Archive for the ‘Skin Stem Cells’ Category

Friday, Oct. 12, 2012

Stem cells derived from a mouse's skin won Shinya Yamanaka the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine on Monday. Now researchers in Japan are seeking to use his pioneering technology for an even greater prize: restoring sight.

Scientists at the Riken Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe plan to use induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells in a human trial using patients with macular degeneration, a disease in which the retina becomes damaged and results in loss of vision, Yamanaka, a Kyoto University professor, told reporters the same day in San Francisco.

Companies including Pfizer Inc. are already planning trials of stem cells derived from human embryos, but Riken's will be the first to use a technology that mimics the power of embryonic cells while avoiding the ethical controversy that accompanies them.

"The work in that area looks very encouraging," John B. Gurdon, 79, a professor at the University of Cambridge who shared this year's Nobel Prize with Yamanaka, said in an interview in London.

Yamanaka and Gurdon split the 8 million Swedish kronor (about 94 million) award for experiments 50 years apart demonstrating that mature cells in latent form retain all of the DNA they had as immature stem cells, and that they can be returned to that potent state.

Their findings offer the potential for a new generation of therapies against hard-to-treat diseases like macular degeneration.

In a study published in 1962, Gurdon took a cell from a tadpole's gut, extracted the nucleus and inserted it into the egg cell of an adult frog whose own nucleus had been removed. The reprogrammed egg cell developed into a tadpole with the genetic characteristics of the original tadpole, and subsequent trials yielded adult frogs.

Yamanaka, 50, built on Gurdon's work by adding four genes to a skin cell from a mouse, returning it to its immature state as a stem cell with the potential to become any cell in the body.

He dubbed them induced pluripotent stem cells.

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Riken to test iPS cells in human trial

Yesterday at 12:00 AM Their work holds hope for treating diseases such as Parkinson's by growing tissue for transplant.

The Associated Press

NEW YORK - Two scientists from different generations won the Nobel Prize in medicine Monday for the groundbreaking discovery that cells in the body can be reprogrammed into completely different kinds, work that reflects the mechanism behind cloning and offers an alternative to using embryonic stem cells.

click image to enlarge

British scientist John Gurdon, left, and Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka, right, were named winners of the 2012 Nobel Prize in medicine for their work in cell biology.

Left: AP/Matt Dunham; right: Kyodo News

The work of British researcher John Gurdon and Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka -- who was born the year Gurdon made his discovery -- holds hope for treating diseases like Parkinson's and diabetes by growing customized tissue for transplant.

And it has spurred a new generation of laboratory studies into other illnesses, including schizophrenia, which may lead to new treatments.

Basically, Gurdon, 79, and Yamanaka, 50, showed how to make the equivalent of embryonic stem cells without the ethical questions those versatile cells pose, a promise scientists are now scrambling to fulfill.

Once created, these "blank slate" cells can be nudged toward developing into other cell types. Skin cells can ultimately be transformed into brain cells, for example.

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Two scientists share Nobel for medicine for work on alternate stem cells

Two scientists who discovered the developmental clock could be turned back in mature cells, transforming them into immature cells with the ability to become any tissue in the body pluripotent stem cells are being honored with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

The Nobel Prize honoring Sir John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka was announced today (Oct. 8) by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Th duo's work revealed what scientists had thought impossible. Just after conception, an embryo contains immature cells that can give rise to any cell type such as nerve, muscle and liver cells in the adult organism; these are called pluripotent stem cells, and scientists believed once these stem cells become specialized to carry out a specific body task there was no turning back.

Gurdon, now at the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, England, found this wasn't the case when in 1962 he replaced the nucleus of a frog's egg cell with the nucleus taken from a mature intestinal cell from a tadpole. And voila, the altered frog egg developed into a tadpole, suggesting the mature nucleus held the instructions needed to become all cells in the frog, as if it were a young unspecialized cell. In fact, later experiments using nuclear transfer have produced cloned mammals. [5 Amazing Stem Cell Discoveries]

Then in 2006, Yamanaka, who was born in 1962 when Gurdon reported his discovery and is now at Kyoto University, genetically reprogrammed mature skin cells in mice to become immature cells able to become any cell in the adult mice, which he named induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS). Scientists can now derive such induced pluripotent stem cells from adult nerve, heart and liver cells, allowing new ways to study diseases.

When Yamanaka received the call from Stockholm about his award, he was doing housework, according to an interview with the Nobel Prize website. "It is a tremendous honor to me," Yamanaka said during that interview.

As for his hopes for mankind with regard to stem cells, he said, "My goal, all my life, is to bring this technology, stem cell technology, to the bedside, to patients, to clinics." He added that the first clinical trials of iPS cells will begin next year.

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Stem Cell Discoveries Snag Nobel Prize in Medicine

A Japanese and a British scientist were awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine Monday for their groundbreaking work in turning adult cells into immature ones that might be tweaked further to treat a wide spectrum of diseases. Such research is being aggressively pursued at scientific institutions across San Diego County.

Shinya Yamanaka of Japan and John Gurdon of Great Britain showed that it is possible to alter adult cells to the point where they are very similar to human embryonic stem cells. But the process does not involved the destruction of embryos.

In essence, scientists can now take cells from, say, a person's skin and turn back the clock, making the cell essentially act as though it were new.

The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute issued a statement today saying, "These groundbreaking discoveries have completely changed our view of the development and cellular specialisation. We now understand that the mature cell does not have to be confined forever to its specialised state. Textbooks have been rewritten and new research fields have been established. By reprogramming human cells, scientists have created new opportunities to study diseases and develop methods for diagnosis and therapy.

"The discoveries of Gurdon and Yamanaka have shown that specialised cells can turn back the developmental clock under certain circumstances. Although their genome undergoes modifications during development, these modifications are not irreversible. We have obtained a new view of the development of cells and organisms.

