TRAGIC STORY! Paid $25,000 for Stem Cells @ Hospital Angeles Tijuana http://www.RegenerativeMedicine.mx
TWO Websites: http://www.regenerativemedicinemx.com AND http://www.regenerativemedicinetijuana.com STEM CELL Resources: http://www.cellmedicinesociety.org/component/content/article/86-news/410-mex...

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TRAGIC STORY! Paid $25,000 for Stem Cells @ Hospital Angeles Tijuana http://www.RegenerativeMedicine.mx - Video

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Common shoulder conditions treated with stem cell therapy
In this video, Ross Hauser, MD discusses the types of shoulder conditions our Prolotherapy team specializes in treating with stem cell therapy and platelet rich plasma Prolotherapy. If you...

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Common shoulder conditions treated with stem cell therapy - Video

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Stem RX Bioscience Solution Pvt Ltd hold awareness program on stem cell therapy

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Stem RX Bioscience Solution Pvt Ltd hold awareness program on stem cell therapy - Video

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Okyanos Heart Institute Live on 850 WFTL: Adult Stem Cell Therapy for Heart Disease
Okyanos #39; Chief Medical Officer Dr. Howard (Bo) Walpole and Chief Science Officer sat down with Karen Curtis at 850 WFTL in Ft. Lauderdale to discuss the promise of adult stem cell therapy as...

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Okyanos Heart Institute Live on 850 WFTL: Adult Stem Cell Therapy for Heart Disease - Video

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India's biotech regulator Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) has given green signal for the import of Genetically Modified (GM) soybean oil.

"Three applications for import of GM Soybean oil were permitted as highly processed food like oil do not contain detectable DNA or Proteins. The same was confirmed by Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI) Mysore after testing of the oil samples," GEAC said, adding that more than 70 countries are importing GM soybean and canola oil.

The statutory body, which held its 121st meeting on Friday, also permitted confined field trials of 13 GM crops, including rice, brinjal, chickpea, mustard and cotton, out of the 15 cases it considered.

GEAC Chairman Hem Pande said "field trials for certain varieties of GM crops including rice, brinjal, chickpea, mustard and cotton had been cleared".

However, the field trials, or small scale experiments, on these crops were subject to No Objection Certificate (NOC) from state governments.

During the GEAC meeting, three cases of pharmaceuticals were also considered of which two were deferred and one case pertaining to revalidation of the GEAC nod was permitted.

Officials said GEAC had "virtually" not met for almost two years from April 2012 to March 2014 due to which which decision on 79 applications for field trials remained pending.

These 79 cases, recommended by Review Committee on Genetic Manipulation (RCGM) under the Department of Biotechnology, included 37 cases of revalidation and 42 new cases involving confined (regulated) field trials related to cotton, rice, castor, maize, wheat, groundnut, sugarcane, chickpea, mustard, sorghum and brinjal.

The GEAC on Friday also decided to constitute a sub-committee to review the toxicology data generated by the applicants of GM brinjal developed by BejoSheetal P Limited and GM mustard developed by Delhi University South Campus in view of concerns raised by some of the members.

An official said all GM crops field trials are subject to stringent norms which are as per the international standards.

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GEAC clears import of GM soyabean oil

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

20-Jul-2014

Contact: Elizabeth Dowling newsmedia@mssm.edu 212-241-9200 The Mount Sinai Hospital / Mount Sinai School of Medicine

Nearly 60 percent of the risk of developing autism is genetic and most of that risk is caused by inherited variant genes that are common in the population and present in individuals without the disorder, according to a study led by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published in the July 20 edition of Nature Genetics.

"We show very clearly that inherited common variants comprise the bulk of the risk that sets up susceptibility to autism," says Joseph D. Buxbaum, PhD, the study's lead investigator and Director of the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment and Professor of Psychiatry, Neuroscience and Genetics and Genomic Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "But while families can be genetically loaded for autism risk, it may take additional rare genetic factors to actually produce the disorder in a particular family member."

Dr. Buxbaum and colleagues of the Population-Based Autism Genetics and Environment Study (PAGES) Consortium conducted a rigorous analysis of DNA sequence variations from an ongoing, comprehensive study of autism in Sweden.

Although autism is thought to be caused by an interplay of genetic and other factors, there has been no consensus on their relative contributions and the nature of its genetic architecture. Recently, evidence has been mounting that genomes of people with autism are prone to harboring de novo mutations - rare, spontaneous mutations that exert strong effects and can largely account for particular cases of the disorder.

Specifically, the current study found that about 52.4 percent of autism was traced to common and rare inherited variations, with spontaneous mutations contributing a modest 2.6 percent of the total risk.

"Many people have been focusing on de novo mutations, such as the ones that can occur in the sperm of an older father," explains Dr. Buxbaum. "While we find these mutations are also key contributors, it is important to know that there is underlying risk in the family genetic architecture itself."

