.

"It's so important for us to help other people keep their families together and save a mother or father or son or daughter," she said. "The more people we can encourage to cheek-swab and get on the registry, the more lives we can help save and help families stay together."

TO LEARN MORE

For more information and to learn how to get on the bone marrow and peripheral blood stem cell registry, visit dkms.org.

IF YOU GO

The thank-you party for Daniela Halfkann will be from 2 to 5 p.m. on Sunday at The Other Place Bar and Grill, 3930 E. Calvary Road.

Read the original here:
Duluth woman meets the German donor whose stem cells saved her ... - Duluth News Tribune

The biggest national project to treat patients with cerebral palsy (CP) through injection of stems cells from umbilical cord blood (UCB) into the brain began its trial run in March. The project is jointly undertaken by Royan Institute, Childrens Medical Center (affiliated to Tehran University of Medical Sciences), and the Iran Blood Transfusion Organization (IBTO). In the first phase, it will provide treatment to 130 children with CP between the ages 5-13. The treatment was tested in September 2016 on children with CP in some hospitals, and the results were highly satisfactory. Approximately four in every 1,000 children in Iran have CP while in the developed countries the rate is 2 to 2.5 per 1000 live births. Cerebral palsy is an umbrella term for the effects of damage to a developing brain by various causes. It is connected with a range of symptoms, including muscle weakness and movement problems. The damage to the brain usually occurs early on in its development, either in the baby during pregnancy or during the period soon after birth. Symptoms may include difficulties in walking, balance and motor control, eating, swallowing, speech or coordination of eye movements. Some people affected by CP also have some level of intellectual disability. No two people with cerebral palsy are affected in exactly the same way. The IBTO plans to expand the storage of stems cells from umbilical cord blood to 100,000 samples from the current 80,000, said Ali Akbar Pourfathollah, head of the organization, ILNA reported. Around 75,000 samples have been stored in private banks and 5,000 in public banks, but the number will surpass 100,000 soon, he added.

Valuable Source for Treatment Umbilical blood is a valuable source of hematopoietic stem cells which can be used for treatment of many malignant diseases such as leukemia. Hundreds of transplants have been performed using stem cells from such blood, which is easy and risk free. The use of stem cells reduces the risk of viral diseases transmission and incidence of Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD). The ability to perform organ transplants is among the benefits of umbilical cord blood transfusion. Using stems cells is also one of the best ways to treat blood diseases since the method has a success rate of 70% worldwide. Storage of stem cells is a valuable investment. So far, 27 cord blood banks have been launched across the country. There are two types: public and private banks for stem cell storage. The former does not charge a fee for storage. But in the latter, the cost of collection and genetic testing is about $645 and the annual charge for storage is $33, according to ISNA. Pourfathollah said the IBTO is looking to store stem cells in medical cases when a patient needs to receive treatment from matched unrelated donors. In the past Iranian year (ended March 20), out of the 8,000 stem cell transplantations in the country, only 100 were from matched unrelated donors and the rest came from sibling (or related) donors. IBTO is also looking to set up coagulation/transfusion and HLA/immunogenetics laboratories in the country on par with international standards. The Immunogenetics and HLA Laboratory provides human leukocyte antigen (HLA) typing, HLA antibody identification and post-transplant engraftment monitoring services. These tests are required for patients undergoing evaluation for organ transplantation, recipients of bone marrow/stem cell transplants, patients requiring platelet transfusions from HLA-matched donors, and patients undergoing evaluation of particular health conditions.

Read more:
Treating Cerebral Palsy With UCB Stem Cells - Financial Tribune

Comments(0)

A Lincoln student is set to save someone's life after finding out he was a match for someone who needed a bone marrow transplant.

John-Paul Dickie, the vice-president of academic affairs at the University of Lincoln, said he joined the register after his flatmate told him about it.

He doesn't know the identity of the person whose life he saved, but said he was delighted that he's been able to help someone who was desperate for a transplant.

He said: "My flatmate was involved with Lincoln Marrow, a student-led group trying to sign people up to the British Bone Marrow Register. He was telling me the benefits of it, including the fact it could potentially save someone's life.

