More Paralyzed in US than Previously Thought

About 5.6 million Americans have some degree of paralysis ? far more than previously thought, according to the findings of a telephone survey released today by the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation.

The 2008 survey of more than 33,000 U.S. households defined paralysis as "a central nervous system disorder resulting in difficulty or inability to move" arms or legs. Mobility problems from muscular dystrophy, obesity, arthritis or diabetes, which aren't central nervous system disorders, weren't counted.

Previously, the highest estimate of paralyzed Americans was 4 million, says Joe Canose, vice president for quality of life at the foundation.

Read the Full Post!
 

"Moment by Moment: The Healing Journey of Molly Hale"

"Moment by Moment: The Healing Journey of Molly Hale" is an inspiring documentary film on a woman's journey to heal from a spinal cord injury. It documents Molly's progress to work past a prediction that she would be paralyzed from the shoulders down. Through a variety of healing methods and an outpouring of hands-on-support from her community, she is beginning to learn to walk again and has hope for future progress. It is an intimate, touching film that could help others to visualize a healing path for themselves. It can be viewed online for free.

Read the Full Post!
 

Hope for Spinal Cord Injuries

A paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA reports success in repairing damaged nerves in a system critical for human movement.<

We depend on the corticospinal system, a dense tract of nerve fibers that connect our brain?s motor cortex to the spinal cord, simply to walk or move our hands.

And though researchers in the last two decades have made great progress in regenerating some kinds of damaged nerves, they?ve not been able to regrow nerves in the critical corticospinal system. Until now. The breakthrough was reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.

Scientists genetically engineered rats so that injured neurons in the motor cortex expressed receptors for a growth factor called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). The injured neurons recognized the growth factor in the injured area, and then ?grew? or regenerated.
But will the regrown nerves actually allow movement?

The researchers will have to test for this at a spinal cord injury site, to see if neurons will send the receptor down the axon and into the spinal cord. If voluntary movement can be restored in larger animals first, the procedure could move on to human clinical trials, offering hope that people paralyzed by spinal cord injuries might someday be able to move again.

Report by: Christie Nicholson; Scientific American

Read the Full Post!
 

Scientists Advance Stem Cell Research

Scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston are on the forefront of stem cell research, developing novel therapies designed to generate heart cells, repair traumatic lung injuries, grow new bone and stanch the spread of cancer cells.

Research at the UT Health Science Center at Houston is focused on embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells. A stem cell is a generic cell that has the potential to develop into a specialized cell type and to make copies of itself through cell division. The process of cell specialization is called differentiation.

Human embryonic stem cells are highly versatile and have the potential to develop into any cell type in the body with the exception of the placenta. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), they are extracted from clusters of cells called blastocysts that are created during in vitro fertilization procedures to help people with reproductive issues. The cells are sometimes donated for the purposes of research with the permission of the donors.

Adult stem cells come from umbilical cord blood, bone marrow and many other tissues. While less versatile, they have been used in medical procedures for many decades including bone marrow transplants, where bone marrow stem cells are used to treat leukemia and other cancers to replenish blood cells.

Researchers at the Health Science Center use human embryonic stem cells approved by the NIH.
Embryonic stem cell research

Nobel Laureate and UT Health Science Center at Houston Professor Ferid Murad, M.D., Ph.D., is applying his award-winning research into the properties of a signaling molecule called nitric oxide to further the understanding of the differentiation process for human embryonic stem cells. Murad and his colleagues were the first to report that nitric oxide acts to increase the diameter of blood vessels in the body.

Murad was one of the first in the Texas Medical Center to work with embryonic stem cells and to obtain NIH grant support. Over the last four years, his lab has received about $1.2 million from the NIH to study the signals that change human embryonic stem cells into brain and heart cells. Results have been published in five scholarly articles. He is director emeritus of the Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine for the Prevention of Human Diseases (IMM), a part of the Health Science Center.

In a December issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Kalpana Mujoo, Ph.D., along with other researchers in Murad?s lab, demonstrated the role nitric oxide and soluble guanylyl cyclase (nitric oxide receptor) play in the conversion of mouse and human embryonic stem cells into heart cells. Nitric oxide and cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) were shown to influence the differentiation of embryonic cells into myocardial cells. This approach allows to direct stem cell differentiation into the cells of other lineages such as neural precursor cells, neurons and astrocytes.