Gauging the collective impact on autism risk of variations in the genetic code shared by most people, individually much subtler in effect, has proven to be even more challenging. Limitations in sample size and composition have made it difficult to detect these effects and to estimate the relative influence of such common, rare inherited and rare, spontaneous de novo variation. Differences in methods and statistical models have also resulted in estimates of autism heritability ranging from 17 to 50 percent.

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Common gene variants account for most of the genetic risk for autism

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Minecraft Monster #010 - Advanced Genetics [German / HD ] - Feed The Beast
Ich hoffe euch gefllt mein Let #39;s Play. Wenn ja schaut euch doch noch etwas auf meinem Kanal um. Weitere Let #39;s Plays und mehr: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmNSv... Weitere Videos ...

By: StrangeDave

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Minecraft Monster #010 - Advanced Genetics [German / HD ] - Feed The Beast - Video

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Pacemakers have long been a life-saving device for people whose hearts dont keep the right beat but they can sometimes come with complications. Now, a team of researchers at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles have managed to transform regular heart cells in pigs into pacemaker cells cells that naturally keep the hearts rhythm in step.

The experiments described in the journal Science Translational Medicine mark the first study of this gene therapy in a large animal one on par with human scale. The research could help lead to therapies for people who have to have their electronic pacemakers temporarily removed because of infection and could one day remove the need for surgically implanted pacemaker devices altogether.

The heart beats to the sound of its own drum. It relies on a smaller number of specialized pacemaker cells in a tiny region of the heart called the sinoatrial node they are the metronome for the heart. But sometimes the heart can't hear its own timekeeper. It beats too slowly or irregularly and this can lead to dangerous consequences, from fatigue to circulatory collapse.

The researchers found a way around this problem: Create new pacemaker cells in a different part of the heart.

The therapy centers around a gene called TBX18, which is known as a transcription factor a type of gene that creates a protein that turns other genes on and off. The researchers knew that the TBX18 gene was temporarily turned on in the area of the sinoatrial node as an embryo develops, and then it shuts off.

That gave us a clue that maybe TBX18 is important in shaping the biological, the endogenous pacemaker to begin with, said team leader Dr. Eduardo Marbn, director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute.

The researchers loaded the gene into a virus and injected it into normal heart cells in pigs that suffered from complete heart block, which is when scarring keeps the electrical signals from the pacemaker cells in the sinoatrial node from getting through to the rest of the heart. They injected them into a different area of the heart, outside the sinoatrial node. In a matter of days, the injected pigs hearts were beating faster without the help of a pacemaker and without any obvious adverse side effects.

Nothing fancy needs to be done to see if the treatment is working, said study co-author Dr. Eugenio Cingolani. And though the study only lasted 14 days, it could point the way to longer-lasting even permanent biological pacemakers. If all goes well, clinical trials on humans could start in three years. One day, he said, patients could potentially be cured of the slow heart rate forever.

In the meantime, there are a number of more specialized applications for such a gene therapy. For some fetuses with congenital heart block many of whom develop severe heart problems that end in stillbirth a biological pacemaker could be a lifesaver, since an electronic one cant be surgically implanted in the womb.

Roughly 300,000 patients in the U.S. get a pacemaker every year, and about 2% of them develop infections, Marbn said. A significant portion of those people need to have their implants taken out and fixed or changed while the body heals, which could take several. The biological pacemaker could be one way to keep their hearts beating properly in the meantime.

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Scientists create 'biological pacemaker' inside off-tempo hearts

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Myth Busting
A brief discussion on some of the myths surrounding the CSIL program.

By: Spinal Cord Injury BC

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Myth Busting - Video

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Regenerative Medicine for Foreskin
At the San Francisco Pride Festival, Eric Clopper staffed the Foregen booth and discusses regenerative medicine and Foregen #39;s goal to restore genital integrity to men who have been circumcised....

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Professor John Rasko on SBS Insight
Royal Prince Alfred Hospital #39;s Director of Cell and Molecular Therapies, Professor John Rasko, was invited as a guest on SBS Insight #39;s special on stem cell medicine.

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Professor John Rasko on SBS Insight - Video

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There's no good time for a public agency to be embroiled in a conflict-of-interest scandal, but this is an especially delicate time for California's stem cell agency.

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, as the program is known formally, is on track to finish doling out its $3 billion in funding from the state's voters as soon as 2017. Its original sponsor, Northern California real estate developer Robert Klein II, has been quoted talking about another $5-billion infusion, perhaps via the 2016 ballot.

Any such effort will refocus attention on the program board's inherent conflicts of interest, which were baked in by the terms of Proposition 71, Klein's 2004 ballot initiative that created CIRM and funded it through a bond issue. The prestigious Institute of Medicine in a 2012 report found these conflicts to lead to questions about "the integrity and independence of some of CIRM's decisions."

And now here comes another case. This one involves CIRM former President Alan Trounson, an Australian biologist who left the agency on June 30 and joined the board of one of its highest-profile financial partners a mere seven days later. Trounson's new employer, Stem Cells Inc., is the recipient of a nearly $20-million loan for Alzheimer's research.