"Research during recent years has shown that iPS cells can give rise to all the different cell types of the body. These discoveries have also provided new tools for scientists around the world and led to remarkable progress in many areas of medicine. iPS cells can also be prepared from human cells.

"For instance, skin cells can be obtained from patients with various diseases, reprogrammed, and examined in the laboratory to determine how they differ from cells of healthy individuals. Such cells constitute invaluable tools for understanding disease mechanisms and so provide new opportunities to develop medical therapies."

Gurdon -- who was working in his lab today when he learned that he'd won a Nobel -- made the initial breakthrough about 50 years ago, and Yamanaka built on that work, accelerating the process through genetic engineering.

The Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute was created in La Jolla, in part, to probe exactly this area of research.

Will La Jolla scientists win this year's Nobel Prizes?

Read more here:
Nobel Prize awarded for work on stem cells

Click photo to enlarge

Biology professor Graciela Unguez works with a fluorescence stereomicroscope in her laboratory in Foster Hall. Unguez s current research looks at the electromotor system of electric fish in an effort to better understand how intrinsic and extrinsic factors influence the phenotype expressed by individual cells.

New Mexico State University biologist Graciela Unguez and a team of researchers found that electric fish, a vertebrate animal just like humans, can regenerate their tails following amputation after activating their stem cells. The findings were published in the May 2012 edition of the scientific journal, PLOS One.

"What's surprising is that as humans, we're one of the few animal species that do not readily regenerate limbs, organs or most tissues," Unguez said. "So, there's a lot of interest in how these fish do it, and what's preventing us from doing it."

Regeneration is the process of restoring lost cells, tissues or organs. According to Unguez, most animals have the ability to regenerate eyes and tails and some animals may be able to regenerate up to half of their bodies.

The researchers discovered that when they cut off up to one third of an electric fish's tail, including the spinal cord, vertebrae, muscles, skin, connective tissues and nerves, the fish would regenerate it. Unguez said the more tissue cut off, the longer the regeneration takes, but for the purpose of her study, it takes about three weeks.

"It's really exciting to us because, here's an example of an animal that can regenerate a lot of tissue types that are also found in

Unguez has used the electric fish as a model system to investigate the role that the nervous system plays in the fate of electrically excitable cells like muscle cells for 15 years. She noted that for many years, scientists have thought that highly regenerative animals use a mechanism of regeneration that does not involve stem cells, and this stem cell-based mechanism is well known in humans. In contrast, the stem cell-independent mechanism found in highly regenerative animals is not normally active in humans.

Unguez explained that stem cells are a small population of cells that do not mature and stay with us throughout our life, and then when called upon, they reenter the cell cycle to become muscle cells, neurons, skill cells and such.

But, what Unguez and her collaborators discovered was the opposite. The electric fish actually activated its own muscle and electric organ stem cells to regenerate. She said the adult fish regenerated unendingly with the activation of their stem cells.

More here:
Electric fish at NMSU activate stem cells for regeneration

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Scientists from Britain and Japan shared a Nobel Prize on Monday for the discovery that adult cells can be transformed back into embryo-like stem cells that may one day regrow tissue in damaged brains, hearts or other organs.

John Gurdon, 79, of the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, Britain and Shinya Yamanaka, 50, of Kyoto University in Japan, discovered ways to create tissue that would act like embryonic cells, without the need to harvest embryos.

They share the $1.2 million Nobel Prize for Medicine, for work Gurdon began 50 years ago and Yamanaka capped with a 2006 experiment that transformed the field of "regenerative medicine" - the field of curing disease by regrowing healthy tissue.

"These groundbreaking discoveries have completely changed our view of the development and specialisation of cells," the Nobel Assembly at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute said.

All of the body's tissue starts as stem cells, before developing into skin, blood, nerves, muscle and bone. The big hope for stem cells is that they can be used to replace damaged tissue in everything from spinal cord injuries to Parkinson's disease.

Scientists once thought it was impossible to turn adult tissue back into stem cells, which meant that new stem cells could only be created by harvesting embryos - a practice that raised ethical qualms in some countries and also means that implanted cells might be rejected by the body.

In 1958, Gurdon was the first scientist to clone an animal, producing a healthy tadpole from the egg of a frog with DNA from another tadpole's intestinal cell. That showed developed cells still carry the information needed to make every cell in the body, decades before other scientists made headlines around the world by cloning the first mammal, Dolly the sheep.

More than 40 years later, Yamanaka produced mouse stem cells from adult mouse skin cells, by inserting a few genes. His breakthrough effectively showed that the development that takes place in adult tissue could be reversed, turning adult cells back into cells that behave like embryos. The new stem cells are known as "induced pluripotency stem cells", or iPS cells.

"The eventual aim is to provide replacement cells of all kinds," Gurdon's Institute explains on its website.

"We would like to be able to find a way of obtaining spare heart or brain cells from skin or blood cells. The important point is that the replacement cells need to be from the same individual, to avoid problems of rejection and hence of the need for immunosuppression."

Original post:
UK, Japan scientists win Nobel for stem cell breakthroughs

AFP/Getty Images

John B. Gurdon (left) and Shinya Yamanaka will share the prize, worth about $1.2 million.

The two scientists who won this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine discovered that cells in our body have the remarkable ability to reinvent themselves. They found that every cell in the human body, from our skin and bones to our heart and brain, can be coaxed into forming any other cell.

The process is called reprogramming, and its potential for new drugs and therapies is vast. If neurons or heart cells are damaged by disease or aging, then cells from the skin or blood potentially could be induced to reprogram themselves and repair the damaged tissue.

