Growing cord blood stem cells in a laboratory before transplanting them into patients with leukemia, lymphoma, and other blood cancers significantly improves survival, according to a new study. It was presented at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting, held December 7-10, 2013, in New Orleans, Louisiana. The cell-expansion technology potentially could boost the number…
ST. LOUIS, Mo. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — Sickle cell is a serious disease that causes pain, anemia, infection, organ damage, and even stroke. It’s the most common inherited blood disorder in the U.S. The good news is bone marrow transplants can be a cure. The bad news is not every patient has a matching donor. Now,…
Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the Gladstone Institutes have recently discovered a way to successfully transform stem cells into fully functioning liver cells. A press release from Gladstone Institutes explained that there had not yet been a way to get stem cell-derived liver cells to survive once transplanted. Previously, the…
Stem cell therapy may help severe congestive heart failure Researchers want to know whether patients with debilitating heart failure can benefit by having their own stem cells injected into their ailing heart muscle. The severe condition is ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy, a currently incurable condition resulting from significantly compromised blood flow to the heart muscle as…
Stem cell-based gene therapy holds promise for the treatment of devastating genetic skin diseases, but the long-term clinical outcomes of this approach have been unclear. In a study online December 26th in the ISSCR’s journal Stem Cell Reports, published by Cell Press, researchers evaluated a patient with a genetic skin disorder known as epidermolysis bullosa…
No parent would want to see their children suffer from illnesses. The good news is that there are a variety of treatments for such life-threatening diseases, one of which is hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Cord blood stem cells, for one, are widely utilized in stem cell transplantations because of the hematopoietic stem cells that are…