CIRM says Trounson's quick move to Stem Cells Inc., where he'll receive a stipend of at least $90,000 a year, is legally "permissible." But officials there acknowledge they were blindsided; the agency learned about Trounson's new position from the company's press release.

Afterward, CIRM rushed out a statement acknowledging that Trounson's appointment to the board of a CIRM loan recipient "creates a serious risk of a conflict of interest." The agency says it will place the relationship between CIRM and the company under "a full review." Administrators reminded Trounson, board members and agency staff that state law bars him from communicating with them on any administrative matter involving Stem Cells Inc. The company declined to comment.

The relationship already reeked of cronyism. As we reported in 2012, the Newark, Calif.-based firm's co-founder, Irving Weissman, director of Stanford University's Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, had been one of the most prominent and outspoken supporters of Proposition 71.

He's also a leading recipient of CIRM funding, listed as the principal investigator on four Stanford grants totaling nearly $35 million. CIRM contributed $43.6 million toward the construction of his institute's $200-million research building at the Stanford campus. Weissman and his wife, Ann Tsukamoto, owned nearly 380,000 shares of the firm as of last April, according to a corporate disclosure. Tsukamoto is one of the company's top executives; Weissman is a board member.

Trounson's move comes as CIRM must begin looking to the future, but any discussions about extending the agency's life span will have to address the flaws created by Proposition 71. Among them is the program's very structure, and even its scientific goals.

Klein's ballot proposition exempts CIRM from virtually any oversight or accountability. Each of the 29 governing board members has to be associated with a California public or private research institution or company, or an advocacy group for patients of one disease or another. The qualifications for board chairman are so specific they initially yielded a single credible candidate: Bob Klein.

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Conflicts of interest pervasive on California stem cell board

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Washington No batteries required: Scientists are creating a biological pacemaker by injecting a gene into the hearts of sick pigs that changed ordinary cardiac cells into a special kind that induces a steady heartbeat.

The study, published Wednesday, is one step toward developing an alternative to electronic pacemakers that are implanted into 300,000 Americans each year.

There are people who desperately need a pacemaker but cant get one safely, said Dr. Eduardo Marban, director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles, who led the work. This development heralds a new era of gene therapy that one day might offer them an option.

Your heartbeat depends on a natural pacemaker, a small cluster of cells its about the size of a peppercorn, Marban said that generates electrical activity. Called the sinoatrial node, it acts like a metronome to keep the heart pulsing at 60 to 100 beats per minute or so, more when youre active. If that node quits working correctly, hooking the heart to an electronic pacemaker works very well for most people.

But about 2 percent of recipients develop an infection that requires the pacemaker to be removed for weeks until antibiotics wipe out the germs, Marban said. And some fetuses are at risk of stillbirth when their heartbeat falters, a condition called congenital heart block.

For more than a decade, teams of researchers have worked to create a biological alternative that might help those kinds of patients, trying such approaches as using stem cells to spur the growth of a new sinoatrial node.

Marbans newest attempt uses gene therapy to reprogram a small number of existing heart muscle cells so that they start looking and acting like natural pacemaker cells instead.

Because pigs hearts are so similar to human hearts, Marbans team studied the approach in 12 laboratory pigs with a defective heart rhythm.

They used a gene named TBX18 that plays a role in the embryonic development of the sinoatrial node. Working through a vein, they injected the gene into some of the pigs hearts in a spot that doesnt normally initiate heartbeats and tracked them for two weeks.

Two days later, treated pigs had faster heartbeats than control pigs who didnt receive the gene, the researchers reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine. That heart rate automatically fluctuated, faster during the day. The treated animals also became more active, without signs of side effects.

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Scientists working on biological pacemaker

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By Traci Pedersen Associate News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on July 19, 2014

Genetics could be the reason why Denmark tops the world in happiness, according to research from the University of Warwick.

Economists at the university have been investigating why certain countries rank so high in happiness levels. In particular, they discovered that the closer a nation is to the genetic makeup of Denmark, the happier that country is.

The findings could help explain why a country like Denmark so regularly tops the world happiness rankings.

The researchers used data on 131 countries from a number of international surveys including the Gallup World Poll, World Value Survey, and the European Quality of Life Surveys, and then they linked cross-national data on genetic distance and well-being.

The results were surprising, we found that the greater a nations genetic distance from Denmark, the lower the reported wellbeing of that nation. Our research adjusts for many other influences including Gross Domestic Product, culture, religion, and the strength of the welfare state and geography, said Dr. Eugenio Proto.

The researchers also looked at existing studies suggesting a connection between mental wellbeing and a mutation of the gene that influences the reuptake of serotonin, which is believed to be linked to human mood.

We looked at existing research which suggested that the long and short variants of this gene are correlated with different probabilities of clinical depression, although this link is still highly debated, said Proto. The short version has been associated with higher scores on neuroticism and lower life satisfaction.

