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Topic: Cord Blood Stem Cells (Read 324 times)

Rhune
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Cord Blood Stem Cells
« on: Jan 15^th, 2005, 4:31pm »

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I'm sure you all have heard me say a time or two that I banked my son's umbilical cord blood which is full of stem cells that don't require the death of a child to harvest. I fully support cord blood research and hope it becomes more affordable and more common in the future. Here's some cool stuff in the news on the latest achievements.

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Rhune
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Re: Cord Blood Stem Cells
« Reply #1 on: Jan 15^th, 2005, 4:31pm »

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Cord Blood Cells Limit Heart Attack Damage in Animal Model
University of Florida
January 4, 2005

Stem cells from umbilical cord blood effectively treated heart attacks in an animal study, report cardiologist Robert J. Henning, MD, and colleagues at the University of South Florida and James A. Haley Veterans' Hospital.

When injected into rats' hearts soon after a heart attack, stem cells taken from human umbilical cord blood (HUCB) greatly reduced the size of heart damage and restored pumping function to near normal. This improvement occurred without the need for drugs to prevent the rats' immune system from rejecting the human cells.

The USF study will be published online this week in the journal Cell Transplantation, accompanied by an editorial discussing the progress of stem cell therapy in treating heart attacks, or myocardial infarctions.

If further animal studies and human clinical trials prove equally successful, the USF researchers suggest that stem cells from umbilical cord blood could be a new, widely applicable treatment for limiting or repairing the heart muscle destroyed when the vital organ's blood supply is cut off. In the United States, nearly one of every 2 men and one of 3 women older than age 40 will suffer a heart attack, leaving them more vulnerable to chronic heart failure or another, potentially fatal, heart attack. Medications and bypass surgery have prolonged the lives of these patients, but many live with heart failure characterized by chronic fatigue and shortness of breath.

"Patients with heart failure due to heart attacks and other causes spend much of their day at home in a chair or in bed. These are the patients whose lives we hope to greatly improve with stem cell therapy to restore heart function," said Dr. Henning, lead author of the study.

"Our initial results are extremely promising, but raise questions about how these umbilical cord blood cells work. Are they transforming into new heart muscle cells or secreting growth factors that trigger the heart to repair itself? We need more research to insure such therapy will ultimately benefit patients with little or no side effects."

"The possibility to regenerate and to restore function of the heart after myocardial infarction with stem cell transplantation holds great promise for treating heart failure," writes David Stern, MD, dean of the Medical College of Georgia, and colleagues in the Cell Transplantation editorial accompanying the USF study. "Additional preclinical animal studies are warranted and should focus on examining the mechanisms that mediate the functional effects of stem cell transplantation."

The USF researchers compared HUBC-treated rats to both untreated rats (those receiving only a sugar water placebo) and control rats with normal hearts. The HUCB stem cells were injected directly into the heart muscle of rats an hour after heart attacks were induced. After four months of recovery, the size of scar tissue left by dead heart muscle was approximately three times smaller in the HUCB treated rats than in the untreated rats. As a result, the heart's pumping capacity improved to near normal in the treated rats, after an initial decline, and was significantly greater than the cardiac function in the untreated rats with heart attacks.

"Scar tissue does not contract," Dr. Henning said. "Since scar tissue was minimized and more heart muscle remained in the treated rats, their hearts were able to function better as pumps."

The USF work adds to a growing field exploring the potential of stem cells to treat ailing hearts. Animal and human cell transplantation to treat heart attacks has focused primarily on immature cells harvested from adult bone marrow and skeletal muscle - with mixed results.

"Although not as primitive as human embryonic stem cells, stem cells isolated from infant's cord blood are less mature than those taken from adult bone marrow and skeletal muscle," Dr. Henning said.

"Cord blood stem cells may be more amenable to repairing hearts. In addition, cord blood stem cells are readily accessible, easy to use, and, like adult stem cells, are not as controversial as embryonic stem cells." said coauthor Paul R. Sanberg, PhD, DSc, director of the USF Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair.