The winners John Gurdon of the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, England, and Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan and the Gladstone Institute in San Francisco made their discoveries more than 40 years apart.

In 1962, Gurdon proved that a cell from a frog's stomach contained the entire blueprint to make a whole frog. When he took the cell's nucleus and popped it into a frog egg, the egg developed into a normal frog.

This method eventually was used to clone all sorts of animals, including cats, dogs, horses and, most famously, Dolly the sheep the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. Gurdon, 79, continues to study reprogramming and was working in his lab when he received the call from the Nobel committee.

But a major obstacle stood in the way of further development of these stem cells: Getting the frog's stomach cell to strip away its specialization and turn into one of the 200 or so cell types known to exist in animals always required the use of an egg.

A question hung over the field for decades: Could a specialized cell reprogram itself all on its own?

In 2006, Yamanaka and graduate student Kazutoshi Takahashi found the answer, and it sent shockwaves through biology and medicine. They demonstrated that any cell could be reset and induced to develop into another cell type. And, even more remarkably, that it took little to get the job done.

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Nobel Winners Unlocked Cells' Unlimited Potential

Reuters

This undated handout photo shows iPS cells derived from adult human dermal fibroblasts released by Kyoto University Professor Shinya Yamanaka at Center for iPS Cell Research and Application of Kyoto University in Kyoto, western Japan.

By Reuters

Scientists from Britain and Japan shared a Nobel Prize on Monday for the discovery that adult cells can be transformed back into embryo-like stem cells that may one day regrow tissue in damaged brains, hearts or other organs.

John Gurdon, 79, of the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, Britain and Shinya Yamanaka, 50, of Kyoto University in Japan, discovered ways to create tissue that would act like embryonic cells, without the need to harvest embryos.

They share the $1.2 million Nobel Prize for Medicine, for work Gurdon began 50 years ago and Yamanaka capped with a 2006 experiment that transformed the field of "regenerative medicine" - the field of curing disease by regrowing healthy tissue.

"These groundbreaking discoveries have completely changed our view of the development and specialization of cells," the Nobel Assembly at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute said.

Photoblog: Click for a close-up viiew of the Nobel Prize-winning stem cell research

All of the body's tissue starts as stem cells, before developing into skin, blood, nerves, muscle and bone. The big hope for stem cells is that they can be used to replace damaged tissue in everything from spinal cord injuries to Parkinson's disease.

Go here to read the rest:
Nobel Prize awarded for stem cell breakthroughs

Shinya Yamanaka MD, PhD

Here are answers to frequently asked questions about induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, the type of cell that has been reprogrammed from an adult cell, such as a skin or blood cell.

What are induced pluripotent stem cells?

Induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, are a type of cell that has been reprogrammed from an adult cell, such as a skin or blood cell. iPS cells are pluripotent cells because, like embryonic stem cells, they can develop into virtually any type of cell. iPS cells are distinct from embryonic stem cells, however, because they are derived from adult tissue, rather than from embryos. iPS cells are also distinct from adult stem cells, which naturally occur in small numbers in thehuman body.

In 2006, Shinya Yamanaka developed the method for inducing skin cells from mice into becoming like pluripotent stem cells and called them iPS cells. In 2007, Yamanaka did the same with adult human skin cells.

Yamanakas experiments revealed that adult skin cells, when treated with four pieces of DNA (now called the Yamanaka factors), can induce skin cells to revert back to their pluripotent state. His discovery has since led to a variety of methods for reprogramming adult cells into stem cells that can become virtually any cell type such as a beating heart cell or a neuron that can transmit chemical signals in the brain. This allows researchers to create patient-specific celllines that can be studied and used in everything from drug therapies to regenerative medicine.

How are iPS cells different from embryonic stem cells?

iPS cells are a promising alternative to embryonic stem cells. Embryonic stem cells hold tremendous potential for regenerative medicine, in which damaged organs and tissues could be replaced or repaired. But the use of embryonic stem cells has long been controversial. iPS cells hold the same sort of promise but avoid controversy because they do not require the destruction of human embryos. Nor do they require the harvesting of adult stem cells. Rather, they simply require a small tissue sample from a living human.

Why is iPS cell technology so important?

In addition to avoiding the controversial use of embryonic stem cells, iPS cell technology also represents an entirely new platform for fundamental studies of human disease. Rather than using models made in yeast, flies or mice for disease research, iPS cell technology allows human stem cells to be created from patients with a specific disease. As a result, the iPS cells contain a complete set of the genes that resulted in that disease and thus represent the potential of a farsuperior human model for studying disease and testing new drugs and treatments. In the future, iPS cells could be used in a Petri dish to test both drug safety andefficacy for an individual patient.

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Stem Cell Science Q & A

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Scientists from Britain and Japan shared a Nobel Prize on Monday for the discovery that adult cells can be transformed back into embryo-like stem cells that may one day regrow tissue in damaged brains, hearts or other organs.

John Gurdon, 79, of the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, Britain and Shinya Yamanaka, 50, of Kyoto University in Japan, discovered ways to create tissue that would act like embryonic cells, without the need to collect the cells from embryos.

They share the $1.2 million Nobel Prize for Medicine, for work Gurdon began 50 years ago and Yamanaka capped with a 2006 experiment that transformed the field of "regenerative medicine" - the search for ways to cure disease by growing healthy tissue.

"These groundbreaking discoveries have completely changed our view of the development and specialization of cells," the Nobel Assembly at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute said.

All of the body starts as stem cells, before developing into tissue like skin, blood, nerves, muscle and bone. The big hope is that stem cells can grow to replace damaged tissue in cases from spinal cord injuries to Parkinson's disease.

Scientists once thought it was impossible to turn adult tissue back into stem cells. That meant new stem cells could only be created by taking them from embryos, which raised ethical objections that led to research bans in some countries.