Intriguingly, among the 30 nations included in the study, it is Denmark and the Netherlands that appear to have the lowest percentage of people with this short version.

Finally, researchers also looked at whether the link between genetics and happiness also held true across generations, continents, and the Atlantic Ocean.

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Melancholy Danes? Not So Much, And Genetics May Show Why

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Therapeutic Drug Monitoring and Personalized Medicine - Rosa F. Yeh
Patients are unique, and improvements in medicine and laboratory technology are showing that drug exposure and its effects can be very different in an individual patient despite receiving the...

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

18-Jul-2014

Contact: Robert Miranda cogcomm@aol.com Cell Transplantation Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair

Putnam Valley, NY. (July 18th 2014) The long-term, positive benefits of transplanted allogenic (other-donated) smooth muscle cells (SMCs) to repair cardiac tissues after myocardial infarction (MI) have been enhanced by the addition of interleukin 10 (IL-10) to the transplanted cells, report researchers in Canada. Their study with rats modeled with MI has shown that SMCs modified with IL-10 - a small, anti-inflammatory protein - benefitted cell survival, improved heart function, and also provided protection against the host's rejection of the allogenic SMCs.

The study will be published in a future issue of Cell Transplantation and is currently freely available on-line as an unedited early e-pub at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/pre-prints/content-CT1170Dhingra.

Three groups of rats modeled with MI were treated with SMC injections into the MI-damaged area of the heart. One group received unmodified autologous (self-donated) SMCs; a second group received unmodified allogenic (other-donated) SMCs; the third group received allogenic SMCs modified with IL-10. After three weeks, the unmodified autologous cells had engrafted while the unmodified allogenic cells had been rejected by the hosts. However, the IL-10-modified allogenic cells were found to greatly improve cell survival, improve ventricular function, increase myocardial wall thickness, and also prevent host immune response and rejection of the foreign cells.

"While the most appropriate cell type for cardiac repair remains controversial, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) that have been differentiated toward myogenic cells restore ventricular function better, as previous studies have shown," said study co-author Ren-Ke Li of the MaRS Centre in Toronto, Canada. "This study demonstrated that IL-10 gene-enhanced cell therapy prevented immune response, increased survival of SMCs in the heart, and improved cardiac function when compared to the results with the control groups."

The researchers noted that while the use of autologous SMCs donated by patients may be optimal for cell therapy, SMCs self-donated by older, debilitated patients who likely have other serious health problems, have limited regenerative capability. Thus, allogenic SMCs from young, healthy donors are the most beneficial cells, but rejection of foreign cells by the host has been a problem in allogenic cell transplantation. This study suggests that the use of allogenic SMCs modified with IL-10 can prevent host rejection.

"Future studies will be required to determine the long-term effects of IL-10 transduced SMCs to evaluate cell survival and cardiac function at six months and one year," concluded the researchers.

"The use of IL-10 overexpression to reduce rejection of allogenic SMCs is an interesting idea" said Dr. Amit N. Patel, director of cardiovascular regenerative medicine at the University of Utah and section editor for Cell Transplantation. "Further studies will help to determine if this manipulation could prove useful for translation of allogenic SMC therapies to humans".

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Interleukin-10 aids survival of cells transplanted to repair cardiac tissues after MI

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Case Study: Stem Cells vs Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery in a Patient with Multi-Vessel Disease 6 Year Follow Up

Stem cells outperform heart bypass surgery. A heart patient treated with his own stem cells instead of undergoing coronary bypass surgery is exceeding all expectations 6 years after his adult stem cell treatment.

In 2008, Howie Lindeman, then 58 years old, was facing open heart bypass surgery for three blocked coronary arteries. Lindeman, now 64, had his first heart attack at age 39 that severely damaged his heart. He went through multiple procedures over the last several years including having several stents placed in his blocked arteries. When he developed almost constant chest pain and struggled to walk just 25 feet his doctors decided to perform another heart catheterization. They found severe disease; two arteries were 100% blocked and the remaining one was at 80%. Cardiac bypass surgery was immediately recommended.

Lindeman was not quite ready to have his chest cracked open, so he sought alternative options. He was aware of successful treatments for single blocked arteries with stem cells. Determined to avoid surgery he inquired as to the possibility of stem cell treatment for his condition. Dr. Zannos Grekos, a cardiologist with Regenocyte, agreed to treat him as a case study with the understanding that if the treatment was not successful bypass surgery was his only option. Lindeman was treated with his own stem cells in March of 2008. Within one week of the stem cell procedure Lindeman was feeling much better and returned to fulltime work. His subsequent cardiac testing showed continued improvement up to one year later and now 6 years after his procedure he has had no further cardiac events, his heart tests have remained stable and he continues to work fulltime as a sound engineer touring the world.

I have a high stress, high energy job that I absolutely love, says Lindeman. The treatment has allowed me to continue my career and enjoy the active lifestyle I thought I had lost for good. Im a new person and I continue to feel better every day. Click here to see a video of Howie Lindeman.

