Posts tagged Stem Cells

Marcelo Rivolta from Britain’s University of Sheffield, who led the research, said the first patients could receive cell therapy for hearing loss in clinical trials in “a few years”.

The procedure needs further animal research to assess safety and long term effectiveness but researchers said on Wednesday the experiment was an important proof of concept, marking a further advance in the growing field of regenerative medicine.

After treating 18 gerbils with complete deafness in one ear, his team reported in the journal Nature that stem cells produced an average 46 percent recovery in hearing function, as measured by electrical signals in the animals’ brains.

(Source: futurenow321)

One of the top suspects behind killer vascular diseases is the victim of mistaken identity, according to researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, who used genetic tracing to help hunt down the real culprit.

The guilty party is not the smooth muscle cells within blood vessel walls, which for decades was thought to combine with cholesterol and fat that can clog arteries. Blocked vessels can eventually lead to heart attacks and strokes, which account for one in three deaths in the United States.

Instead, a previously unknown type of stem cell — a multipotent vascular stem cell — is to blame, and it should now be the focus in the search for new treatments, the scientists report in a new study appearing June 6 in the journal Nature Communications.

“For the first time, we are showing evidence that vascular diseases are actually a kind of stem cell disease,” said principal investigator Song Li, professor of bioengineering and a researcher at the Berkeley Stem Cell Center. “This work should revolutionize therapies for vascular diseases because we now know that stem cells rather than smooth muscle cells are the correct therapeutic target.”

The finding that a stem cell population contributes to artery-hardening diseases, such as atherosclerosis, provides a promising new direction for future research, the study authors said.

(Source: futurenow321)

Ateam of researchers at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is the first in Africa to establish groundbreaking biomedical stem cell technology, which could hold the key to finding cures for some of Africa’s most prevalent diseases.

The CSIR Department of Biological Sciences’ Gene Expression and Biophysics Group, led by Dr Musa Mhlanga, success- fully generated the first induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells in Africa, in December last year.

The iPS cell technology involves inducing adult cells (like skin cells) to revert back to stem cells that can differentiate into specialised cell types. This means that the early stem cells can be programmed to become any type of adult cell, such as skin, heart, brain and blood cells.

Dr Janine Scholefield, one of the key researchers involved in generating iPS cells at the CSIR, was the first biologist in South Africa to record video footage of cardiomyocytes, or heart muscle cells, generated from adult skin cells.

Scholefield was recently recruited to join Mhlanga’s lab as a postdoctoral fellow, and started with the experimental protocol at the end of October. By early December, the team had generated iPS cell lines, each line indicating a single genetic background. “It was remarkable and completely took my breath away,” says Scholefield, describing the moment she saw evidence of the first cardiomyocytes.

(Source: futurenow321)

Lab scientists on Wednesday reported that for the first time they had taken skin cells from patients who had suffered heart failure and turned them into cells that could repair damaged cardiac muscle.

The technique has so far been tested on rats and it could take up to a decade of problem-solving before trials can go ahead on humans, the scientists cautioned.

Even so, it marks an important advance in the quest for replacement cells to treat tissue affected by disease, said the scientists who developed the technique in Israel.

The research uses a method called human-induced pluripotent stem cells, or hiPSCs, a recently-discovered source that is viewed as an exciting and less controversial research alternative to embryonic stem cells.

It entails taking cells from a patient and introducing genes to the cell nucleus. Helped by a chemical “cocktail,” these genes then act as switches which reprogramme the cells back to their versatile, youthful state.

The ultimate goal is that if a patient’s own cells are used as the replenishment source, they will be recognised as friendly by the immune system and not be attacked.

Recent studies have shown it is possible to derive hiPSCs from young and healthy people and that these are capable of transforming into heart cells.

(Source: futurenow321)

As per a research, which has been published in the PLoS Pathogens, it has been revealed that a team of researchers at California University, has developed cells, which can kills HIV-infected cells in a living organism.

They have genetically engineered stem cells, which in return can form into immune cells that targets HIV infected cells. Lead researcher Scott G Kitchen said that they are satisfied with the findings of their research and are sure that the research will act as a foundation stone for a medical application that can be used to treat HIV infection.

Kitchen said that they have engineered human blood stem cells and have discovered that these cells can develop into engineered human blood stem cells, which will further attack HIV in tissues. In order to reach at the above given conclusion, the study researchers prepared a humanized mouse in which the human HIV infection closely reflected.

They introduced genetically engineered cells in the mouse and noticed the developments in it for six weeks. Kitchen said that they found that T cells number reduced as levels of HIV in the blood was found to be decreasing.

“We believe that this study lays the groundwork for the potential use of this type of an approach in combating HIV infection in infected individuals, in hopes of eradicating the virus from the body”, said Kitchen.

(Source: futurenow321)

Depicting the brain child of Professor Lee Cronin, the chair of chemistry at Glasgow University, a new 3D printing process he and his team developed to synthesize chemicals. He believes his research could one day lead to low-cost chemical printers in the home that allow patients to print out their prescriptions. Such a scenario would certainly shake up the healthcare industry as it could bring the cost of care down for patients with chronic ailments.

(Source: futurenow321)

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Honda have finally realized that developing and selling a complete humanoid robot at affordable prices is going to take longer than they expected when they invested millions of dollars in the development of ASIMO. Now, Honda wants to take advantage of some of the technology developed for ASIMO to build less complete but still massively useful robotic devices.

As a result, a couple of days ago, Honda unveiled a new robotic leg device which functions similarly to an exoskeleton but has a rather different design as you can tell from the photo at the left. The new device will be of great assistance for the elderly and the disabled.

(Source: futurenow321)

Innovega says the lenses could be released to the public in 2014

The Pentagon has put in an order for prototype contact lenses that give users a much wider field of vision.

The lenses are designed to be paired with compact heads up display (HUD) units - glasses that allow images to be projected onto their lenses.

Much bulkier HUDs are already deployed by the US Army and Air Force to superimpose data about targets and other status updates over users’ views.

The tech could help troops enhance their awareness on the battlefield.

The iOptik system’s developer, Innovega, told the BBC it had signed a contract earlier this week to deliver a fully-functioning prototype to the Pentagon’s research laboratory, Darpa.

The US Department of Defense had previously funded part of the Washington-based firm’s initial engineering work on the project.

“The new contract gives us an immediate opportunity to start prototyping and demonstrating elements of this new system,” Innovega’s chief executive Steve Willey said.

(Source: futurenow321)