As far back as 1962 Gurdon became the first scientist to clone an animal, making a healthy tadpole from the egg of a frog with DNA from another tadpole's intestinal cell. That showed that developed cells carry the information to make every cell in the body - decades before other scientists made world headlines by cloning the first mammal from adult DNA, Dolly the sheep.

More than 40 years later, Yamanaka produced mouse stem cells from adult mouse skin cells by inserting a small number of genes. His breakthrough effectively showed that the development that takes place in adult tissue could be reversed, turning adult tissue back into cells that behave like embryos.

Stem cells created from adult tissue are known as "induced pluripotency stem cells", or iPS cells. Because patients may one day be treated with stem cells from their own tissue, their bodies might be less likely to reject them.

"The eventual aim is to provide replacement cells of all kinds," Gurdon's institute explains on its website.

Go here to read the rest:
UK, Japan scientists win Nobel for adult stem cell discovery

John B. Gurdon transferred DNA between a tadpole and a frog to clone the first animal. Shinya Yamanaka used Gurdons concept to turn ordinary skin into potent stem cells. Both won the Nobel Prize for medicine today.

Gurdon, 79, a researcher at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., and Yamanaka, 50, a professor at Kyoto University in Japan, will share the 8 million-kronor ($1.2 million) prize, the Nobel Assembly said today in Stockholm. The pairs findings have created new opportunities to study diseases and develop methods for diagnosis and therapy, the assembly said in a statement.

Gurdons feat, in 1962, paved the way in 1996 for the cloning of Dolly the sheep and, 10 years later, for Yamanaka, who turned mouse skin cells into stem cells with the potential to become any cell in the body. That achievement was lauded by some politicians and religious figures as a more ethical way to make stem cells because it doesnt destroy human life.

This field has had a long history, starting with John Gurdon, Yamanaka, who was born the same year Gurdon published his achievement, said in an interview on the Nobel Assemblys website. I was able to initiate my project because of his experiments 50 years ago.

Stem cells are found in human embryos and in some tissues and organs of adults, and have the potential to develop into different types of cells. Thats spurred scientists to look at ways of harnessing their power to treat diseases such as Alzheimers, stroke, diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Gurdon showed that mature cells from specific parts of an animals body retain all the genetic information they had as immature stem cells. He took a cell from a tadpoles gut, extracted the nucleus, and inserted it into the egg cell of an adult frog whose own nucleus had been removed. That reprogrammed egg cell developed into a tadpole with the genetic characteristics of the original tadpole, and subsequent trials yielded adult frogs.

Gurdon overturned the prevailing view that as cells differentiate, they lose genes and their ability to generate other cells of any kind, said Alan Colman, the executive director of the Singapore Stem Cell Consortium, who gained his doctorate under Gurdon at Cambridge.

Hes amazingly passionate, Colman said in an interview before the award was announced. He was the sort of supervisor who you found it difficult to get appointments with, not because he was flying around the world, but because he was doing experiments all the time.

Gurdon was answering e-mails in his laboratory when he received the call from Sweden today about the prize, he said in an interview on the Nobel Assemblys website. His first reaction was, Its amazing if its really true, he said. Could it be that someones pulling your leg? That has happened before.

Gurdon will celebrate at a reception that his institute is hosting today, and then hell be back to work early tomorrow, he said at a London news conference today.

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Stem-Cell Pioneers Gurdon, Yamanaka Win Nobel Prize

Skin care meets science for stem cell education and product introduction to the only human and non-embryonic stem cell skin care line of its kind on October 25th, 2012.

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) October 08, 2012

Lifeline Skin Care products feature a unique combination of stem cell extracts, vitamins A, B, E, and antioxidants that work synergistically to create new healthy cells. To date, Lifeline is the only skin care line based on human non-embryonic stem cells, which give skin cells the ability to continually proliferate. The result is firmer, smoother, younger and healthier looking skin. Lifeline Skin Care is based on a patented method for ethically extracting growth factors and peptides from young, human stem cells through the use of non-fertilized eggs and never embryos. Stem cell extracts help to increase skins overall thickness, making skin less vulnerable to premature aging.

Independent clinical studies have proven 73% firmer, tighter skin, 93% improved skin hydration, 63% improved skin tone and brightness, and 67% improved appearance of lines and wrinkles with topical use. With benefits boasting similar to those of collagen injections, Lifeline Skin Care offers a collection of formulas for day and night use. Both the Defensive Day Moisturizer Serum SPF 15 and Recovery Night Moisture Serum feature unique combinations of stem cell extract, vitamins A, B, E, and antioxidants.

Stimulating the skins ability to repair itself, these products along with Blue Spa professional procedures and treatments, make a win-win combination for beauty enthusiasts wanting to achieve optimal skincare results. Owner of Blue Spa, Ronda Nofal, recently stated, We are very pleased to be the first Medi Spa in Los Angeles to offer Lifeline@ Skin Care technology to clients. The science and technology behind this product line is far beyond anything else on the market and the results speak for themselves. Our staff has been using these products for the last two months and they have noticed theyre the perfect compliment to any of our facial laser services: IPL (FotoFacial), Laser Genesis, and Titan Skin Tightening. The skin reacts beautifully when paired with dermal fillers, Vitalize Peels, and Micro-dermabrasion as well.

Members of the press and media are invited for early entry on Thursday, October 25th, 2012 between 1-4 pm for Q& A with Lifeline Skin Care expert, Linda Nelson. Additional hours have been arranged for Friday, October 26th, 2012 from 10 am-12 pm. Please directly contact Blue Spa and Lifeline Skin Cares publicity team at Jade Umbrella, to schedule interviews.

