New Clues to How HIV Infects Body's Cells

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New Clues to How HIV Infects Body's Cells

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Stem cells blamed for cancer re-growth

"Stem cells are viewed on a computer screen. Researchers presented evidence Wednesday for the existence of cancer stem cells, with three different studies seeking to end a decades-old scientific dispute about how tumours grow. (AFP Photo/)" title

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Stem Cells Show Promise as Heart Failure Treatment

HealthDay – 1 hr 40 mins ago MONDAY, July 23 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists who used modified stem cells to rejuvenate damaged and aged heart cells from elderly heart failure patients say their research could one day lead to new treatments for the illness.

"Since patients with heart failure are normally elderly, their cardiac stem cells aren't very healthy," Sadia Mohsin, one of the study authors and a postdoctoral research scholar at San Diego State University's Heart Institute, explained in a news release from the American Heart Association (AHA). "We modified these biopsied stem cells and made them healthier. It is like turning back the clock so these cells can thrive again."

The study was to be presented Monday at an AHA meeting, in New Orleans, and published simultaneously in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

The stem cells taken from the patients were modified with a protein called PIM-1, which promotes cells survival and growth. The modified stem cells helped the signaling and structure of the patients' heart cells by boosting the activity of an enzyme called telomerase, which elongates telomeres.

Telomeres are the caps on the ends of chromosomes that are involved in cell replication. Aging and disease occur when telomeres break off.

"There is no doubt that stem cells can be used to counter the aging process of cardiac cells caused by telomere degradation," Mohsin said.

While the study did use human heart cells, it was conducted in the laboratory and remains in its early stages. However, tests conducted in mice and pigs also found that telomere lengthening resulted in new heart tissue growth in just four weeks.

"Modifying aged human cardiac cells from elderly patients adds to the cell's ability to regenerate damaged heart muscle, making stem cell engineering a viable option," Mohsin said. "This is an especially exciting finding for heart failure patients. Right now we can only offer medication, heart transplantation or stem cell therapies with modest regenerative potential, but PIM-1 modification offers a significant advance for clinical treatment."

One expert called the research "exciting."

The stem cell technique "is enabling endogenous

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Scientists Use Stem Cells to Mimic Huntington's Disease

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Sunburn May Help Rid Body of Radiation-Damaged Cells

HealthDay – 4 hrs ago SUNDAY, July 8 (HealthDay News) -- In examining exactly what happens when skin gets sunburned, researchers studying human skin cells and mice found that sunburn is the result of RNA damage.

The red and painful burn is an immune response triggered by this altered genetic material to remove sun-damaged cells, according to the study published in the July 8 online edition of Nature Medicine.

Researchers from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), suggested their findings could help scientists find a way to block this inflammatory process, which could have implications for a number of medical conditions and treatments, including psoriasis.

"For example, diseases like psoriasis are treated by UV

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Gamma Tocotrienol Weakens and Kills Prostate Cancer Cells

Protection of both women’s and men’s sexual organs is important for survival and quality of life.  Previously, I reported on exciting research relating to gamma tocotrienol Specialized form of vitamin E. Powerful antioxidant showing positive benefits for cholesterol, cardiovascular, neurological health and cancer risk reduction. and breast cancer in my article, Gamma Tocotrienol for Breast Cancer Prevention and Treatment.  New research now shows that gamma tocotrienol Specialized form of vitamin E. Powerful antioxidant showing positive benefits for cholesterol, cardiovascular, neurological health and cancer risk reduction. may be quite helpful for prostate cancer prevention and treatment.

Gamma tocotrienol Specialized form of vitamin E. Powerful antioxidant showing positive benefits for cholesterol, cardiovascular, neurological health and cancer risk reduction. is one of the best nutrients for managing cholesterol because it can help lower cholesterol in a healthy way.  Interestingly, this nutrient has a different effect on cholesterol in cancer cells.  Cancer cells try to use cholesterol to fortify the cell walls so they are stronger.  Gamma tocotrienols can tell the difference between healthy cells and cancer cells and act to crumble the cholesterol structure of the cancer cell, as I explained in an earlier article, Tocotrienols: Twenty Years of Dazzling Cardiovascular and Cancer Research.