The USF study does not define how the HUCB cells reduced acute heart attack damage in the rats, but the researchers continue to search for explanations. The researchers do not discount transdifferentiation -- that HUCB cells transform into functional heart muscle cells to regenerate damaged tissue. However, Dr. Henning suggests, these stem cells instead may release nourishing substances that rally primitive cells within the heart itself to form new blood vessels and muscle.

Other authors of the study were Hamdi Abu-Ali; MD; John Balis, MD; Michael B. Morgan, MD; and Alison E. Willing, PhD.

The USF study was supported by the American Heart Association, the Veterans Administration, a Florida Biomedical Research Grant, and Saneron CCEL Therapeutics, Inc., a USF spin-out biotechnology company focusing on developing stem cell therapies for debilitating or deadly diseases. Some study authors are affiliated with Saneron and are co-inventors on related patent applications by USF.

Responding to demand from Tampa's community leaders, the University of South Florida College of Medicine was established by the Florida Legislature in 1965. Part of the USF Health Sciences Center, doctors and researchers were awarded $116.6 million in grants and contracts last year. Providing advanced medical care, USF Physicians Group at the College of Medicine is the largest doctor group in West Central Florida offering expert medical care throughout Tampa Bay's finest hospitals such as Tampa General Hospital, James A. Haley Veterans' Hospital, Moffitt Cancer Center and All Children's Hospital.

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Rhune
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Re: Cord Blood Stem Cells
« Reply #2 on: Jan 15^th, 2005, 4:32pm »

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Paralyzed Woman Walks Again After Stem Cell Therapy
World - AFP
November 28, 2004

SEOUL (AFP) - A South Korean woman paralyzed for 20 years is walking again after scientists say they repaired her damaged spine using stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood.

Hwang Mi-Soon, 37, had been bedridden since damaging her back in an accident two decades ago.

Last week her eyes glistened with tears as she walked again with the help of a walking frame at a press conference where South Korea researchers went public for the first time with the results of their stem-cell therapy.

They said it was the world's first published case in which a patient with spinal cord injuries had been successfully treated with stem cells from umbilical cord blood.

Though they cautioned that more research was needed and verification from international experts was required, the South Korean researchers said Hwang's case could signal a leap forward in the treatment of spinal cord injuries.

The use of stem cells from cord blood could also point to a way to side-step the ethical dispute over the controversial use of embryos in embryonic stem-cell research.

"We have glimpsed at a silver lining over the horizon," said Song Chang-Hoon, a member of the research team and a professor at Chosun University's medical school in the southwestern city of Kwangju.

"We were all surprised at the fast improvements in the patient."

Under TV lights and flashing cameras, Hwang stood up from her wheelchair and shuffled forward and back a few paces with the help of the frame at the press conference here on Thursday.

"This is already a miracle for me," she said. "I never dreamed of getting to my feet again."

Medical research has shown stem cells can develop into replacement cells for damaged organs or body parts. Unlocking that potential could see cures for diseases that are at present incurable, or even see the body generate new organs to replace damaged or failing ones.

So-called "multipotent" stem cells -- those found in cord blood -- are capable of forming a limited number of specialized cell types, unlike the more versatile "undifferentiated" cells that are derived from embryos.

However, these stem cells isolated from umbilical cord blood have emerged as an ethical and safe alternative to embryonic stem cells.

Clinical trials with embryonic stem cells are believed to be years away because of the risks and ethical problems involved in the production of embryos -- regarded as living humans by some people -- for scientific use.

In contrast, there is no ethical dimension when stem cells from umbilical cord blood are obtained, according to researchers.

Additionally, umbilical cord blood stem cells trigger little immune response in the recipient as embryonic stem cells have a tendency to form tumors when injected into animals or human beings.

For the therapy, multipotent stem cells were isolated from umbilical cord blood, which had been frozen immediately after the birth of a baby and cultured for a period of time.

Then these cells were directly injected to the damaged part of the spinal cord.

"Technical difficulties exist in isolating stem cells from frozen umbilical cord blood, finding cells with genes matching those of the recipient and selecting the right place of the body to deliver the cells," said Han Hoon, president of Histostem, a government-backed umbilical cord blood bank in Seoul.

Han teamed up with Song and other experts for the experiment.

They say that more experiments are required to verify the outcome of the landmark therapy.

"It is just one case and we need more experiments, more data," said Oh Il-Hoon, another researcher.

