Signs are good for Sophie after pioneering stem cell treatment

ONE DAY AT A TIME: Sophie Edwards, who suffers from a rare form of leukaemia, is progressing well after undergoing pioneering treatment.

A GIRL diagnosed with a rare form of leukaemia is progressing well after undergoing pioneering stem cell treatment after an earlier bone marrow transplant failed.

Sophie Edwards's family say they are taking one day at a time after the eight-year-old underwent the stem cell treatment three months ago.

Her mother, Emma Edwards, of Newsome, Huddersfield, said last night: "She is a lot better."

After her bone marrow transplant failed earlier this year, Mrs Edwards and her husband, Andrew, know only too well that Sophie's condition can suddenly change but so far all the signs are good.

Three months ago Sophie underwent a type of stem cell treatment that was the first of its kind in Leeds. Doctors used part of the original bone marrow left over from the previous transplant, but as Sophie was so ill there wasn't time for it to be treated, so instead it was transplanted unprepared and chemotherapy used to get rid of the cells she didn't need.

The original transplant took place at St James's Hospital, in Leeds, in October, but she rejected the transplant in January.

Sophie was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in February last year. Doctors then found Sophie was suffering from leukaemia with Philadelphia chromosome, which occurs in chronic leukaemia cases.

Source:  www.yorkshirepost.co.uk  27 May 2009

Adult stem cells cure child of sickle cell anemia

Research using adult stem cells has saved the life of a Texas boy suffering from sickle cell anemia.

 

Dallas-area residents Joe and Darlene Davis welcomed the news of a pregnancy and later the birth of their first son. Texas Alliance for Life recorded an interview with the couple.
 
"I was very excited to find that I had a son -- but finding out that he had sickle cell anemia, as a nurse I knew there was going to be a lot of problems associated with that disease," Joe said.
 
"The child can have strokes," Darlene also noted. "It can stunt his growth and damage some organs, and the child can die at an early age -- age 15 maybe or earlier."
 
Stem cell therapy was the key, and when the Davises received news of a new pregnancy and the birth of another son, they were elated because stem cells from the new baby's umbilical cord could be used to help their ailing firstborn.
 
"[Cells from] Isaac's umbilical cord blood, adult stem cells, [were] going to save my son's life, and that adult stem cell got my son cured today. He is healed," Darlene adds. "What I'm talking about is no more sickle cell, no more running to the hospital, no more fevers, no more blood transfusion. He's a healthy child today."
 
Research shows adult stem cells are now being used to treat well over 70 diseases and medical conditions, while research using embryonic stem cells -- which requires killing of a human embryo -- has produced no results.

Source: www.onenewsnow.com 28 May 2009

Great site - Cordblood America

Found this link - a good umbilical cord blood site.  

Has a good video in simple language of the benefits of storing cord blood in a blood bank.  Click onto the lick below for some interesting insights!

http://www.cordblood-america.com/

Contact lens stem cell sight aid

The treatment used stem cells from the patients' eyes Scientists have used stem cells grown onto contact lenses to improve the sight of people with cornea damage. The treatment was given to three patients by a team from Australia's University of New South Wales. All saw improvements within weeks. They used the patients' own stem cells in the treatment, detailed in the journal Transplantation, and a type of lens already used after eye surgery. UK experts said the small-scale study was promising.  This small-scale study reveals promising outcomes with the use of contact lenses  Sonal Rughani, RNIB The cornea is the transparent layer that covers the eye - but it can lose transparency, damaging sight. In the most serious cases, people can need cornea grafts or transplants. Corneal disease can be caused by genetic disorders, surgery, burns, infections or chemotherapy. In this study, all three patients had damage to the epithelium - the layer of cells covering the front of the cornea. Eye cells The researchers in this study used limbal stem cells - found within the eye. Stem cells are "master cells", which have the power to transform themselves into other cell types. The cells can be taken from any healthy part of the eye and, because they are from the patient's own body, the transplant will not be rejected. They removed small samples of stem cells from the eyes of the three patients - two men and a woman - and grew them on contact lenses. The patients then wore the lenses for 10 days. During that period, the stem cells moved off the lenses and onto the damaged corneas. The patients were followed up for between eight and 13 months. 'Step forward' The researchers, led by Dr Nick di Girolamo, said each person's sight improved significantly within weeks of the procedure, and that it was a simple inexpensive technique which required a minimal hospital stay. Professor Kuldip Sidhu, director of the Stem Cell Lab and Chair of Stem Cell Biology at the University of New South Wales, who was not directly involved in the work, said: "This study is a step forward towards developing regenerative medicine with stem cells for other debilitating human diseases. And Loane Skene, professor of law at the University of Melbourne and former Deputy Chair of the Lockhart Committee on human cloning and embryo research, said: "Provided that patients are told that the new procedure is experimental and possible risks are not yet known, and they then consent to have it, this use of a patient's own stem cells is no more ethically contentious than a skin transplant" Sonal Rughani, of the RNIB, said: "This small-scale study reveals promising outcomes with the use of contact lenses. "We await further developments of this innovative nature." Source: BBC News 28 May 2009

Sight restored with stem cell contact lenses

PETER CAVE: Medical researchers at the University of New South Wales are claiming success in curing partial blindness by coating contact lenses with stem cells. The patients with diseased corneas wore the lenses coated with their own stem cells and after about a month their corneas had regrown.

The scientists say that in the future the technique may be used to help people blinded by other causes.

Meredith Griffiths reports.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: One of the main causes of blindness around the world is diseases affecting the cornea. That's the thin clear barrier at the front of the eye and if it gets diseased, scratched, scarred or burned, light can't make it through to the retina.

The World Health Organization says that every year corneal disease could be responsible for one-and-a-half-million people losing sight in one of their eyes. But now researchers in Sydney have found a way to overcome that for some patients.