The new research demonstrated that prostate cancer cells have a high level of gene activity called Sterol-Regulatory Element Binding Protein isoform 2 (SREBP-2).  This gene signal recruits extra cholesterol to the cancer, which is used to make stronger cell membranes.  Researchers showed that cancer cell survival was dependent on the SREBP-2 gene doing its job at a high level of function.  Then they showed that gamma tocotrienol Specialized form of vitamin E. Powerful antioxidant showing positive benefits for cholesterol, cardiovascular, neurological health and cancer risk reduction. directly knocks down this gene signal in prostate cancer cells, leading to prostate cancer cell death.  The prostate cancer cell destructive activity of tocotrienols does not happen to normal healthy prostate cells, meaning tocotrienols can tell friend from foe and act accordingly.

The implications of this study are profound and will require human studies to demonstrate dose and effectiveness.  Nevertheless, the lack of toxicity to human cells means there is very little reason for any man not to use them as part of a plan to prevent or help treat prostate issues.  Furthermore, such a nutrient will be supportive of just about any medical treatment.  Since gamma tocotrienol Specialized form of vitamin E. Powerful antioxidant showing positive benefits for cholesterol, cardiovascular, neurological health and cancer risk reduction. weakens cancer cells, those cells are now less resistant to cancer drugs, which has been demonstrated numerous times.

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Carcinogens linked to cancer stem cells, but spinach can help

ScienceDaily (June 20, 2012) — Researchers at Oregon State University have for the first time traced the actions of a known carcinogen in cooked meat to its complex biological effects on microRNA and cancer stem cells.

See Also:Health & MedicineColon CancerLung CancerCancerPlants & AnimalsBiotechnologyGeneticsEpigenetics ResearchLiving WellReferenceTumor suppressor geneTumorEmbryonic stem cellBRCA1

The findings are part of a growing awareness of the role of epigenetics in cancer, or the ways in which gene expression and cell behavior can be changed even though DNA sequence information is unaltered.

The scientists also found that consumption of spinach can partially offset the damaging effects of the carcinogen. In tests with laboratory animals, it cut the incidence of colon tumors almost in half, from 58 percent to 32 percent.

The research at OSU's Linus Pauling Institute was recently reported in the journal Molecular Nutrition and Food Research, in work supported by the National Institutes of Health.

"Cancer development is a complex, multi-step process, with damaged cells arising through various means," said Mansi Parasramka, a postdoctoral scholar with LPI. "This study showed that alterations of microRNAs affect cancer stem cell markers in colon cancer formation.

"MicroRNAs are very small factors that do very big things in cells," she said.

Traditionally, cancer was thought to be caused by changes in DNA sequence, or mutations, that allowed for uncontrolled cell growth. That's still true. However, there's also increasing interest in the role played by epigenetics, in which such factors as diet, environmental toxins, and lifestyle affect the expression of genes -- not just in cancer, but also cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and neurological disorders.

Included in this epigenetic equation is the formation of microRNAs -- once thought to be "junk DNA" -- which researchers were at a loss to understand. It's now known that they influence which areas of DNA get expressed or silenced.

There are hundreds of microRNAs, and the OSU scientists monitored 679 in their experiments. When they don't work right, bad things can happen, including abnormal gene expression leading to cancer.

"Recent research is showing that microRNAs are one of the key epigenetic mechanisms regulating cellular functions in normal and diseased tissues," said Rod Dashwood, the Helen P. Rumbel Professor for Cancer Prevention and director of LPI's Cancer Chemoprotection Program.

"But unlike mutations which are permanent genetic changes in DNA," he said, "the good news about epigenetics and microRNA alterations is that we may be able to restore normal cell function, via diet and healthy life style choices, or even drug treatments."

Epigenetics essentially makes every person biologically unique, Dashwood said, a product of both their genetics and their environment. That includes even identical twins.

The findings of the new study should lead to advances in understanding microRNAs, their effects on cancer stem cells, and the regulatory processes disrupted in disease development, the OSU scientists said. This might lead one day to tailored or "patient specific" therapies for cancer, Dashwood said.

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Vein grown from stem cells saves 10-year-old girl

Reuters – 4 hrs ago LONDON (Reuters) - Doctors in Sweden have replaced a vital blocked blood vessel in a 10-year-old girl using the first vein grown in a lab from a patient's own stem cells.

The successful transplant operation, reported online in The Lancet medical journal on Thursday, marks a further advance in the search for ways to make new body parts.