The Regenocyte treatment is an outpatient procedure and after a period of observation, the patients then are typically discharged from the hospital. The patient is followed up regularly with testing to monitor their progress and measure their results. Lindemans follow up nuclear cardiac stress testing show a greater than 100% improvement in exercise capacity and improved myocardial perfusion. A heart catheterization performed a year after treatment showed a significant increase in heart function and new blood vessels. Lindemans progress was last reported in December 2011.

Dr. Grekos describes how stem cells are extracted from the patient and then processed in a laboratory. The stem cells are then activated and educated to heal the damaged heart. The lab process provides a key step in Regenocytes treatment success, Dr. Grekos explained. The lab extracts the stem cells from the sample and activates them into over a billion cells while educating them to assist the area of the body that needs treatment. These activated stem cells are known as Regenocytes (regenerative cells). The whole process takes about 3 days.

In this ground-breaking treatment, Dr. Zannos Grekos, an interventional cardiologist, inserted a catheter into Lindemans heart. Over the next 20 minutes, adult stem cells were introduced into the damaged part of his heart. The process of tissue repair begins almost immediately.

We continue to see remarkable results from adult stem cell treatment, said Grekos. Successes like those weve seen with Howie are common and show significant promise for diseases in other organs.

Dr. Grekos and the Regenocyte medical team continue to research the impact of adult stem cell therapy on heart disease. For more information on Regenocyte Adult Stem Cell procedures, upcoming seminars, and to see videos featuring Lindeman, visit http://www.regenocyte.com.

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Case Study: Stem Cells vs Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery in a Patient with Multi-Vessel Disease 6 Year Follow Up

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Thomas Deernick, NCMIR/Science Photo Library

The HIV virus (yellow particles), seen on a white blood cell in this scanning electron micrograph.

Scientists have uncovered two new cases of HIV patients in whom the virus has become undetectable.

The two patients, both Australian men, became apparently HIV-free after receiving stem cells to treat cancer. They are still on antiretroviral therapy (ART) as a precaution, but those drugs alone could not be responsible for bringing the virus to such low levels, says David Cooper, director of the Kirby Institute at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, who led the discovery. A year ago, a different group of researchers had reported cases with a similar outcome.

Cooper presented details of the cases today at a press briefing in Melbourne, Australia, where delegates are convening for next week's 20th International AIDS Conference. The announcement came just a day after the news that at least six people heading to the conference died when a Malaysia Airlines flight was shot down in Ukraine.

Cooper began searching for patients who had been purged of the HIV virus after attending a presentation by a US team last year at a conference of the International AIDS Society in Kuala Lumpur. At that meeting, researchers from Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, reported that two patients who had received stem-cell transplants were virus-free.

Cooper and his collaborators scanned the archives of St Vincents hospital in Sydney, one of the largest bone-marrow centres in Australia. We went back and looked whether we had transplanted [on] any HIV-positive patients, and found these two, says Cooper.

The first patient had received a bone-marrow transplant for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2011. His replacement stem cells came from a donor who carried one copy of a gene thought to afford protection against the virus. The other had been treated for leukaemia in 2012.

Unfortunately, several months after the 'Boston' patients stopped taking ART, the virus returned. An infant born with HIV in Mississippi who received antiretroviral therapy soon after birth, then stopped it for more than three years, was thought to have been cured, but has had the virus rebound, too.

At the moment, there is only one person in the world who is still considered cured of HIV: Timothy Ray Brown, the 'Berlin patient', who received a bone-marrow transplant and has had no signs of the virus in his blood for six years without ART. The bone marrow received by the Berlin patient came from a donor who happened to have a natural genetic resistance to his strain of HIV.

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Cancer treatment clears two Australian patients of HIV

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HIV on macrophage image by Public Library of Science

A 53-year-old and a 47-year-old man appear to be clear of HIV after receiving bone marrow transplants for leukaemia and lymphoma respectively at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney, Australia, in partnership with the University of New South Wales' Kirby Institute.

Moreover, the leukaemia patient is the first recorded case of clearing the virus without the presence of a rare anti-HIV gene in the donor marrow.

To date, there have been several reported cases of cleared HIV. Timothy Ray Brown, a US citizen, was treated in 2007 and 2008 for leukaemia with transplanted stem cells from a donor with the CCR5 delta32 mutation, which is resistant to HIV, and was reported clear of the virus in 2008. Brown stopped taking his antiretroviral medication and has remained HIV-free.

In 2012, two other patients in Boston had similar treatments with bone marrow cells that did not contain the mutation. They initially tested clear of the virus, but -- when they ceased taking antiretroviral medication -- the virus returned.

The lymphoma patient, treated in 2010, did receive one transplant of bone marrow that contained one of two copies of a gene that is possibly resistant to HIV. The leukaemia patient, treated in 2011, received donor marrow with no resistive gene. Both patients remain on antiretroviral medication as a precaution, since the virus may be in remission rather than completely cured.