READ MORE: Selfless mum marks 50th blood donation with daughter's first

"I signed up in February 2014, so it was a surprise when I heard back earlier this year that I was a potential match. I had some samples taken and eventually I had a date set for the operation in May.

"I'm looking forward to it, as it's an amazing way to help somebody.

"However I'm also a bit hesitant as it will require me to be strapped to a machine for four or five hours. My partner will be there to keep me company and I'll have books and TV to stop me from getting too bored."

When bone marrow is damaged it prevents a person from creating healthy blood cells and transplants like this help to treat the condition.

The transplant requires taking stem cells from the blood or bone marrow of one person and giving them to another.

John-Paul added: "There are two ways to take stem cells. One is taking them out of your back using a needle, which is painful but only 10 per cent of people have. Fortunately, I'm having the more common method in which blood is taken out of one arm, the stem cells are removed and then it is returned in the other arm."

READ MORE: 'Gordon was denied stem cell treatment, but I'll hold him in my heart forever'

Most people who need stem cells will be a match with a close family member. However, if this doesn't work then they will have to wait on the British Bone Marrow Registry.

"It's a great way to contribute and help save someone's life. All you have to do is give a sample of spit to get on the register, the process is so simple and easy. If you're able to do it, I would definitely encourage you to give it a try.

"The procedure is anonymous in case something goes wrong. You can find out their age and sex, but at the moment I don't know anything. After two years, you can apply to find out who they are."

Bone marrow donors need to be aged between 17 and 40 and already registered as a blood donor.

If you meet these criteria interested in signing up to the British Bone Marrow Register, visit their website for more information at: http://www.nhsbt.nhs.uk/bonemarrow/

The rest is here:
'It's amazing!' Student discovers he's a potential life-saving bone marrow match - Lincolnshire Echo

It was Thursday afternoon, and the little girl from near Cologne, Germany, and the 40-year-old Duluth woman had known each other for less than 24 hours. But it was obvious that Edwards already had bonded with Ina and her little sister Mila.

They were together because the girls' mother had given Edwards a much greater gift: the gift of life.

"By your donation, I still get to be a mom," Edwards told Daniela Halfkann, 30. "(You're) a mom, so you completely understand how important it is to be here with your children."

Edwards, the mother of 15-year-old twin boys and the wife of Duluth Fire Chief Dennis Edwards, is alive because of the stem cell transplant she received at the Mayo Clinic on Oct. 31, 2014. As a result, she said, she is in remission from the rare and aggressive form of leukemia with which she had been diagnosed that June.

All she was told at the time of the transplant was that the donor was a woman from Germany.

Halfkann had registered as a potential stem cell or bone marrow donor at the large insurance company where she works in Cologne, she said. One day she received a call, saying her donation was needed.

After the six-hour procedure, Halfkann was told nothing more than that the recipient was a woman in the United States.

After a two-year waiting period required in Germany, the two women learned each other's identities last October and connected via Facebook.

Their meeting in Duluth was arranged by Amanda Schamper, Midwest donor recruitment coordinator for DKMS, the Germany-based organization that facilitated the donation.

Halfkann made the trip along with husband Stefan and their daughters, leaving their home at 3 a.m. on Tuesday and arriving at the Duluth International Airport at 5 p.m. on Wednesday.

Like Edwards, DKMS wants to raise awareness of the need for people to enter the registry, said Schamper, who also traveled to Duluth for the occasion.

She said 14,000 patients are in need of a peripheral blood stem cell or bone marrow donation, but fewer than half will get one because there's no match on the registry.

"We're looking for a particular protein in our DNA," she explained.

Only in 30 percent of cases are siblings a match. Edwards' brother and sister both had been screened, she said, and neither was a match for her.

Finding a match "is equated to finding your genetic twin, or winning the genetic lottery," Schamper said.

If more people were on the registry a process that only requires taking a swab from your cheek there would be more potential matches. But only 2 percent of eligible Americans are registered, Schamper said.

When the Halfkanns arrived at the gate on Wednesday, Dennis and Merissa Edwards, along with sons Caden and Jaxon, were waiting at the gate.