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About Lifeline Skin Care: Developed in 2010 by the International Stem Cell Corporation (http://www.internationalstemcell.com/), while researching cures for diabetes and Parkinsons Disease, a team of biotech scientists discovered a powerful compound for regenerating skin cells. Lifeline Skin Cares goal is to help improve the look and feel of you skin by combining the latest discoveries in the fields of stem cell biology, nanotechnology and skin cream formulation technology to create the highest quality, scientifically tested, and most effective anti-aging products. Revenue helps to fund further research into finding cures and treatments for Diabetes, Parkinsons, Liver, Eye, and other neurological diseases.

Website: http://www.lifelineskincare.com

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Blue Spa and Lifeline® Stem Cell Skin Care Pair up to Promote a Beauty Breakthrough and Scientific Approach to Anti ...

Thomas Perlmann of Karolinska Institute presents Sir John B. Gurdon of Britain and Shinya Yamanaka of Japan as winners of the 2012 Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology. The prize committee at Stockholms Karonlinska institute said the discovery has revolutionized our understanding of how cells and organisms develop. Photograph by Bertil Enevag Ericson/Scanpix/AP Photo

Stem cells derived from a mouses skin won Shinya Yamanaka the Nobel Prize yesterday. Now researchers in Japan are seeking to use his pioneering technology for an even greater prize: restoring sight.

Scientists at the Riken Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe plan to use so-called induced pluripotent stem cells in a trial among patients with macular degeneration, a disease in which the retina becomes damaged, resulting in blindness, Yamanaka told reporters in San Francisco yesterday.

Companies including Marlborough, Massachusetts-based Advanced Cell Technology Inc. (ACTC) are already testing stem cells derived from human embryos. The Japanese study will be the first to use a technology that mimics the power of embryonic cells while avoiding the ethical controversy that accompanies them.

The work in that area looks very encouraging, John B. Gurdon, 79, a professor at the University of Cambridge who shared the Nobel with Yamanaka yesterday, said in an interview in London.

Yamanaka and Gurdon shared the 8 million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million) award for experiments 50 years apart that showed that mature cells retain in latent form all the DNA they had as immature stem cells, and that they can be returned to that potent state, offering the potential for a new generation of therapies against hard-to-treat diseases such as macular degeneration.

In a study published in 1962, Gurdon took a cell from a tadpoles gut, extracted the nucleus, and inserted it into the egg cell of an adult frog whose own nucleus had been removed. That reprogrammed egg cell developed into a tadpole with the genetic characteristics of the original tadpole, and subsequent trials yielded adult frogs.

Yamanaka, 50, a professor at Kyoto University, built on Gurdons work by adding four genes to a mouse skin cell, returning it to its immature state as a stem cell with the potential to become any cell in the body. He dubbed them induced pluripotent stem cells.

The technology may lead to new treatments against diseases such as Parkinsons by providing replacement cells.

The implications for regenerative medicine are obvious, R. Sanders Williams, president of the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco, where Yamanaka is a senior investigator, said in a telephone interview. Skin cells can be converted to any other cell you want -- skin to brain or skin to heart, skin to insulin-producing.

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Nobel Winner’s Stem Cells to Be Tested in Eye Disease Next Year

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Scientists from Britain and Japan shared a Nobel Prize on Monday for the discovery that adult cells can be transformed back into embryo-like stem cells that may one day regrow tissue in damaged brains, hearts or other organs.

John Gurdon, 79, of the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, Britain and Shinya Yamanaka, 50, of Kyoto University in Japan, discovered ways to create tissue that would act like embryonic cells, without the need to collect the cells from embryos.

They share the $1.2 million Nobel Prize for Medicine, for work Gurdon began 50 years ago and Yamanaka capped with a 2006 experiment that transformed the field of "regenerative medicine" - the search for ways to cure disease by growing healthy tissue.

"These groundbreaking discoveries have completely changed our view of the development and specialisation of cells," the Nobel Assembly at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute said.

All of the body starts as stem cells, before developing into tissue like skin, blood, nerves, muscle and bone. The big hope is that stem cells can grow to replace damaged tissue in cases from spinal cord injuries to Parkinson's disease.

Scientists once thought it was impossible to turn adult tissue back into stem cells. That meant new stem cells could only be created by taking them from embryos, which raised ethical objections that led to research bans in some countries.

As far back as 1962 Gurdon became the first scientist to clone an animal, making a healthy tadpole from the egg of a frog with DNA from another tadpole's intestinal cell. That showed that developed cells carry the information to make every cell in the body - decades before other scientists made world headlines by cloning the first mammal from adult DNA, Dolly the sheep.

More than 40 years later, Yamanaka produced mouse stem cells from adult mouse skin cells by inserting a small number of genes. His breakthrough effectively showed that the development that takes place in adult tissue could be reversed, turning adult tissue back into cells that behave like embryos.

Stem cells created from adult tissue are known as "induced pluripotency stem cells", or iPS cells. Because patients may one day be treated with stem cells from their own tissue, their bodies might be less likely to reject them.

"The eventual aim is to provide replacement cells of all kinds," Gurdon's institute explains on its website.

The rest is here:
UK, Japan scientists win Nobel for adult stem cell discovery

Shinya Yamanaka MD, PhD

Here are answers to frequently asked questions about induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, the type of cell that has been reprogrammed from an adult cell, such as a skin or blood cell.

What are induced pluripotent stem cells?

Induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, are a type of cell that has been reprogrammed from an adult cell, such as a skin or blood cell. iPS cells are pluripotent cells because, like embryonic stem cells, they can develop into virtually any type of cell. iPS cells are distinct from embryonic stem cells, however, because they are derived from adult tissue, rather than from embryos. iPS cells are also distinct from adult stem cells, which naturally occur in small numbers in thehuman body.