"We're so pleased that both patients are doing reasonably well years after the treatment for their cancers and remain free of both the original cancer and the HIV virus," said study senior author and UNSW Kirby Institute director Scientia Professor David Cooper said.

The next step is to figure out why the body responds to a bone marrow transplant in a way that makes the virus retreat. One possible explanation is that the body's immune response to the foreign cells of the transplant causes it to fight harder against HIV. This is because, while bone marrow transplant seems to be the most effective means of clearing the AIDS virus to date, it is not an acceptable risk for patients whose lives aren't already endangered by bone cancer.

"The procedure itself has an up to 10 percent mortality rate," Professor Cooper explained. "But you take that risk in someone with leukaemia or lymphoma because they're going to die without it, and the transplantation will result in cure. For someone with HIV, you would certainly not transplant them when they have an almost normal life span with standard antiretroviral therapy."

The team of researchers plans to replicate the immune response to bone marrow transplantation in a laboratory setting in the hope of devising a less invasive and less dangerous immunotherapy against the virus.

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Two men cleared of AIDS virus after bone marrow transplants

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I-DNA Phyto Stem Cell Therapy Miracle - Lily Khoo Testimonial
3 3 weeks, improving eye sight, skin tightening, solving triangular eyes...

By: I-DNA DEER PLACENTA SINGAPORE ORIGINAL

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I-DNA Phyto Stem Cell Therapy Miracle - Lily Khoo Testimonial - Video

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Paul Laikind, CEO of ViaCyte, which is making a treatment for diabetes from human embryonic stem cells.

In an historic announcement for the stem cell field, San Diego's ViaCyte said Thursday it has applied to start human clinical trials of its treatment for Type 1 diabetes.

ViaCyte grows replacement insulin-producing cells from human embryonic stem cells. The cells are packaged while maturing in a semi-permeable device and implanted. In animal trials, the cells produce insulin, relieving diabetes.

Now the company proposes to take what could be a cure for diabetes into people. ViaCyte has asked to begin a Phase 1/2 clinical trial, which would assess both safety and efficacy of its product. ViaCyte is targeting Type 1 diabetes, in which the insulin-producing cells are destroyed. Patients require multiple injections of insulin daily to survive.

The announcement is good news for California's stem cell agency, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The agency has awarded nearly $39 million to ViaCyte to ready its device for human use.

Paul Laikind, ViaCytes chief executive, said if all goes smoothly, the first patients will be treated in August or September. Based on animal studies, it will take a few months to see results, and just a few patients will be treated at first.

CIRM itself, funded with $3 billion in state bond funds, has come under pressure to show results from its work. The money is projected to run out in 2017. Some supporters of the agency have proposed launching a new initiative to continue funding.

"This is a great example of how the investment that the voters made in creating CIRM is beginning to move from labs to patients," said Joe Panetta, a member of CIRM's governing board and chief executive of Biocom, the San Diego-based life science trade group. ""There are at least a dozen other clinical trials in progress. This is good for CIRM and San Diego."

Jonathan Thomas, chairman of CIRM's governing board, called the filing "a big step in developing therapies for Type 1 diabetes."

"The project is one that has been front and center for us for six years," Thomas said. "As a principal funder of Viacyte since 2008, we are delighted that they have taken this major step towards getting a Type 1 Diabetes therapy to patients."

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Diabetes stem cell therapy readied

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Phoenix, AZ (PRWEB) July 17, 2014

Arizona Pet Vet Family of Animal Hospitals is hosting San Diego, California based Regenerative Veterinary Medicine company, Vet-Stem, Inc., for a summer session of RACE approved Credentialing Courses and wet-labs on stem cell therapy. AZ Pet Vets Family of 17 Animal Hospitals has been offering Vet-Stems Regenerative Cell Therapy to its small animal patients since 2010, and continuously strives to educate their team members on cutting-edge services like stem cell therapy.

Since Vet-Stems last training session with AZ Pet Vet in the summer of 2013 the number of pets diagnosed with arthritis has increased as much as an estimated 13% say industry sources. As many as 65% of dogs between the ages of 7 and 11 years old will be inflicted with some degree of arthritis. For certain specific breeds the percentage is as high as 70%, with an additional estimated 7% remaining undiagnosed. AZ Pet Vets Family of Animal Hospitals equips their veterinarians with a complete package of services to help diagnose and treat dogs that are suffering pain or inflammation from osteoarthritis or polyarthritis. Stem cell therapy is one of these services, most commonly used to help decrease inflammation, help with the pain of osteo or polyarthritis, as well as other joint or ligament issues, and muscle injuries.

Vet-Stems Corey Orava, DVM will be leading a series of daily training sessions which include a RACE (Registry of Approved Continuing Education from the American Association of Veterinary State Boards) approved credentialing course, and the ability to consult on potential stem cell therapy cases with current patients of AZ Pet Vets Family of Animal Hospitals. Each of these sessions will help veterinarians and their staff to learn the ins and outs of stem cell therapy, as well as benefit from a hands-on experience to bring the best care to their patients and pet owners. Under the mentorship of Dr. Orava all of the 17 AZ Pet Vet Animal Hospitals will have the potential to collect fat and inject stem cells on qualifying pet patients.

