Stem cell video collection

Here's a video featuring Scotland's Dr. Colin McGuckin, who has been doing research on cord blood stem cells. Dr. McGuckin has worked with the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and NASA to produce embryonic-like stem cells from umbilical cord blood cells. His lab has gone on to stimulate those embryonic-like stem cells - that no one had to die for - into functional liver cells, masses of liver cells and pancreatic cells that produce insulin and the other hormones vital to the regulation of diabetes.

The video is part of a collection on YouTube, by "Stem cells that work." Visit the YouTube page with great collection of videos about stem cells, including the excellent 50 minute "Google" video, "Everything you wanted to know about stem cells."

Cutting Edge Juvenile Diabetes Adult Stem Cell Research

Interrupting our discussion on State force and conscience, but this news is just too cool to postpone:

Regenetech, the company that has the license agreement with NASA for the "Intrafuge" that processes cord blood cells and bone marrow cells for the production of embryonic-like and select stem cell treatments, has announced a two year agreement for research with Johns Hopkins, on Type 1, insulin-dependent or Juvenile Diabetes:

Regenetech®, Inc. announces that it has signed a Sponsored Research Agreement (SRA) with Johns Hopkins University in order to work toward a treatment for type 1 diabetes. This is in addition to the research agreements which the Company currently has in place with Texas A&M University and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Regenetech is pioneering the development and commercialization of technology which the company believes will enable regenerative therapy with adult stem cells for widespread use.

Regenetech’s agreement with Johns Hopkins University will span over two years, and involves significant funding from the Company. The goal of the research project is to develop a treatment for type 1 diabetes using a patient’s own adult stem cells expanded in Regenetech’s IntrifugeTM Bioreactor. Dr. Mehboob Hussain, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, has considerable experience in the treatment of diabetes with stem cells, and is overseeing the research which will use Regenetech’s technology.

University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) supplies blood and cord blood stem cells to Regenetech’s laboratories and uses them for their own research purposes as well. In addition, the Company has signed a sub-license agreement with UTMB to use Regenetech’s NASA licensed IntrifugeTM Bioreactor system to expand the stem cells found in the blood. The ultimate goal is to provide low cost, safe doses of adult stem cells for a broad range of diseases and known therapies. The principal investigator from UTMB is Professor Larry A. Denner, who has significant expertise in the identification, expansion and differentiation of primitive cord blood stem cells for pre-clinical studies.

Regenetech also has a SRA with Texas A&M University for the treatment of bone fractures in animals. The research is to demonstrate the clinical efficacy of NASA’s patented time-varying electromagnetic field (TVEMF) technology, which is exclusively licensed to Regenetech. This technology holds rapid healing potential for animals, such as high value race horses and pets, which offer highly significant markets for Regenetech. Once the veterinary treatment protocols have been finalized successfully, it is expected that they will lead the way to human clinical trials.

Regenetech also has a good stem cell "primer," as well as more information on their ongoing research and patents. They do make a case for embryonic stem cells, saying that adult stem cells haven't been found for all tissues and organs and that it might take too long in emergency situations to grow the needed tissues, but do not acknowledge that these limitations also exist for embryonic stem cells.

Oh well, no one's perfect.

Great news from the mom of a child with diabetes (cord blood)

There's a great comment today from the mom of a boy whose Type 1 or Juvenile Diabetes is being treated with cord blood:

Darla Lindenmayer said...

My son so far has been the oldest to participate in the cord blood trial. We are excited how well it is working. My son has gone from 5 shots a day to only one and that one is being weaned down. It also has cured him of his thyroid disease which he also was diagnosed with a few months after he was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. We know the cord blood we collected is working somehow to change the molecular structure and increase his beta cell production. We hope and pray that this continues on. Dr. Haller is doing great research!!

Diabetes and thyroid disease tends to go together - more evidence for an autoimmune risk factor for Diabetes.

Thanks, Ms. Lindenmayer for giving us the update!

Type I diabetes and cord blood

Researchers at the University of Florida have treated children, aged 2 to 7, with infusions of their own stored cord blood, with some improvement in insulin production and control of blood sugar.

No one knows the exact mechanism that causes the disease we know as Juvenile or Type I Diabetes Melitus (DMI), but it is thought to be due to some combination of auto-immune disease (when the body's immune system causes damage to its own tissues) and possibly an infection, along with an unknown genetic susceptibility. Not only do the patients make antibodies against their own insulin-producing cells, they also make antibodies against their own insulin. It appears that the cord blood contains regulatory T cells which reverse some of the effects of the DMI on the pancreas.