In 2006, Shinya Yamanaka developed the method for inducing skin cells from mice into becoming like pluripotent stem cells and called them iPS cells. In 2007, Yamanaka did the same with adult human skin cells.

Yamanakas experiments revealed that adult skin cells, when treated with four pieces of DNA (now called the Yamanaka factors), can induce skin cells to revert back to their pluripotent state. His discovery has since led to a variety of methods for reprogramming adult cells into stem cells that can become virtually any cell type such as a beating heart cell or a neuron that can transmit chemical signals in the brain. This allows researchers to create patient-specific celllines that can be studied and used in everything from drug therapies to regenerative medicine.

How are iPS cells different from embryonic stem cells?

iPS cells are a promising alternative to embryonic stem cells. Embryonic stem cells hold tremendous potential for regenerative medicine, in which damaged organs and tissues could be replaced or repaired. But the use of embryonic stem cells has long been controversial. iPS cells hold the same sort of promise but avoid controversy because they do not require the destruction of human embryos. Nor do they require the harvesting of adult stem cells. Rather, they simply require a small tissue sample from a living human.

Why is iPS cell technology so important?

In addition to avoiding the controversial use of embryonic stem cells, iPS cell technology also represents an entirely new platform for fundamental studies of human disease. Rather than using models made in yeast, flies or mice for disease research, iPS cell technology allows human stem cells to be created from patients with a specific disease. As a result, the iPS cells contain a complete set of the genes that resulted in that disease and thus represent the potential of a farsuperior human model for studying disease and testing new drugs and treatments. In the future, iPS cells could be used in a Petri dish to test both drug safety andefficacy for an individual patient.

The rest is here:
Stem Cell Science Q & A

AFP/Getty Images

John B. Gurdon (left) and Shinya Yamanaka will share the prize, worth about $1.2 million.

The two scientists who won this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine discovered that cells in our body have the remarkable ability to reinvent themselves. They found that every cell in the human body, from our skin and bones to our heart and brain, can be coaxed into forming any other cell.

The process is called reprogramming, and its potential for new drugs and therapies is vast. If neurons or heart cells are damaged by disease or aging, then cells from the skin or blood potentially could be induced to reprogram themselves and repair the damaged tissue.

The winners John Gurdon of the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, England, and Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan and the Gladstone Institute in San Francisco made their discoveries more than 40 years apart.

In 1962, Gurdon proved that a cell from a frog's stomach contained the entire blueprint to make a whole frog. When he took the cell's nucleus and popped it into a frog egg, the egg developed into a normal frog.

This method eventually was used to clone all sorts of animals, including cats, dogs, horses and, most famously, Dolly the sheep the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. Gurdon, 79, continues to study reprogramming and was working in his lab when he received the call from the Nobel committee.

But a major obstacle stood in the way of further development of these stem cells: Getting the frog's stomach cell to strip away its specialization and turn into one of the 200 or so cell types known to exist in animals always required the use of an egg.

A question hung over the field for decades: Could a specialized cell reprogram itself all on its own?

In 2006, Yamanaka and graduate student Kazutoshi Takahashi found the answer, and it sent shockwaves through biology and medicine. They demonstrated that any cell could be reset and induced to develop into another cell type. And, even more remarkably, that it took little to get the job done.

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Nobel Winners Unlocked Cells' Unlimited Potential

Skin care meets science for stem cell education and product introduction to the only human and non-embryonic stem cell skin care line of its kind on October 25th, 2012.

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) October 08, 2012

Lifeline Skin Care products feature a unique combination of stem cell extracts, vitamins A, B, E, and antioxidants that work synergistically to create new healthy cells. To date, Lifeline is the only skin care line based on human non-embryonic stem cells, which give skin cells the ability to continually proliferate. The result is firmer, smoother, younger and healthier looking skin. Lifeline Skin Care is based on a patented method for ethically extracting growth factors and peptides from young, human stem cells through the use of non-fertilized eggs and never embryos. Stem cell extracts help to increase skins overall thickness, making skin less vulnerable to premature aging.

Independent clinical studies have proven 73% firmer, tighter skin, 93% improved skin hydration, 63% improved skin tone and brightness, and 67% improved appearance of lines and wrinkles with topical use. With benefits boasting similar to those of collagen injections, Lifeline Skin Care offers a collection of formulas for day and night use. Both the Defensive Day Moisturizer Serum SPF 15 and Recovery Night Moisture Serum feature unique combinations of stem cell extract, vitamins A, B, E, and antioxidants.

Stimulating the skins ability to repair itself, these products along with Blue Spa professional procedures and treatments, make a win-win combination for beauty enthusiasts wanting to achieve optimal skincare results. Owner of Blue Spa, Ronda Nofal, recently stated, We are very pleased to be the first Medi Spa in Los Angeles to offer Lifeline@ Skin Care technology to clients. The science and technology behind this product line is far beyond anything else on the market and the results speak for themselves. Our staff has been using these products for the last two months and they have noticed theyre the perfect compliment to any of our facial laser services: IPL (FotoFacial), Laser Genesis, and Titan Skin Tightening. The skin reacts beautifully when paired with dermal fillers, Vitalize Peels, and Micro-dermabrasion as well.

Members of the press and media are invited for early entry on Thursday, October 25th, 2012 between 1-4 pm for Q& A with Lifeline Skin Care expert, Linda Nelson. Additional hours have been arranged for Friday, October 26th, 2012 from 10 am-12 pm. Please directly contact Blue Spa and Lifeline Skin Cares publicity team at Jade Umbrella, to schedule interviews.