"I believe experts in other countries have been conducting similar experiments and accumulating data before making the results public."

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luci
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Re: Cord Blood Stem Cells
« Reply #3 on: Jan 17^th, 2005, 10:21am »

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This is wonderful news and a breakthrough very much needed. And to think years ago the cord was pitched in the trash after the baby's birth!

Cool

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Rhune
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Re: Cord Blood Stem Cells
« Reply #4 on: Jan 17^th, 2005, 12:01pm »

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They still do in most cases. Sad

It costs a ton of money to pay for the cord blood draw these days, fortunately I had help paying for it, but my hope is that it will become more affordable to everyone and ultimately common practice.

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luci
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Re: Cord Blood Stem Cells
« Reply #5 on: Jan 17^th, 2005, 12:05pm »

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This should be mandatory and the Gov. pay for it!

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Rhune
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Re: Cord Blood Stem Cells
« Reply #6 on: Jan 17^th, 2005, 12:12pm »

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I don't mind that idea, but I'll be surpised if it happens in my lifetime. For people who are not familiar with the proceedure, they just draw the blood from the umbilical cord with a needle after the baby has been cut from the cord. There is no phsyical pain to the baby or the mother because of the proceedure. The blood in the cord is rich in stem cells that have been used now to cure many diseases and more cures are on the way. For my son that we banked the blood on, he is a 100% match to those stem cells. If anything happens to him down the road we can potentially use those to cure him, like diabetes is something they are making progress in and alzheimer's disease, and some forms of cancer. The mother is an 80% match to the cells, and the father and any siblings are a 50% match, and so on down the line from there. My father-in-law has diabetes, some day my son's cells may completely cure his grandfather, they are already showing progress in that with rats.

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luci
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Re: Cord Blood Stem Cells
« Reply #7 on: Jan 17^th, 2005, 5:51pm »

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Wonderful, let's pray this is done on a regular basis and people are educated to how it works.

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JP
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Re: Cord Blood Stem Cells
« Reply #8 on: Jan 21^st, 2005, 10:40am »

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This is a very good advancement. With thousands of birth occuring worldwide, I don't see why it would be difficult to get all the cords they need. But I hear that some parents here keep the umbilical cord, I'm not really sure why.

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Rhune
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Re: Cord Blood Stem Cells
« Reply #9 on: Jan 21^st, 2005, 11:51am »

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I have not heard of that, but I suppose some could. It's not common practice to keep the cord here in the US, but it may very well be in other countries.

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Insane 4 Survivor
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Re: Cord Blood Stem Cells
« Reply #10 on: Jan 21^st, 2005, 2:38pm »

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How do they store it Rhune? I thought there was a shelf life on all blood products?

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Rhune
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Re: Cord Blood Stem Cells
« Reply #11 on: Jan 21^st, 2005, 3:56pm »

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Here's a link to the people I bank with on their storage and whatnot

http://www.cordblood.com/cord_blood_banking_with_cbr/banking/processing_ overview.asp

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Insane 4 Survivor
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Re: Cord Blood Stem Cells
« Reply #12 on: Jan 31^st, 2005, 9:08am »

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Very interesting. Thanks for sharing

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Addams
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Re: Cord Blood Stem Cells
« Reply #13 on: Feb 1^st, 2005, 6:33pm »

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thanks for these articles Rhune. I have also banked my daughter's cord blood cells.

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Rhune
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Re: Cord Blood Stem Cells
« Reply #14 on: Feb 24^th, 2005, 1:24am »

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Cord Blood Registry's 36th Transplant Aims to Treat Brain Injury
Last week, doctors gave hope to a CBR client family whose 5-month old suffered from anoxic brain injury by treating the child with her own newborn (cord blood) stem cells. Doctors are hopeful that these stem cells will stimulate the growth of new brain cells to replace the damaged ones. Anoxic brain injury, a subset of cerebral palsy, can be caused by lack of oxygen during birth or from injury following birth. Although this treatment is still in the early stages, doctors hope that stem cell therapy will soon be used to treat many types of brain injuries and degenerative brain disorders.

To learn more about cerebral palsy:
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/cerebral_palsy/cerebral_palsy.htm

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