Dr Nick Di Girolamo is a medical scientist at the University of New South Wales.

NICK DI GIROLAMO: The cornea is the window to the eye so any abnormal cells that are growing on top of a healthy cornea would preclude or would distort vision. 

We've gone from patients that have only been able to count fingers, you know, at a close distance in front of their eye so to speak, to being able to read letters on a standard visual chart. 

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: The three patients in question were legally blind in one eye. The scientists took some stem cells from their healthy eyes and cultured them inside contact lenses for 10 days. The patients then wore the contacts and after less than a month their corneas had regenerated.

Dr Nick Di Girolamo again.

NICK DI GIROLAMO: We can grow the cells on a contact lens, that was the biggest challenge, to make sure that they were healthy and remained stable on that contact lens for a period of time. And then it was just a matter of trusting that they could transfer from the contact lens surface onto the patient's ocular surface.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: He says the patients only need to wear the contact lenses for about 10 days and that the beauty of the technique is that it uses the patient's own cells.

NICK DI GIROLAMO: So we're not going to be using any immunosuppressive therapy to prevent rejection if you want; whereas most other techniques out there utilise foreign human materials or stem cells that are grown in the presence of animal products. You know there's a potential risk of foreign infectious agents in that material. 

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Dr Di Girolamo says the plan now is to grow a whole cornea.

NICK DI GIROLAMO: We're focusing on corneal disease because of the accessibility of the cornea but it's quite possible that using a similar material to the contact lens material, you know in the future that sort of material could be used as a carrier of different stem cells such as retinal stem cells to the back of the eye.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Do you think in years to come this will help people with other problems who are blind for other reasons?

NICK DI GIROLAMO: Oh most definitely. Certainly you know there needs to be a lot more laboratory work looking at this sort of technique for diseases in the back of the eye, like macular degeneration for example.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Jane Ellis from Vision Australia says the study is good news for anybody with corneal problems but she says at the moment the treatment can only help people with damage to the edge of the cornea.

JANE ELLIS: The most common form of corneal problem that we see in Australia is called keratoconus which is where the cornea grows in a very odd shape. The use of stem cells to correct that will be a great breakthrough because currently the treatment is around corneal transplant and as we know, the risks around surgery to the cornea are quite high. The waiting list for corneal transplants is very high.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Jane Ellis says the study illustrates just one of the many possibilities that stem-cell research is opening up for people who are blind or have poor vision.

PETER CAVE: Meredith Griffiths.

Source: The World Today - Thursday, 28 May , 2009

New Tech research center’s aim: healing soldiers quicker

Georgia Tech officials on Tuesday unveiled a $5 million research center aimed at finding better ways to heal combat wounds and speeding those treatments into military use.

Often, such advances lag for long periods before moving into clinical use, said Barbara Boyan, the director of the new center. Many researchers focus on study and publishing in scientific journals rather than planning to move a product to the market, she said.

The Georgia Tech Center for Advanced Bioengineering for Soldier Survivability has coupled with several medical device firms early on, giving it an edge in moving advancements into medical use, she said.

Researchers at the center, which include clinicians and consultants experienced in combat medical care, focus on the healing of wounds, broken bones and massive muscle loss.

Medical care on the battlefield largely focuses on stabilizing a soldier, such as stopping bleeding and preventing infection, Boyan said. Oftentimes that soldier can be back in the U.S. for medical care within two days.

“We can take a concept discovered in an academic setting and transfer it into helping improve their lives,” Boyan said.

The researchers currently are focusing on using a person’s own stem cells — not the controversial stem cells taken from human embryos — to enhance tissue and bone repair. They are developing a better way to deliver stem cells to an injured area, in which the cells take hold and help grow tissue and bone, she said.

The center began its research last year but only recently received full funding, officials said.

Boyan, who is also the associate dean for research at Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering, said the researchers hope their work leads to clinical trials within three years and is in use within five.

Eventually, she hopes that the advancements will be used in civilian trauma centers.

The center receives funding from the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research’s Orthopedic Trauma Research Program, the U.S. Department of Defense and from private industry.

Source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution May 26, 2009

Adult allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation: a single centre experience in Malaysia

An interesting statistical piece... 

Gan GG, Zakaria Z, Sangkar JV, Haris AR, Bee PC, Chin E, Teh A.

Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University Malaya Medical Centre, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

We analysed the outcome of 104 patients from a single institution who underwent allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (AHSCT) from their HLA-identical siblings between 1993 and 2006. 

Sixty-nine percent of patients had peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) as the stem cell source and the remaining had bone marrow (BM). 

The majority of patients are Chinese (60%) followed by Malays (24%) and Indians (14%). The median time to reach white cell counts of >1 x 10(9)/L and platelet counts of >30 x 10(9)/L was 13 and 15 days, respectively in patients who had PBSC transplantation compared with 16 and 25 days in patients who had BM transplantation, (p <>

Acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD) of grade II to IV was observed in 34% of patients and chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD) in 38% of patients. Although not statistically significant, there was a higher incidence of overall aGVHD in Indian patients (73%) compared to Chinese and Malays (57% and 56% respectively). There was no significant difference in the incidence of aGVHD and cGVHD with the source of stem cells. 

Overall survival (OS) and disease free survival (DFS) was 50% and 60% at five years respectively. Multivariate analysis showed that patients transplanted in standard risk and those who had limited cGVHD had a significant better OS, (p = 0.05 and p = 0.05). Patients who had cGVHD and transplanted in standard risk had a better DFS, (p = 0.002 and p <>

In summary, AHSCT in standard risk patients is associated with a better outcome than those transplanted in high risk and although not statistically significant, there is a higher incidence of aGVHD in Indian patients.