AZ Pet Vet is a family of 17 animal hospitals with one vision: to provide the best comprehensive care for their highly valued patients. Whether it be routine wellness, or other type of medical care, AZ Pet Vet provides loving care and treatment for pets. As animal lovers and pet owners, they understand the connection owners have with your pet. The doctors and staff at each hospital strive to build a long term relationship with their client families and their pets, always making recommendations in the pets best health interest. The AZ Pet Vet Family of Animal Hospitals offer complete veterinary care from wellness, to vaccines, spays and neuters, dental, surgical and now regenerative medicine. Their animal hospital locations can be easily found at http://www.arizonapetvet.com/.

Since its formation in 2002, Vet-Stem, Inc. has endeavored to improve the lives of animals through regenerative medicine. As the first company in the United States to provide an adipose-derived stem cell service to veterinarians for their patients, Vet-Stem pioneered the use of regenerative stem cells for horses, dogs, cats, and some exotics. In 2004 the first horse was treated with Vet-Stem Regenerative Cell Therapy for a tendon injury that would normally have been career ending. Ten years later Vet-Stem celebrated its 10,000th animal treated, and the success of establishing stem cell therapy as a proven regenerative medicine for certain inflammatory, degenerative, and arthritic diseases. As animal advocates, veterinarians, veterinary technicians, and cell biologists, the team at Vet-Stem tasks themselves with the responsibility of discovering, refining, and bringing to market innovative medical therapies that utilize the bodys own healing and regenerative cells. For more information about Vet-Stem and Regenerative Veterinary Medicine, visit http://www.vet-stem.com or call 858-748-2004.

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Arizona Pet Vet, a Family of Animal Hospitals in Central Arizona, is Hosting Vet-Stem, Inc. for Continued Education ...

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

17-Jul-2014

Contact: Meng Zhao eic@nrren.org 86-138-049-98773 Neural Regeneration Research

Recent studies have demonstrated that glutamate receptor 2 gene (GRID2) is closely related to cerebellar functions in mice. This gene is predominantly located in postsynaptic dendrites of parallel fiberPurkinje cell synapses in the cerebellum and contains potential fragile sites within large introns. These fragile sites easily develop spontaneous mutation, which leads to Purkinje cell death, contributing to the manifestation of spinocerebellar ataxia in mice. The human GRID2 shares 90% homology with the orthologous mouse gene, and therefore it has become an important candidate gene for screening the virulence gene of spinocerebellar ataxia. Dr. Chaodong Wang, Affiliated Sanming First Hospital of Fujian Medical University, China and his team screened for mutations in the coding sequence of GRID2 in 24 patients with familial or sporadic spinocerebellar ataxia and in 52 normal controls. They detected no point mutations or insertion/deletion mutations in the 16 exons of GRID2. However, a polymorphic 4 nucleotide deletion (IVS5-121_-118 GAGT) and two single nucleotide polymorphisms (c.1251G>T and IVS14-63C>G) were identified. The frequency of these polymorphisms was similar between spinocerebellar ataxia patients and normal controls. These data indicate that spontaneous mutations do not occur in GRID2 and that the incidence of spinocerebellar ataxia in humans is not associated with GRID2 mutation or polymorphisms. Related results were published in Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 9, No. 10, 2014).

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Article: " The human 2 glutamate receptor gene is not mutated in patients with spinocerebellar ataxia," by Jinxiang Huang1, Aiyu Lin2, Haiyan Dong3, Chaodong Wang3 (1 Department of Neurosurgery, Changzheng Hospital, the Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, China; 2 Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital, Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, Fujian Province, China; 3 Department of Neurology, The Affiliated Sanming First Hospital, Fujian Medical University, Sanming, Fujian Province, China) Huang JX, Lin AY, Dong HY, Wang CD. The human 2 glutamate receptor gene is not mutated in patients with spinocerebellar ataxia. Neural Regen Res. 2014;9(10):1068-1074.

Contact: Meng Zhao eic@nrren.org 86-138-049-98773 Neural Regeneration Research http://www.nrronline.org/

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

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The human 2 glutamate receptor gene is not mutated in spinocerebellar ataxia patients

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) on Friday gave the green signal for field trials of genetically modified (GM) rice, mustard, cotton, chickpea and brinjal at its meeting in Delhi.

Hem Kumar Pande, chairperson of the GEAC told The Hindu that meetings were not held for a year since March 2013 and there was a backlog of 70 applications pending since 2011-12 of which 60 have been cleared so far.

Fridays agenda dealt with 15 items and cleared field trials of rabi crops. In the three meetings since March 2014, the GEAC took up revalidation of data and approved kharif crops, Mr. Pande pointed out.