It was an emotional moment.

"It was hard for me," Merissa Edwards said on Friday, speaking to Daniela Halfkann. "I was crying. I was so emotional, so happy to meet you and hug you."

She wiped away a tear. "I still am."

"It was amazing," Halfkann responded. "I cried at the gate, too."

The Halfkanns, who are staying at the Edgewater, initially focused on recovery from jet lag. But Edwards is making sure they'll get a full taste of Duluth and Minnesota before beginning their return trip to Germany next Saturday. That includes visits to the Mall of America, the Great Lakes Aquarium and a trip up the North Shore.

A "thank-you party," open to the public, is planned on Sunday afternoon. Halfkann also will be recognized on Monday during the Saints Sports Awards ceremony at the College of St. Scholastica, where Edwards is an administrative assistant in the athletics department.

Recovery from the ravages of leukemia has been a long process, Edwards said, but she remains in remission. She gets a PET scan every six months to make sure that's still the case; the next one takes place next week.

Edwards shares her story, she said, not to call attention to herself but to highlight the need for people to take the simple step of registering as a potential donor.

"It's so important for us to help other people keep their families together and save a mother or father or son or daughter," she said. "The more people we can encourage to cheek-swab and get on the registry, the more lives we can help save and help families stay together."

TO LEARN MORE

For more information and to learn how to get on the bone marrow and peripheral blood stem cell registry, visit dkms.org.

IF YOU GO

The thank-you party for Daniela Halfkann will be from 2 to 5 p.m. on Sunday at The Other Place Bar and Grill, 3930 E. Calvary Road.

Go here to read the rest:
Duluth woman meets the German donor whose stem cells saved her life - WDAY

Madhu Srivastava/IANS

Our health scenario has undergone drastic changes over the past few decades. Is it not fair to say that given today`s lifestyles, finding someone who is completely fit and healthy is quite rare?

In an attempt to take precautions, people are doing their best such as exercising, controlling their diet, taking health supplements, undergoing periodic health check-ups and what not. However, these are only precautionary or preventive measures. How can you protect yourself or your family in the worst case of being diagnosed by a disorder that could take you by surprise?

The good news is that while more new diseases are being discovered, medical science is also growing at a matching pace with treatment solutions for such conditions. Here comes the role of stem cells. Stem cell treatment has been found to be a solution for many ailments that are not treatable by conventional methods of surgery or medication. Diseases such as leukemia ans thalassemia can now be treated by stem cells with a hope of survival, which was not possible even a decade or so ago.

As stem cell medicine keeps advancing with more conditions being researched, the future sounds quite promising as more and more disorders that were once considered as permanent or terminal will soon become treatable.

But, the question is, where does one find these stem cells? Well, the answer is, within you; in your bone marrow.

Unfortunately in more than 80 per cent of these disorders, your own stem cells cannot be used and you would need to seek them from someone else. Here comes the challenge of finding a matching donor and someone who is willing to donate his stem cells. Alternatively, you can source stem cells from a public bank which preserves umbilical cord stem cells of donors. Here, in addition to the rarity of finding a matching stem cell of Indian ethnicity, the problem gets compounded with the need of Rs 15 lakh to Rs 20 lakh for stem cell treatment. Seven out of 10 patients who require a matching stem cell do not find a match in their family.

Can this scenario change? Is there a hope for treating such dreaded conditions? The answer is yes. If you are expecting a baby in your family, then you are blessed.

We say a child is a blessing from God, which is true in real terms. While as parents we bless our children, now the baby can bless us to stay protected against such medical conditions.

The baby`s umbilical cord is a rich source of stem cells. These can be collected and preserved at the time of birth for future use so that it can come to the rescue when required. With the new concept of community stem cell banking by one of the leading stem cell banks in the country which preserves a baby`s stem cells by making him/her a member of the community of parents who have also preserved their baby`s stem cells. The stem cell of all the babies within the community forms a collective pool to be accessed by all members.