It could open the door to stem cell-based grafts for heart bypass and dialysis patients who lack suitable blood vessels for replacement surgery, and the Swedish team said it is now working with an undisclosed company to commercialize the process.

"I'm very optimistic that in the near future we will be able to get both arteries and veins transplanted on a large scale," said Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson, professor of transplantation biology at the University of Gothenburg, and a member of the team that performed the operation in March 2011.

The advantage of using tissue grown from a patient's own cells is that there is no risk of organ rejection and hence no need for lifelong immunosuppressive drugs.

Four years ago, a 30-year-old woman received the world's first transplant of a tailor-made windpipe, grown in a similar way by seeding a stripped-down donor organ with her own stem cells. Other such trachea operations have followed since.

The latest case involved a young girl with an obstructed hepatic portal vein, which drains blood from the intestines and spleen to the liver. Its blockage can be fatal.

The team from the University of Gothenburg took a 9 cm (3.5 inch) section of groin vein from a deceased donor and removed all the living cells, leaving just a protein scaffold tube. Stem cells extracted from the girl's bone marrow were then injected onto the tube and two weeks later the graft was implanted.

The new blood vessel immediately restored normal blood flow, the doctors said, although after a year it narrowed and a second stem cell-based graft was needed.

Martin Birchall and George Hamilton of University College London said in a commentary in The Lancet that the Swedish doctors had spared the young girl the trauma of having veins harvested from deep in her neck or leg and avoided the need for a liver transplant.

But they cautioned the technique now needed to be tested in clinical trials and developed into a straightforward quality-controlled production process.

Sumitran-Holgersson said her team had already simplified the process and was now able to harvest stem cells from blood rather than bone marrow. She aims to test the technique with arteries later this year.

"You are going to see more and more of these personalized grafts in future," she said in a telephone interview.

The university has also linked up with a Swedish company, which Sumitran-Holgersson declined to identify, to explore how to commercialize the technique. This could involve offering "off-the-shelf" scaffolds from which tailor-made blood vessels could then be built.

Around the world, scientists in the emerging field of regenerative medicine are working to engineer many different human organs and tissues in the lab, including lungs and hearts.

Building such complex organs is a lot more challenging than making blood vessels, however, since veins are relatively simple hollow structures with few engineering demands.

(Editing by Alessandra Rizzo)

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Stem cells can be harvested long after death: study

"Stem cells are fed at the University of Connecticut's Stem Cell Institute in 2010. Some stem cells can lay dormant for more than two weeks in a dead person and then be revived to divide into new, functioning cells, scientists in France say. (AFP Photo/Spencer Platt)" title

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Skin Cells Turned Into Brain Cells in Lab Study

HealthDay – 54 mins ago THURSDAY, June 7 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists who reprogrammed skin cells into brain cells say their research could lay the groundwork for new ways to treat Alzheimer's and other brain diseases.

The team at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco transferred a gene called Sox2 into both mouse and human skin cells. Within days, the skin cells transformed into early-stage brain stem cells called induced neural stem cells.

These cells began to self-renew and soon matured into neurons capable of transmitting electrical signals. Within a month, these new neurons had developed into neural networks, according to the research published online June 7 in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

These transformed cells could provide better models for testing new drugs to treat Alzheimer's and other brain diseases, the researchers said.

"Many drug candidates -- especially those developed for neurodegenerative diseases -- fail in clinical trials because current models don't accurately predict the drug's effects on the human brain," Gladstone investigator Dr. Yadong Huang, who is also an associate professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, said in a Gladstone news release.

"Human neurons -- derived from reengineered skin cells -- could help assess the efficacy and safety of these drugs, thereby reducing risks and resources associated with human trials," Huang explained.

About 5.4 million people in the United States have Alzheimer's disease and that number is expected to triple by 2050., the release notes. Currently, there are no approved drug treatments to prevent or reverse the disease.

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Aging has more about Alzheimer's disease.

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Scientists Turn Skin Cells Into Cardiac Cells to Help Failing Hearts

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Lab uses skin cells to help repair heart muscle

"Surgeons performing a heart surgery. 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. (AFP Photo/Kambou Sia)" title

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Cancer Cells in Bloodstream Show Great Diversity: Study

HealthDay – 4 hrs ago TUESDAY, May 8 (HealthDay News) -- There is a great deal of genetic diversity in cells shed by cancerous tumors into the bloodstream, a new study has found.