From the University of Florida press release:

UF researchers identified children recently diagnosed with type 1 diabetes whose families banked their
umbilical cord blood at birth. Most were still producing a small amount of insulin. The researchers then gave seven patients ages 2 to 7 intravenous infusions of stem cells isolated from their own cord blood. (They have since treated an additional four children.) The patients were evaluated for the next two years to measure how much insulin they were making on their own and to assess blood sugar levels and the function of key immune system cells.

In the first six months, they required significantly less insulin — on average 0.45 versus 0.69 units of insulin per kilogram per day — and maintained better control of blood sugar levels than children of comparable age with type 1 diabetes who were randomly selected from the clinic population. The researchers also noted that the children who received cord blood infusions had higher levels of regulatory immune cells in their blood six months after the infusion, on average 9 percent of the total cell volume compared with 7.21 percent at the time of infusion.

“This isn’t a cure-all. We think that giving these cells is essentially providing some immunotherapy and downregulating the autoimmunity these patients have,” Haller said. “Realistically, we hope to protect what’s left of their insulin-production for an extended period of time. We think the immune regulation hypothesis is more likely than the hypothesis that stem cells are forming insulin producing cells on their own.”

The idea would be to intervene and repair any early damage during the “honeymoon period” many patients enjoy — the first several months after diagnosis during which insulin needs are minimal, he added.

The results are consistent with what we already know about Type I diabetes (DMI) and the stem cells that some receive from their mothers before or at birth. The men and women who were found to have functional stem cells from their mothers did not have complete remission of their DMI, either.

Juvenile Diabetes Adult Stem Cell Cure?

The Journal of the American Medical Association has published a study - free online here - that describes successful treatment of 13 patients with their own stem cells. Some of the patients have been able to go without insulin or any other medications to control their diabetes.

15 patients with new onset "Juvenile Onset," "Insulin Dependent," or Type I diabetes received shots to stimulate production of their own bone marrow stem cells. Those cells were collected by "leukapheresis," a process where the blood is filtered to remove specific cells.

The bone marrow was killed and the patients received anti-thymocite antibodies to wipe out more of the white blood cells (from the thymus that might not be in the bone marrow.

Then, the patients received their own bone marrow stem cells.

During a 7- to 36-month follow-up (mean 18.8), 14 patients became insulin free
(1 for 35 months, 4 for at least 21 months, 7 for at least 6 months; and 2 with late response were insulin-free for 1 and 5 months, respectively).

Just as Dr. John Willerson of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston did a few years ago to explore the use of adult stem cells in the treatment of heart disease, Dr. Richard Burt of Northwestern University in Chicago went down to Brazil in order to perform the research. It was easier to receive permission from the local ethics board to use stem cell transplants - actually, an autologous bone marrow transplant.

The news reporters and some bloggers are criticizing the research for a lack of controls as well as the use of teen subjects.

Tell me - if your son or daughter were diagnosed tomorrow with insulin dependent diabetes, would you look into a plane trip to Brazil?

Texas Politics, Bias and Bioethics

"All politics is local," is a quote attributed to - and the title of a book co-authored by - the late, former Speaker of the House, Tip O'Neill.

The lesson seems to be one that Texas State Representative Juan Garcia, D-Corpus Christi, learned well. It doesn't hurt to stack the deck in your favor, either.

Evidently, the Representative held a meeting at a church in Corpus Christi, Texas and only invited the people that agreed with him to present arguments on stem cell research to a local group of clergy.

Read "stem cell research" to include embryonic stem cells from human embryos.

I'm certain that the Representative knows the names of groups who could have directed him to people like me who could make the case for the basic science and human rights issues inherent in "the stem cell debate." (Okay, I did say, "people like me.")

Instead, the clergy evidently found themselves faced with advocates who do not believe that research in stem cells and regenerative, cellular medicine can proceed without embryonic stem cells. Advocates who include representatives from State Universities and from the "Texans for the Advancement of Medical Research," a group dedicated to the advancement of destructive embryonic stem cell research and cloning.

A similar one-sided, and self-serving argument was made this week by Tom Okarma, the president of Geron, one of the biotech companies that holds the patents on human embryonic stem cells.