Hence, at any given time, one can access donor stem cells from this collective pool for treatment, protecting not just your baby but your family too from such ailments. There is only the initial cost of preserving your baby`s stem cells which is much lower than sourcing stem cells from a public stem cell bank. More importantly, the probability of finding a match of Indian ethnicity is higher and stem cells are readily available for treatment when required.

If you are worried about the uncertainties over the health of your family, you can now rest assured that your baby`s birth will now bless your family with the protection of good health.

Link:
Stem cells and the art of giving - Zee News (blog)

It was Thursday afternoon, and the little girl from near Cologne, Germany, and the 40-year-old Duluth woman had known each other for less than 24 hours. But it was obvious that Edwards already had bonded with Ina and her little sister Mila.

They were together because the girls' mother had given Edwards a much greater gift: the gift of life.

"By your donation, I still get to be a mom," Edwards told Daniela Halfkann, 30. "(You're) a mom, so you completely understand how important it is to be here with your children."

Edwards, the mother of 15-year-old twin boys and the wife of Duluth Fire Chief Dennis Edwards, is alive because of the stem cell transplant she received at the Mayo Clinic on Oct. 31, 2014. As a result, she said, she is in remission from the rare and aggressive form of leukemia with which she had been diagnosed that June.

All she was told at the time of the transplant was that the donor was a woman from Germany.

Halfkann had registered as a potential stem cell or bone marrow donor at the large insurance company where she works in Cologne, she said. One day she received a call, saying her donation was needed.

After the six-hour procedure, Halfkann was told nothing more than that the recipient was a woman in the United States.

After a two-year waiting period required in Germany, the two women learned each other's identities last October and connected via Facebook.

Their meeting in Duluth was arranged by Amanda Schamper, Midwest donor recruitment coordinator for DKMS, the Germany-based organization that facilitated the donation.

Halfkann made the trip along with husband Stefan and their daughters, leaving their home at 3 a.m. on Tuesday and arriving at the Duluth International Airport at 5 p.m. on Wednesday.

Like Edwards, DKMS wants to raise awareness of the need for people to enter the registry, said Schamper, who also traveled to Duluth for the occasion.

She said 14,000 patients are in need of a peripheral blood stem cell or bone marrow donation, but fewer than half will get one because there's no match on the registry.

"We're looking for a particular protein in our DNA," she explained.

Only in 30 percent of cases are siblings a match. Edwards' brother and sister both had been screened, she said, and neither was a match for her.

Finding a match "is equated to finding your genetic twin, or winning the genetic lottery," Schamper said.

If more people were on the registry a process that only requires taking a swab from your cheek there would be more potential matches. But only 2 percent of eligible Americans are registered, Schamper said.

When the Halfkanns arrived at the gate on Wednesday, Dennis and Merissa Edwards, along with sons Caden and Jaxon, were waiting at the gate.

It was an emotional moment.

"It was hard for me," Merissa Edwards said on Friday, speaking to Daniela Halfkann. "I was crying. I was so emotional, so happy to meet you and hug you."

She wiped away a tear. "I still am."

"It was amazing," Halfkann responded. "I cried at the gate, too."

The Halfkanns, who are staying at the Edgewater, initially focused on recovery from jet lag. But Edwards is making sure they'll get a full taste of Duluth and Minnesota before beginning their return trip to Germany next Saturday. That includes visits to the Mall of America, the Great Lakes Aquarium and a trip up the North Shore.

A "thank-you party," open to the public, is planned on Sunday afternoon. Halfkann also will be recognized on Monday during the Saints Sports Awards ceremony at the College of St. Scholastica, where Edwards is an administrative assistant in the athletics department.

Recovery from the ravages of leukemia has been a long process, Edwards said, but she remains in remission. She gets a PET scan every six months to make sure that's still the case; the next one takes place next week.

Edwards shares her story, she said, not to call attention to herself but to highlight the need for people to take the simple step of registering as a potential donor.

"It's so important for us to help other people keep their families together and save a mother or father or son or daughter," she said. "The more people we can encourage to cheek-swab and get on the registry, the more lives we can help save and help families stay together."

TO LEARN MORE

For more information and to learn how to get on the bone marrow and peripheral blood stem cell registry, visit dkms.org.