Some cells have genes that enable them to lodge themselves in new locations, helping the cancer spread between organs, while other cells have different patterns of gene expression that might make them more benign or less likely to survive in other locations in the body.

Some circulating tumor cells even express genes that could predict their response to a specific cancer treatment, the researchers said.

"Within a single blood draw from a single patient, we're seeing

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'Iceman' Mummy Yields Oldest Human Blood Cells

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A Guide to Banking Cord Blood Cells

April 20, 2012 by admin

Banking cord blood cells for its stem cells is rapidly becoming a standard procedure for many hospitals worldwide. However, the procedure is relatively new, and many expecting parents are faced with a decision whether or not to bank their child’s cord blood cells, despite obvious reasons that they should.

Families with a medical history of diseases curable only with a bone marrow transplant are highly encouraged to bank their child’s cord blood cells. The procedure required to harvest cord blood takes only ten minutes, and processing and storing (cryogenically) the separated stem cells take only fifteen hours maximum. That is a huge difference compared to the process of finding a perfectly matching, bone marrow donor should the situation calls for it.Parents from, or with, a minority or ethnic background, or are adopted, are also highly encouraged to bank umbilical cord blood. Statistically, these people have a very slim chance of finding a bone marrow match, so having their cord blood banked gives them a huge chance of successful treatment should they acquire a life-threatening disease in the future.Parents should decide whether to store their child’s cord blood for his or her own future use (can also be used by family members), or to donate it for public use. It should be noted that when stored for public use, the child’s cord blood will be marked anonymously and cannot be retrieved for personal use. However, it is a generous offer to save someone else’s life.When decided to donate cord blood, parents should research about the cord-blood bank’s financial stability. A stable facility lessens the chance for its donors to transfer to another facility should it close in the future.Fees and maintenance costs charged by the facility should be considered. It is a good idea to know if fees would change in the future, or they are fixed.Certain basic information should be asked from the cord-blood bank, like contracts, or procedures to transfer donated cord blood to a selected facility should the facility closes.Cord blood banking is like a life insurance. A child’s (and family’s) health should not be compromised, and as parents, opting to bank their child’s cord blood is one of the best decisions.

Health

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New Zealand firm to trial pig cells to treat Parkinson's

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Protective gene discovered in fat cells

ScienceDaily (Apr. 1, 2012) — In a finding that may challenge popular notions of body fat and health, researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have shown how fat cells can protect the body against diabetes. The results may lead to a new therapeutic strategy for preventing and treating type 2 diabetes and obesity-related metabolic diseases, the authors say.

See Also:Health & MedicineObesityDiet and Weight LossDiabetesPlants & AnimalsMiceMolecular BiologyFoodReferenceBlood sugarHyperglycemiaDiabetic dietDiabetes mellitus type 2

In the last decade, several research groups have shown that fat cells in people play a major role in controlling healthy blood sugar and insulin levels throughout the body. To do this crucial job, fat cells need a small portion of the sugars derived from food. Obesity often reduces the dedicated sugar transport molecules on fat cells, blocking the glucose from entering fat cells. As a result, the whole body becomes insulin resistant, and blood sugar rises, leading to diabetes.

The new study shows why glucose is so important to fat cells. The team discovered a new version of a gene inside fat cells that responds to sugar with a powerful systemic effect.

"If we change that one gene, that makes the animal more prone to or more protected from diabetes," said senior author Barbara Kahn MD, the George R. Minot Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Vice Chair of the Department of Medicine at BIDMC. "Many foods get converted into sugar, so there is no need to eat more sugar."

The paper is published online April 1 in the journal Nature. In the study, the BIDMC researchers pinpointed the fat gene and its effect in mouse models of human obesity and insulin resistance and reported supporting evidence from fat tissue samples from both lean and obese people.

"Two things were surprising -- first, that a lone gene could shift the metabolism of the fat cell so dramatically and then, that turning on this master switch selectively in adipose tissue is beneficial to the whole body," Kahn said. Twelve years ago, Kahn first demonstrated that fat cells are a master regulator of healthy levels of glucose and insulin in mice and require sugar to do the job.