This, in spite of proof such as that given to the House State Affairs Committee last Monday, of children who are alive because of stem cell transplants from cord blood. And the hope of so much more from readily available umbilical cord cells: including functional liver tissue, lung cells, nerve cells and pancreatic islet cells.

Texas, Adult Stem Cells, Multiple Sclerosis

Opexa is a division of Pharmafronteirs (or it's the other way around, I'm not sure) which is based at the Woodlands, near Houston, Texas.

The company specializes in cell therapies, based on adult stem cells and the controlled manipulation and replication of adult cells.

Multiple sclerosis (MS)is a disease that causes the loss of the myelin around nerves. Think of myelin as insulation that speeds the transmission of nerve signals. When myelin is lost, nerve signals can't go where they're needed, as fast as they are needed. People end up weak, with tremors, and the lack of balance, loss of coordination and the loss of the ability for the muscles that enable us to breathe and cough to function.

We know that MS is a sort of autoimmune disease in most cases. The cells that are supposed to fight infection and keep abnormal or injured cells that can cause cancer actually decide that the myelin needs to be destroyed.

For over 4 years, Pharmafrontiers or Opexa has been running a series of experiments using T cells - the specialized white blood cells that mature in the Thymus and which are supposed to kill foreign cells, like bacteria or cancer cells.

The company has a technique for isolating the patient's specific T cells that attack their myelin, growing them in the lab until they have millions, and then treating them so they can't multiply. The treated cells are then injected under the skin of the patient, and the body really notices the cells, and uses all the immune system to attack them - and all or most of the T cells in the body that act like them. So the myelin is not destroyed anymore - or at least not as fast.


Opexa are now in Phase IIb - meaning that they know it's safe to use in people (Phase I tests) and are finding out more about how much is needed and who can be helped.

There's a great first-person story about someone who is being treated as part of the experiment at "I Have MS."

For a couple of very pretty videos that explain all this much better than I ever could - and the press release by the company about the Phase IIb trial -- take a look at the Opexa site, at this page.

Added:

Opexa is selling the treatment as "Tovaxin™" - a vaccine.

That's how vaccinations work, by the way. Our bodies are convinced to make antibodies and specialized white blood cells to kill or destroy the foreign bacteria, virus -- and someday, cancer and all sorts of cells that inappropriately make those antibodies and attacks against our own normal cells, treating them as though they are damaged or foreign. As long as our bone marrow is healthy, we seem to be able to make a nearly unlimited number of those white blood cells (there's also some "depots" or reserves out in the lymph nodes and in the liver, spleen and the gut lining where the cells lurk and wait for their chance to multiply and fight disease, evidently). And I think this is how "allergy shots" work.

Review of Umbilical Cord Pancreas Cells

I've read the unproofed draft (their English is much better than my Korean) of "Induction of human umbilical cord blood-derived stem cells with embryonic stem cell phenotypes into insulin producing islet-like structure" by B. Sun, et. al. (Biochem. Biophys.Res. Commun. (2007), doi:10.1016/j.bbrc.2007.01.069)

The authors do not tell us how much of the insulin-secreting cells or colonies of cells they were able to obtain. However, they do report that at one stage, the cells exhibit Oct-4 and "stage-specific antigen 4"(which are characteristic of embryonic stem cells). After inducing umbilical cord cells to revert to these embryonic-like stem cells, they then followed a previously reported protocol for inducing embryonic stem cells into beta islet cells. Colonies of cells grew in islet-like structures and were positive for both insulin and C-peptide. The C-petide is indication that the insulin came from the cells, and not from an artificial source in the nutrients in which the cells were grown.

Time will tell whether the photos are real, whether the results can be replicated in other labs, whether there are enough babies born and cord blood to be obtained to match all the diabetic patients in the world, whether it's possible to transplant immune-matched islet cell structures into humans, and whether those islet cells will survive and function in the recipients. I wonder whether the manipulated cells will be genetically stable or whether they will be prone to die or mutate.

On the other hand, if as in hematopoietic stem cell umbilical cord blood transplants, the cells do not have to be as closely matched in order to be accepted by the immune system, and if these cells persist as long as maternal stem cells have been reported to do, then this report brings us the most promising news of a possible treatment if not cure for diabetes that I've seen in all these years of stem cell reports.