IF YOU GO

The thank-you party for Daniela Halfkann will be from 2 to 5 p.m. on Sunday at The Other Place Bar and Grill, 3930 E. Calvary Road.

See the original post here:
Duluth woman meets the German donor whose stem cells saved her life - WDAZ

In an autologous BMT procedure, the healthy stem cells from the patient are taken out and preserved

IANS | New Delhi April 21, 2017 Last Updated at 05:00 IST

A team of doctors in New Delhi has successfully treated a 24-year-old girl suffering from Multiple Sclerosis (MS) with bone marrow transplant (BMT).

Kanika Juneja was diagnosed with MS an autoimmune disorder where the body's immune system starts attacking the protective sheet covering the nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord.

She went through several rounds of treatments but could not be cured. Juneja got another chance at life at Fortis Healthcare where the doctors treated her with BMT.

"In an autologous BMT procedure, the healthy stem cells from the patient are taken out and preserved. Chemotherapy is then administered to reset the body's immunity and then the stem cells are injected back to rescue the person from the side effects of chemotherapy. After the surgery, the patient is kept under isolation for a few months to ensure he/she does not contract any infection," explained Dr Rahul Bhargava, Director, Clinical Hematology and Bone Marrow Transplant, Fortis Memorial Research Institute (FMRI).

Since conventional steroid injections and immune therapy are expensive and don't promise a cure, Bhargava thought of going for a BMT for Juneja.

Juneja is now actively involved in raising awareness about MS amongst the community through social media.

"I had just completed my college education when I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. I was lucky because I got diagnosed within a week of my symptoms and could avail treatment options faster," Juneja said.

"In this case, we have proved that bone marrow transplant can be seen as a successful alternate treatment option for multiple sclerosis patients, giving them a fresh shot at life," added Dr Simmardeep Singh Gill, Zonal Director, FMRI, in a statement.

Currently, there are 2.3 million people living with multiple sclerosis worldwide.

A team of doctors in New Delhi has successfully treated a 24-year-old girl suffering from Multiple Sclerosis (MS) with bone marrow transplant (BMT).

Kanika Juneja was diagnosed with MS an autoimmune disorder where the body's immune system starts attacking the protective sheet covering the nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord.

She went through several rounds of treatments but could not be cured. Juneja got another chance at life at Fortis Healthcare where the doctors treated her with BMT.

"In an autologous BMT procedure, the healthy stem cells from the patient are taken out and preserved. Chemotherapy is then administered to reset the body's immunity and then the stem cells are injected back to rescue the person from the side effects of chemotherapy. After the surgery, the patient is kept under isolation for a few months to ensure he/she does not contract any infection," explained Dr Rahul Bhargava, Director, Clinical Hematology and Bone Marrow Transplant, Fortis Memorial Research Institute (FMRI).

Since conventional steroid injections and immune therapy are expensive and don't promise a cure, Bhargava thought of going for a BMT for Juneja.

Juneja is now actively involved in raising awareness about MS amongst the community through social media.

"I had just completed my college education when I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. I was lucky because I got diagnosed within a week of my symptoms and could avail treatment options faster," Juneja said.

"In this case, we have proved that bone marrow transplant can be seen as a successful alternate treatment option for multiple sclerosis patients, giving them a fresh shot at life," added Dr Simmardeep Singh Gill, Zonal Director, FMRI, in a statement.

Currently, there are 2.3 million people living with multiple sclerosis worldwide.

IANS

http://bsmedia.business-standard.com/_media/bs/wap/images/bs_logo_amp.png 177 22

View post:
Multiple Sclerosis patient successfully treated with bone marrow transplant - Business Standard

Scientists at the University of California San Francisco have discovered a new function of lungs: They make blood which leads to a new wellspring of stem cells as well.

The astonishing breakthrough comes courtesy of refinement to microscopic video imaging that allows researchers to probe individual cells within blood vessels of a living host's lungs in this case, mice lungs.

The findings have far-reaching implications for human study: Researchers were surprised to find that not only did the lungs produce more blood cells, they did so in volumes that indicated more than half of all platelets in circulation critical for clotting are produced by the lungs.

