Author Topic: Future embryonic stem cell treatment promise for MS  (Read 98 times)

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Offline agate

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Future embryonic stem cell treatment promise for MS
« on: June 20, 2014, 08:48:57 pm »
Excerpted from Medical News Today, June 18, 2014:

Quote
Future embryonic stem cell treatment promise for multiple sclerosis


 
Scientists in the University of Connecticut's Technology Incubation Program have identified a novel approach to treating multiple sclerosis (MS) using human embryonic stem cells, offering a promising new therapy for more than 2.3 million people suffering from the debilitating disease.

The researchers demonstrated that the embryonic stem cell therapy significantly reduced MS disease severity in animal models, and offered better treatment results than stem cells derived from human adult bone marrow.

The study was led by ImStem Biotechnology Inc. of Farmington, Conn., in conjunction with UConn Health Professor Joel Pachter, Assistant Professor Stephen Crocker, and Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) Inc. of Massachusetts. ImStem was founded in 2012 by UConn doctors Xiaofang Wang and Ren-He Xu, along with Yale University doctor Xinghua Pan and investor Michael Men.

"The cutting-edge work by ImStem, our first spinoff company, demonstrates the success of Connecticut's Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine funding program in moving stem cells from bench to bedside," says Professor Marc Lalande, director of the UConn's Stem Cell Institute.

The research was supported by a $1.13 million group grant from the state of Connecticut's Stem Cell Research Program that was awarded to ImStem and Professor Pachter's lab.

...

The researchers compared eight lines of adult bone marrow stem cells to four lines of human embryonic stem cells. All of the bone marrow-related stem cells expressed high levels of a protein molecule called a cytokine that stimulates autoimmunity and can worsen the disease. All of the human embryonic stem cell-related lines expressed little of the inflammatory cytokine.

Another advantage of human embryonic stem cells is that they can be propagated indefinitely in lab cultures and provide an unlimited source of high quality mesenchymal stem cells - the kind of stem cell needed for treatment of MS, the researchers say. This ability to reliably grow high quality mesenchymal stem cells from embryonic stem cells represents an advantage over adult bone marrow stem cells, which must be obtained from a limited supply of healthy donors and are of more variable quality.

...

The findings also offer potential therapy for other autoimmune diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and type-1 diabetes, according to Xu, a corresponding author on the study and one of the few scientists in the world to have generated new human embryonic stem cell lines.

...

"The beauty of this new type of mesenchymal stem cells is their remarkable higher efficacy in the MS model," says Wang, chief technology officer of ImStem.

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The group’s findings appear in the current online edition of Stem Cell Reports, the official journal of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. ImStem is currently seeking FDA approval necessary to make this treatment available to patients.

The entire article can be seen here.
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