While the GEAC has approved the commercial release of Bt brinjal it has been stayed by the Ministry of Environment and Mr. Pande said the government would have to take a decision on this. The only genetically modified crop approved for release in India is cotton.

So far about 20 GM crops are under trial at various stages, he said and the new approvals were for the first stage of trials on one-acre plots. He said unless research in Indian conditions is allowed, the viability of these crops would not be known.

Meanwhile, Dr. Pushpa M. Bhargava, founder and former director, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad and Supreme Court appointee to the GEAC told The Hindu that he was particularly concerned about the approval granted to import GM soyabean oil.

According to my technical information, no oil made from a GM product is free of foreign DNA. Even in small amounts, DNA is genetic material and can cause damage. There is incontrovertible evidence that oils made from GM material do contain foreign DNA, he said.

Three companies - Bayer Bio Sciences, Monsanto and BASF have been allowed to import the oil. The last time there was objection to the import of soyabean oil; samples were sent for testing to the Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI), which gave it a clean chit.

Dr. Bhargava questioned the sensitivity of the tests that were carried out. The next meeting of the GEAC will be held in August. However, the country is already using cotton seed oil after the advent of transgenic cotton.

Members who attended the meeting said that while companies provided data to support their proposals there was no system of verifying the validity of the data. They also objected to some dissenting voices, which were not recorded in the minutes of the meeting the last time and the Committee said it would be recorded now on.

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GEAC clears field trials for GM crops

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Aspirin is the gold standard for antiplatelet therapy and a daily low-dose aspirin is widely prescribed for the prevention of cardiovascular disease.

Now, a new study suggests that common genetic variation in the gene for catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) may modify the cardiovascular benefit of aspirin, and in some people, may confer slight harm. The findings, led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) appear online in the American Heart Association journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology.

"This is one of the few cases where you can identify a single genetic polymorphism which has a significant interaction with aspirin such that it affects whether or not it protects against cardiovascular disease," says first author Kathryn Hall, PhD, MPH, an investigator in the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care at BIDMC and Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School.

COMT is a key enzyme in the metabolism of catecholamines, a group of hormones that include epinephrine, norepinephrine, and dopamine. "These hormones are implicated in a broad spectrum of disorders, including hypertension," explains Hall, "We were initially interested in finding out if the COMT gene affected people's susceptibility to incident cardiovascular disease such as myocardial infarction or ischemic stroke." Knowing that aspirin is commonly prescribed for the prevention of incident cardiovascular disease, the investigators also wanted to learn if genetic variation in COMT would influence aspirin's potential benefit.

To answer these questions, the researchers used data from the Women's Genome Health Study, a cohort of over 23,000 women who were followed for 10 years in a randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of low-dose aspirin or vitamin E for the primary prevention of incident cardiovascular disease. Their analysis focused on val158met, a common variant in the COMT gene: Individuals who are homozygous for the enzyme's high-activity valine form, the "val/vals," have been shown to have lower levels of catecholamines compared to individuals who are homozygous for the enzyme's low-activity methionine form, the "met/mets,." The val/met heterozygotes are in between.

"When we examined women in the placebo arm of the trial, we found that the 23 percent of the women who were 'val/vals' were naturally protected against incident cardiovascular disease," explains senior author Daniel I. Chasman, PhD, a genetic epidemiologist in the Division of Preventive Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. "This finding, which was replicated in two other population-based studies, was in itself of significant interest." But, he adds, the investigation further revealed the surprising discovery that when the women with the val/val polymorphism were allocated to aspirin, this natural protection was eliminated.

"As we continued to look at the effects of drug allocation, we found that val/val women who were randomly assigned to aspirin had more cardiovascular events than the val/vals who were assigned to placebo," says Chasman. Among the 28 percent of women who were met/met, the opposite was true, and these women had fewer cardiovascular events when assigned to aspirin compared to placebo. The benefit of aspirin compared to placebo allocation for met/mets amounted to reduction of one case of incident cardiovascular disease for 91 treated women over 10 years of study follow-up. By contrast, the harm of aspirin compared to placebo allocation for the val/val women was an increase of one case per 91 treated.

The researchers further found that rates of cardiovascular disease were also reduced in met/met women assigned to vitamin E compared to those assigned to placebo.

The authors stress that the findings will require further research and replication to understand their potential for clinical impact. Nonetheless they note that given that aspirin is preventively prescribed to millions of individuals and the COMT genetic variant is extremely common, this study underscores the potential importance of individualizing therapies based on genetic profiles.

"What this study suggests is that we can be smarter about the groups of patients that would most likely benefit from aspirin," says study coauthor Joseph Loscalzo, MD, PhD, Chairman of the Department of Medicine and Physician-in-Chief at BWH. "Rather than give aspirin to all patients with risk factors for heart disease, we need to use modern genomics and genetics to identify those individuals for whom aspirin has the greatest benefit and the lowest risk of adverse effects."

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Genetic variations may modify cardiovascular benefit of aspirin

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith