All posts by Barbara Payne

atrial fibrillation, stem cells

Sex hormones may predict sudden cardiac arrest (not heart attack)

A "street defibrillator". Having a c...
A “street defibrillator”. Having a cardiac arrest in the “heart of Monaco” could be less problematic. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There appears to be a relationship between levels of sex hormones in the blood, for both men and women, may be related to occurrence of the nearly-always-fatal sudden cardiac arrest – which is different from myocardial infarction (“heart attack”) in people who have blockages in their arteries. Sudden cardiac arrest has to do with faulty electrical signals in the heart. Think about it. Your heart beats about 100,000 times in one day and about 35 million times in a year. During an average lifetime, the human heart will beat more than 2.5 billion times. The heart is a muscle that has to have stimulation to do its work, and that’s where the electrical signals come in. In atrial fibrillation the signals come irregularly and often too fast. But meds can do a good job of controlling this condition and thus lowering the risk of stroke. In sudden cardiac arrest they go out of whack so suddenly and severely that immediate death nearly always occurs. A recent study measured levels of male sex hormone testosterone in men and female sex hormone extradiol in both women and men who died of sudden cardiac arrest versus those who didn’t. The levels were strikingly higher in the deceased. This study promises potential for earlier detection – a much-desired goal that will allow docs to begin devising ways to treat this random-seeming fatal condition.

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nanotechnology

Scanning for nanoprobes may cut brain tumor recurrence

English: Histology specimen of a glioblastoma ...
English: Histology specimen of a glioblastoma showing abundant mitotic activity of the tumor cells (HE stain) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A new nanotech laser-like solution may help surgeons  more completely remove brain tumors, especially those called glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). Instead of guessing which cells are cancerous, this new scanner can identify them for sure so that only and hopefully all the tumor cells are surgically removed.

The method, reported in the journal ACS Nano, has been developed using mouse brains and could one day vastly improve the outlook for human patients.

The day before surgery was to take place, researchers injected “Raman nanoprobes” into a  in a mouse model that mimics human GBM. The nanoprobes headed right to tumor cells and avoided ordinary brain cells. Then the researchers used a handheld device similar to a laser pointer that allows them to identify and remove all malignant cells in the rodents’ brains.

Some steps of this procedure have already made it to human testing for other purposes. So researchers hope this process will move quickly into clinical trials. And they hope eventually to use the device to treat other types of brain cancer.

gene therapy, stem cell research

Stem cells repair older muscle, gene changes cells to restore heart rate

Mouse embryonic stem cells. More lab photos
Mouse embryonic stem cells. More lab photos (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Can’t keep up with all the exciting research going on with stem cells and gene therapy. I imagine many of the researchers might feel a little like a kid who just discovered clay – and found you can do almost anything with it.

First up is a project in which researchers identified why older creatures can take so long to recover from muscle injuries. They found that muscle stem cells in mice were not dividing and renewing themselves the way younger stem cells do.

So they found a way to reinvigorate the murine stem cells by blocking a substance known as p38 MAP kinase that appears to be critical in slowing stem cell division. The growing medium, soft hydrogel, is critical to the newly invigorated cells maintaining their “stemness.” They then injected the revunated stem cells into damaged muscles of elderly (two years old – about the same as 80 in humans) mice and found the muscles began substantially repairing themselves.

Next up, pigs who were suffering from heart block (their heart rate was too slow) were injected with a human gene into a tiny area of the pumping heart that allowed researchers to reprogram “heart muscle cells into a type of cell that emits electrical impulses to drive the beating heart.” The pigs’ heart rates were restored to normal for two weeks.

The hope is that these “biological pacemaker” cells will one day replace the devices we now insert into bodies that must have batteries replaced every 8 to 10 years. Read more about pacemaker gene therapy here.

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health dangers, nitric oxide

Promising new treatment for uncontrolled asthma

Asthma before-after
Asthma before-after (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Your body produces nitric oxide (NO) as a way to fight inflammation, relax tight muscles and increase blood flow. High levels of exhaled nitric oxide in your breath can mean that your airways are inflamed — one sign of asthma.

Researchers have recently discovered a substance called anti-thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) that seems to aggravate inflammation and trigger response to allergens in adults with allergic asthma.

In  a small double-blind study asthma patients treated with AMG-157 (Amgen) over nearly a 3-month period reacted significantly less to asthmatic challenges than those not treated. Amgen is a human monoclonal antibody that inhibits TSLP activity by binding to it.

Study results reported  adults with allergic asthma were shown to have “reduced the fraction of exhaled nitric oxide and blood and sputum eosinophils,” both of which are markers for airway inflammation. Dramatic promise for patients whose asthma is not well-controlled by other means.

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nitric oxide

Exhaled NO shows e-cigarettes too good to be true

CIGARETTE
CIGARETTE (Photo credit: Fried Dough)

As an ex-smoker I was intrigued when I heard about the new “smokeless” cigarette as an alternative to the devastatingly addictive habit of tobacco smoking. I wondered if it was truly possible to essentially hang on to your habit and not suffer the consequences.

Recent research says definitively not.

Italian researchers tested a small group of subjects for rates of exhaled nitric oxide (NO) – considered to be an accurate gauge of whether airways are inflamed – and found that e-smokers’ lungs were just as short on exhaled NO as those of tobacco smokers’. In fact, there were indications that nicotine-laced e-cigarettes actually deposited more particles in the lungs than real cigarette smoke.

So, unlike using methadone for stabilizing people with addictions, the e-cure could be turning out to be worse than what it’s replacing.

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BiomedNews, stem cell research, stem cells

Stem cells help heart attack & heart failure

English: Human bone marrow.
English: Human bone marrow. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Imagine a substance your doctor could inject directly into your heart soon after you have a heart attack that will prevent and/or repair some of the damage that heart attacks usually involve? AND thus possibly prevent you from  developing heart failure as a result of the attack?

Yep. They’ve done it in a recent study with 40 patients in Japan – half got a protein drip called G-CSF and the rest a saline solution (placebo).

…researchers from the Gunma Prefectural Cardiovascular Center in Maebashi, Japan, have found that a protein called G-CSF—when injected into the hearts of patients who recently suffered an attack—can actually spur a type of bone marrow stem cells to migrate to the heart and curb the spread of cellular death that normally takes place.

Clinical trials are in the works to confirm these dramatic preliminary promises.

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stem cell research, stem cells

Baby teeth – new source for stem cells

Tooth-Care
Tooth-Care (Photo credit: Lutz-R. Frank)

Researchers have recently found they can create stem cells taken non-invasively from tissues found in teeth. “These stem cells can be isolated and grown under defined tissue culture conditions, and are potential cells for use in tissue engineering, including, dental tissue, nerves and bone regeneration.”

This press release mentions a concern that people might start yanking their kids’ teeth out for money. I guess you have to mention the weird fears when you put out information about a new discovery. But happily, no scary dental visit is needed. The manufacturer rushes to point out that its method will preserve a baby tooth that fell out all by itself for up to 5 days. That gives you plenty of time to get it to a lab while the blood-flowing parts are still operating.

Bravo! Scientists continue to discover new ways to use nature’s own approaches to healing. What a great time to be alive.

And I’m going to bet the tooth fairy may have to up her game a bit on this one…

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nitric oxide

All things nitric oxide – research report released

Nitric Oxide Synthase
Nitric Oxide Synthase (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you’ve read even a few of the posts on BioMedNews.org, you probably know I love writing about research that involves nitric oxide (NO). I was introduced to the power of NO about ten years ago when I wrote a white paper on asthma research for the Lerner Research Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. In fact, that project was the reason I started this blog – I got hooked on bioscience.

Just found out that Research and Markets, a global organization dedicated to examining the state of research, the condition of markets, and the companies working to develop various therapies, has recently released a comprehensive report about the current global state of research on nitric oxide (NO) and a related enzyme called nitric oxide synthase (NOS).

The description of this report is the simplest explanation I’ve seen of the dual nature of NO – how it produces great good in the human body, and yet can cause health problems in the same areas where it’s done good. A strange and wonderful molecule to learn about.

 

 

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BiomedNews, stem cell research, stem cells

Harvard stem cell study promises personalized treatments

Personalized Medicine
Personalized Medicine (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Scientists have for some time been able to reproduce pieces of human organs on chips. Now in a new study they’ve been able to use a patient’s stem cells to reproduce in the lab chunks of functioning tissue from a human being with a specific disease.

In this case, a team of experts from multiple disciplines “modeled the cardiovascular disease Barth syndrome, a rare X-linked cardiac disorder caused by mutation of a single gene called Tafazzin, or TAZ. The disorder, which is currently untreatable, primarily appears in boys, and is associated with a number of symptoms affecting heart and skeletal muscle function.”

The disease in this case results in very weak contractions of the heart muscle. The hope is that they may also eventually be able to model functioning tissue from patients with other diseases that produce other functional problems.

Why would they want to create functioning yet diseased human tissue outside a human being? The answer is that they can then experiment with and test all kinds of drugs and other treatments that they might not want to use directly on an actual living, breathing human being. In this scenario they were able to inject a genetic product that corrected the contractile problem right there in the lab.

While the article doesn’t say this, I’m thinking it could also mean in the long run fewer animals used for experimentation. And it could lead to shorter times before promising therapies can get to clinical trials.

A brave new world, indeed.

 

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BiomedNews, stem cell research, stem cells

Stem cells from fat used to regenerate bone

English: Fat Stem Cells
English: Fat Stem Cells (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Bone injuries and osteoporosis have long been the target of research for better treatments. Now a team of California researchers has discovered a way to use stem cells from fat tissue to regenerate bone.

The new approach overcomes some of the major obstacles of using regular mesenchymal stromal stem cells (MSC). MSCs require a two- to three-week period of culturing outside the body, which introduces greater possibility of infection and increases the risk of cancer cells developing before the stem cells can be used.

The new method of harvesting and purifying stem cells from adipose tissue produces what are known as perivascular stem cells (PSC). PSCs are localized around all the body’s veins and arteries and form part of the natural regenerative system. At the same time researchers identified a new growth factor NELL-1 that “potently amplifies the ability of PSC to form bone and vascular structures.”

Applications for the new method include treating bone loss due both to post-menopause in women and to aging in both men and women.

Can’t wait to see this get to clinical trial.

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