About Blue Spa: Opened in October 1999 and former home to the infamous La Reina Theater, Blue Medi Spa is modern luxury spa combining beauty, science, service, and style. Staying ahead of beauty trends and the most effective treatments, highly trained specialists have the knowledge and a decade of experience in lasers (IPL/ Titan/ Laser Genesis/ Zerona), anti-aging skin cocktails, weight loss, non-invasive body contouring, and one-step-ahead aesthetic options. Where feeling blue, never felt better

Website: http://www.bluespa.com.

About Lifeline Skin Care: Developed in 2010 by the International Stem Cell Corporation (http://www.internationalstemcell.com/), while researching cures for diabetes and Parkinsons Disease, a team of biotech scientists discovered a powerful compound for regenerating skin cells. Lifeline Skin Cares goal is to help improve the look and feel of you skin by combining the latest discoveries in the fields of stem cell biology, nanotechnology and skin cream formulation technology to create the highest quality, scientifically tested, and most effective anti-aging products. Revenue helps to fund further research into finding cures and treatments for Diabetes, Parkinsons, Liver, Eye, and other neurological diseases.

Website: http://www.lifelineskincare.com

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Blue Spa and Lifeline® Stem Cell Skin Care Pair up to Promote a Beauty Breakthrough and Scientific Approach to Anti ...

Published: Oct. 7, 2012 at 1:05 AM

NEW YORK, Oct. 7 (UPI) -- An experimental treatment using skin cells to improve the vision of blind mice may help those with macular degeneration, U.S. researchers say.

Dr. Stephen Tsang of the Columbia University Medical Center in New York and colleagues said the findings suggest induced pluripotent stem cells -- derived from adult human skin cells but with embryonic properties -- could soon be used to restore vision in people with macular degeneration.

"With eye diseases, I think we're getting close to a scenario where a patient's own skin cells are used to replace retina cells destroyed by disease or degeneration," Tsang said in a statement. "It's often said that induced pluripotent stem cells transplantation will be important in the practice of medicine in some distant future, but our paper suggests the future is almost here."

Like embryonic stem cells, induced pluripotent stem cells can develop into any type of cell.

None of these cells has been transplanted into people, but many ophthalmologists said the eye is the ideal testing ground.

"The eye is a transparent and accessible part of the central nervous system, and that's a big advantage," Tsang said. "We can put cells into the eye and monitor them every day with routine non-invasive clinical exams and in the event of serious complications, removing the eye is not a life-threatening event."

The study was published online in advance the print edition of Molecular Medicine

Read more here:
Skin stem cells may help avoid blindness

And rightly so: stem-cell scientists have derived many types of cells from stem-cell precursors, but have in the past struggled with sex cells. The research by a team at Kyoto University provides a powerful model into mammalian development and infertility, but it is still a long way off from being used in human therapy.

Despite this fact, it did not stop the headlines in some of today's press screaming that infertile women could one day become pregnant by creating eggs from stem cells.

Evelyn Telfer, a reproductive biologist at the University of Edinburgh, told me this study has no clinical application to humans whatsoever because the tissue used in this study were all foetal and not adult cells.

Mitinori Saitou led a team using foetal mouse tissue from embryos or skin cells to create stem cells. Those stem cells were then genetically reprogrammed to become germ cells egg precursor cells.

These were then given a cocktail of "factors" to support their growth into mature eggs. The eggs were fertilised by IVF in the lab and then implanted into surrogate mice. Three baby mice were born and grew into fertile adults.

The fact that artificially manufactured eggs have gone on to produce healthy mice which are fertile is absolutely astounding and a great step forward for science. The results are published in the journal, Science.

But there are huge differences between human and mouse cells, not to mention the medical and ethical issues surrounding human ovarian tissue to culture cells.

Further clinical trials would be necessary using adult mouse cells first before we can start projecting that we can manufacture babies, and scientists need to learn so much more about how women form eggs.

So while this is major contribution to the field of reproductive biology, the study is not a ready-made cure for women with fertility problems.

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Stem cells: of mice and women?

Scientists have for the first time succeeded in taking skin cells from patients with heart failure and transforming them into healthy, beating heart tissue that could one day be used to treat the condition. The researchers said there were still many years of testing and refining ahead. But the results meant they might eventually be able to reprogram patients cells to repair their own damaged hearts. We have shown that its possible to take skin cells from an elderly patient with advanced heart failure and end up with his own beating cells in a laboratory dish that are healthy and young the equivalent to the stage of his heart cells when he was just born, said Lior Gepstein from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, who led the work. The researchers, whose study was published in the European Heart Journal on Wednesday, said clinical trials of the technique could begin within 10 years. Heart failure is a debilitating condition in which the heart is unable to pump enough blood around the body. It has become more prevalent in recent decades as advances medical science mean many more people survive heart attacks. At the moment, people with severe heart failure have to rely on mechanical devices or hope for a transplant. Researchers have been studying stem cells from various sources for more than a decade, hoping to capitalise on their ability to transform into a wide variety of other kinds of cell to treat a range of health conditions. There are two main forms of stem cells - embryonic stem cells, which are harvested from embryos, and reprogrammed human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs), often originally from skin or blood. Gepsteins team took skin cells from two men with heart failure - aged 51 and 61 - and transformed them by adding three genes and then a small molecule called valproic acid to the cell nucleus. They found that the resulting hiPSCs were able to differentiate to become heart muscle cells, or cardiomyocytes, just as effectively as hiPSCs that had been developed from healthy, young volunteers who acted as controls for the study. The team was then able to make the cardiomyocytes develop into heart muscle tissue, which they grew in a laboratory dish together with existing cardiac tissue. Within 24 to 48 hours the two types of tissue were beating together, they said. In a final step of the study, the new tissue was transplanted into healthy rat hearts and the researchers found it began to establish connections with cells in the host tissue. We hope that hiPSCs derived cardiomyocytes will not be rejected following transplantation into the same patients from which they were derived, Gepstein said. Whether this will be the case or not is the focus of active investigation. Experts in stem cell and cardiac medicine who were not involved in Gepsteins work praised it but also said there was a lot to do before it had a chance of becoming an effective treatment. This is an interesting paper, but very early and its really important for patients that the promise of such a technique is not over-sold, said John Martin a professor of cardiovascular medicine at University College London. The chances of translation are slim and if it does work it would take around 15 years to come to clinic. Nicholas Mills, a consultant cardiologist at Edinburgh University said the technology needs to be refined before it could be used for patients with heart failure, but added: These findings are encouraging and take us a step closer to ... identifying an effective means of repairing the heart.