"The general conception of fat as all bad is not true," said first author Mark Herman MD, an Instructor in Medicine at BIDMC and Harvard Medical School (HMS). "Obesity is commonly associated with metabolic dysfunction that puts people at higher risk for diabetes, stroke and heart disease, but there is a large percentage of obese people who are metabolically healthy. We started with a mouse model that disassociates obesity from its adverse effects."

In the latest study, evidence suggests the newfound gene also may account for the protective effect of glucose uptake in human fat. German collaborators found more gene activity in people with greater insulin sensitivity, based on 123 adipose tissue samples from non-diabetic, glucose tolerant people. The fat gene activity also correlated highly with insulin sensitivity in obese, non-diabetic people, as measured in 38 fat samples by another pair of co-authors based in St. Louis.

"It's a really exciting finding," said Ulf Smith MD PhD, a professor at University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and president of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes. He was not involved in this study. "We've been looking for the mechanism to try to understand why glucose metabolism in adipose tissue is so important for whole-body sensitivity to insulin." Eight years ago, Smith extended Kahn's original findings to people and also showed that fat cells that begin to have trouble taking in sugar can be an early indicator of diabetes. In healthy people, fat cells normally need about 10 percent of the sugars derived from food, he said.

In fat cells, the newfound gene acts as a glucose sensor that converts the sugars into fatty acids, which may play a role in the powerful systemic effect. In response to rising glucose levels, the gene makes a more active version of itself. The active version turns on the cellular machinery that disassembles the sugar molecules and remakes them into fatty acids. The novel version of this gene is called carbohydrate-responsive-element-binding protein-beta, or ChREBP-beta for short.

In the liver, where the original gene was discovered by other scientists, the same fatty acid synthesis process is harmful. There, the transformation of glucose into fatty acids raises triglycerides in the blood and leads to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.

The mice in the latest study were first developed in Kahn's lab two decades ago to model a surprising feature of human obesity. The number of glucose transporters (GLUT4) drops with obesity -- but only on fat cells -- and it happens early in the development of diabetes. (GLUT4 is also found on muscle and heart cells.) Kahn generated mice with genetic alterations in the amount of GLUT4 in fat cells, seeking clues to the link between obesity and diabetes.

One set of mice features 5 to 10 times the usual number of glucose transporters in its fat cells. These mice are obese but exhibit none of the diseases usually associated with obesity. Another set of mice is missing the glucose transporters on their fat cells, which causes diabetes symptoms despite the fact that these mice have normal body weight.

"There's something very special about GLUT4," Kahn said. "When you wake up and haven't eaten all night, the GLUT4 transporters are inside the cell. Within minutes of eating and glucose reaching the blood and stimulating insulin secretion, the GLUT4 transporters move to the cell surface. It's reliable, fast, dynamic and critical to maintaining normal blood sugar after we eat."

Now, the Kahn team has identified how fat cells with GLUT4 can sense the change in glucose transport into the cell and respond by regulating insulin sensitivity in the entire body. The new study reveals a new, potent version of a gene that transforms glucose into fatty acids. "We definitely do not want to imply that people should eat more sugar," Kahn said.

In future research, the team will investigate whether the gene activity could be working directly through fatty acids or altering fat cells and the molecules they secrete in other ways. The BIDMC team is pursuing the fatty acid angle, in part because it seems to fly in the face of conventional wisdom.

The concept that some fatty acids might be beneficial is not new, but "until recently, it was thought that human adipose tissue was not capable of synthesizing many fatty acids," Herman said. In fact, beneficial fatty acids such as omega-3s from fish, and other fatty acids found in olive oil, are usually recommended as part of a healthy diet.

And the fatty acids humans do generate were not thought to be beneficial. "There is a mythology that elevated fatty acids in the blood are detrimental metabolically and generally signal insulin resistance in people," Kahn said. "Our study demonstrates that doesn't have to be the case. It raises the question of whether there are some special fatty acids being made as a result of upregulation of ChREBP."

The research was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Boston Area Diabetes Endocrinology Research Center, Boston Nutrition Obesity Research Center, the Picower and JPB Foundations, a Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschft DFG.

In addition to Kahn and Herman, study coauthors include BIDMC investigators Odile D. Peroni, and Jorge Villoria; Michel R. Schon of Stadtisches Klinikum Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany; Nada A. Abumrad and Samuel Klein of Washington University School of Medicine; and Matthias Bluher of the University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.

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