The significance for the blood stem cells also was compelling. The newly discovered pool of stem cells is capable of restoring blood production when bone marrow stem cells are depleted. This could lead to novel approaches to treating leukemia, a cancer of white blood cells that crowds out red blood cells, and bone cancer, which destroys the body's ability to manufacture red blood cells.

This finding definitely suggests a more sophisticated view of the lungs that theyre not just for respiration but also a key partner in formation of crucial aspects of the blood, said pulmonologist Mark R. Looney, a professor of medicine and of laboratory medicine at the University of California, and the research's senior author. What weve observed here in mice strongly suggests the lung may play a key role in blood formation in humans as well. The report was published online at Nature.com.

The new imaging approach allowed scientists to examine interactions between the immune system and platelets in the lungs. While following the interactions, they discovered a surprisingly large population of cells that produce platelets called megakaryocytes. Though these cells were observed in the lungs previously it was generally though that they exist primarily in bone marrow.

Researchers were baffled and more detailed imaging followed. Once they zeroed in on these cells, they soon realized that they not only took up residence in the lungs, they also were producing 10 million platelets per hour there evidence that more than half of platelet production actually occurs in the lungs (in the mice models).

To be able to track blood stem cells and blood production, researchers transplanted donor lungs to mice with fluorescent-dye-tinted megakaryocytes. They followed the fluorescent cells as they traveled to the new lungs.

In another experiment, scientists wanted to determine if lungs that already had these platelet producers imbedded would spur platelet production in mice with low platelet counts, so they transplanted lungs with fluorescent-tinted megakaryocytes into mice predetermined to have low platelet counts. The transplanted lungs quickly sprung into action and restored normal platelet levels.

In yet another experiment, researchers transplanted healthy lungs with all cells fluorescently tinted into mice without bone marrow blood stem cells. The fluorescent marker cells quickly traveled to the damaged bone marrow and began production of myriad cells including T cells, which are key immune cells.

The exact mechanism behind the bone marrow-lung blood production is not yet known. Its possible that the lung is an ideal bioreactor for platelet production because of the mechanical force of the blood, or perhaps because of some molecular signaling we dont yet know about, said Guadalupe Ortiz-Muoz, a postdoctoral researcher and the researchs co-author. But more research is sure to follow.

Now medical scientists and researchers can zero in on proving in human models that blood components stem cells key among them travel more freely than previously though, which could lead ultimately to advances in treatment options for various blood disorders.

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New Delhi: 24-year-old girl, Kanika Juneja, suffering from Multiple Sclerosis (MS) was successfully treated by a team of doctors with bone marrow transplant (BMT).

She was diagnosed with MS, an autoimmune disorder where the body's immune system starts attacking the protective sheet covering the nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord.

Juneja went through several rounds of treatments but could not be cured. She got another chance at life at Fortis Healthcare where the doctors treated her with BMT.

Dr Rahul Bhargava, Director, Clinical Hematology and Bone Marrow Transplant, Fortis Memorial Research Institute (FMRI) explained, "In an autologous BMT procedure, the healthy stem cells from the patient are taken out and preserved. Chemotherapy is then administered to reset the body's immunity and then the stem cells are injected back to rescue the person from the side effects of chemotherapy. After the surgery, the patient is kept under isolation for a few months to ensure he/she does not contract any infection."

Since conventional steroid injections and immune therapy are expensive and don't promise a cure, Bhargava thought of going for a BMT for Juneja.

Juneja is now actively involved in raising awareness about MS amongst the community through social media.

Juneja said, "I had just completed my college education when I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. I was lucky because I got diagnosed within a week of my symptoms and could avail treatment options faster."

Dr Simmardeep Singh Gill, Zonal Director, FMRI added, "In this case, we have proved that bone marrow transplant can be seen as a successful alternate treatment option for multiple sclerosis patients, giving them a fresh shot at life".

Currently, there are 2.3 million people living with multiple sclerosis worldwide.

(With IANS inputs)

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Doctors successfully treat 24-year-old girl MS patient with bone marrow transplant - Zee News