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Skin cells may mend a broken heart: Research

October 5, 2012

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

Japanese scientists reported in the journal Science that they have created life using stem cells made from skin.

The skin cells were used to create eggs which were then fertilized to produce baby mice, who later had their own babies.

The technique has implications that may possibly help infertile couples have children, and maybe could even allow women to overcome menopause.

About one in 10 women of childbearing age face trouble becoming a parent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Last year, the scientists at Kyoto University were able to make viable sperm from stem cells. In the more recent study, the team was able to perform a similar accomplishment with eggs.

The researchers used two sources, including those collected from an embryo and skin-like cells, that were reprogrammed into becoming stem cells.

After turning the stem cells into early versions of eggs, they rebuilt an ovary by surrounding the early eggs with other types of supporting cells normally found in an ovary.

They used IVF techniques to collect the eggs, fertilize them with sperm from a male mouse and implant the fertilized egg into a surrogate mother.

Read more here:
Healthy Mice Created From Skin Stem Cells In Lab

Eggs capable of being fertilised and making babies can be created in the laboratory from skin cells, a study has shown.

Scientists successfully produced three fertile baby mice using the technique, which involves transforming ordinary skin cells into personalised stem cells.

The same Japanese team created viable mouse sperm from embryonic stem cells earlier this year.

Together both advances greatly increase the likelihood of radical and controversial future treatments for restoring fertility.

It could mean creating sperm for men whose fertility has been wiped out by cancer therapy, or reversing the menopause in women long after they have used up their natural supply of eggs.

However, many questions about safety and ethics will have to be answered first.

In August, scientists from Kyoto University in Japan announced that they had created sperm cells from mouse embryo stem cells.

Injected into mouse eggs, the sperm produced embryos which developed into healthy baby mice.

The same team, led by Dr Katsuhiko Hayashi, carried out the latest research which focused on eggs rather than sperm.

The scientists mirrored their earlier achievement by transforming stem cells from mouse embryos into eggs which could be fertilised to produce offspring.

See the original post here:
Japan: Scientists Create Eggs From Skin Cells

London, October 5 (ANI): Using stem cells made from skin, a Japanese team has created healthy eggs that, once fertilised, grow into normal baby mice.

These babies later had their own babies, the BBC reported.

The team at Kyoto University used stem cells from two sources: those collected from an embryo and skin-like cells, which were reprogrammed, into becoming stem cells.

The first step was to turn the stem cells into early versions of eggs.

A "reconstituted ovary" was then built by surrounding the early eggs with other types of supporting cells that are normally found in an ovary. This was transplanted into female mice. Surrounding the eggs in this environment helped them to mature.

IVF techniques were used to collect the eggs, fertilise them with sperm from a male mouse and implant the fertilised egg into a surrogate mother.

"They develop to be healthy and fertile offspring," Dr Katsuhiko Hayashi, from Kyoto University, told the BBC.

Those babies then had babies of their own, whose "grandmother" was a cell in a laboratory dish.

If the same methods could be used in people then, it could help infertile couples have children and even allow women to overcome the menopause.

But experts say many scientific and ethical hurdles must be overcome before the technique could be adapted for people.

Read the original:
Life created for first time from eggs made from skin cells

4 October 2012 Last updated at 18:31 ET By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News

Stem cells made from skin have become "grandparents" after generations of life were created in experiments by scientists in Japan.

The cells were used to create eggs, which were fertilised to produce baby mice. These later had their own babies.

If the technique could be adapted for people, it could help infertile couples have children and even allow women to overcome the menopause.

But experts say many scientific and ethical hurdles must be overcome.

Stem cells are able to become any other type of cell in the body from blood to bone, nerves to skin.

Last year the team at Kyoto University managed to make viable sperm from stem cells. Now they have performed a similar feat with eggs.

They used stem cells from two sources: those collected from an embryo and skin-like cells which were reprogrammed into becoming stem cells.

I just thought wow! The science is quite brilliant

The first step, reported in the journal Science, was to turn the stem cells into early versions of eggs.

Here is the original post:
Skin cells become 'grandparents'

Eggs capable of being fertilised and making babies can be created in the laboratory from skin cells, a study has shown.

Scientists successfully produced three fertile baby mice using the technique, which involves transforming ordinary skin cells into personalised stem cells.

The same Japanese team created viable mouse sperm from embryonic stem cells earlier this year.

Together both advances greatly increase the likelihood of radical and controversial future treatments for restoring fertility.

It could mean creating sperm for men whose fertility has been wiped out by cancer therapy, or reversing the menopause in women long after they have used up their natural supply of eggs.

However, many questions about safety and ethics will have to be answered first.

In August, scientists from Kyoto University in Japan announced that they had created sperm cells from mouse embryo stem cells.

Injected into mouse eggs, the sperm produced embryos which developed into healthy baby mice.

The same team, led by Dr Katsuhiko Hayashi, carried out the latest research which focused on eggs rather than sperm.

The scientists mirrored their earlier achievement by transforming stem cells from mouse embryos into eggs which could be fertilised to produce offspring.

Read the original post:
Japan: Scientists Create Eggs From Skin Cells