Rick A. Wetsel, Ph.D., professor and the William S. Kilroy Sr. Chair in Pulmonary Disease at the IMM, is leading a research program on the use of human embryonic stem cells to develop a transplantable source of lung cells that could be used to treat lung diseases such as acute respiratory distress syndrome and emphysema. Wetsel?s team is also using these cells for gene therapy for inherited genetic defects affecting the lungs including cystic fibrosis and surfactant protein deficiency. His colleagues include Dachun Wang, M.D., (instructor) and Eva Zsigmond, Ph.D., (assistant professor and associate director of the Laboratory for Developmental Biology).

In a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper in 2007, Wetsel reported his laboratory was the first to generate a pure population of lung cells that could be used for lung transplantation. Subsequent studies using lung cells derived from embryonic stem cells have shown to be very promising in repairing tissue damaged by acute lung injury in mice.
Made possible by support from the Clive and Nancy Runnells Program in Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Wetsel, Wang and Zsigmond are also working on the development of ?universal donor? stem cell lines that would not be rejected by a patient?s immune system. Moreover, these lines have not been grown on mouse feeder layers and could be used for clinical applications. The researchers recently started using these cells in rat models of spinal cord injury.

Adult stem cell research

A past president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) and current IMM professor, Paul J. Simmons, Ph.D. has performed pioneering studies with two populations of stem cells found in bone marrow. The first population is termed mesenchymal stem cells (MSC), a type of adult stem cell that can develop into bone, cartilage and fat tissue. The second population is called hematopoietic stem cells (HSC), which are responsible for the formation of the wide range of cell types in the blood.

In addition to studies of the basic biological properties of these two populations, a major focus of his laboratory in the Centre for Stem Cell Research at the IMM is to exploit the therapeutic potential of MSC and HSC. The Centre for Stem Cell Research is involved in the use of mesenchymal stem cells to treat non-union fractures in Australia. Following the success of clinical trials, they could be used in orthopaedic applications in the Texas Medical Center. The MSC population, previously defined by Simmons, is already being examined at the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke?s Episcopal Hospital to treat myocardial infarction and in pre-clinical studies to examine their utility as a cell therapy for the treatment of spinal cord injury.

Simmons? Centre, in collaboration with The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, is studying the use of MSCs as a way to improve the safety of cord blood transplantation.

Yong-Jian Geng, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine and director of the Center for Cardiovascular Biology and Atherosclerosis Research at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston, and James Willerson, M.D., professor and Edward Randall III Chair in Internal Medicine, are conducting adult stem cell research for wound healing and heart failure with grants from the U.S. Department of Defense. Supported by NIH, they also are studying death and regeneration of vascular stem cells in atherosclerosis and aortic aneurysms and stem cell therapy for animal myocardial infarction. Approved by the FDA, their clinical trial on treating chronic heart failure with stem cells is supported by the NIH. Geng also is a co-investigator on a study using stem cells for animals with atherosclerosis and diabetes, which is supported by the American Heart Association.

Principal investigator Charles Cox, M.D., professor of pediatric surgery at the UT Medical School, is leading a unique clinical trial that will gauge the safety and potential of treating children who have just suffered traumatic brain injury with stem cells derived from their own bone marrow. Approved by the FDA and the university?s Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects (CPHS), the clinical trial is building on animal-model research indicating that bone-marrow derived stem cells can migrate to an injured area of the brain and support brain repair. Ten patients were recruited between 2005 and 2008. The study will be completed this summer.

Sean Savitz, M.D., assistant professor of neurology at the UT Medical School, has begun a similar Phase I safety study using bone marrow stem cells in acute stroke patients admitted to the emergency room at Memorial Hermann ? Texas Medical Center. The study uses the patients? own bone marrow and is funded with a $130,000 NIH pilot grant. Enrollment of 10 patients is underway.

Ali E. Denktas, M.D, assistant professor of internal medicine in the Division of Cardiology, is studying endothelial progenitor cells, stem cells that circulate in the blood. He is investigating their ability to be used as a marker for outcomes in sudden cardiac death and acute myocardial infarction patients. He also is researching the interaction between these stem cells and cardiac risk factors, and is lead investigator for a clinical trial using mesenchymal cells for the treatment of myocardial infarction.

Shiwei Cai, D.D.S., assistant professor of endodontics at The University of Texas Dental Branch at Houston, is seeking to use stem cells derived from dental pulp within a patient?s baby teeth or wisdom teeth for ?tooth regeneration? as the answer to teeth dying after root canals. The research team?s goal is to find the universal stem cell to use in tooth cloning and future therapies for gum disease, bone loss and other conditions.

Ka Bian, MD, Ph.D., a scientist in Murad?s lab, is trying to determine if cancer stem cells could be one of the main factors contributing to the extended survival and resilience of malignant brain tumors. Promising molecular targets for treatment of human glioma have been defined.

Read the Full Post!
 

Microscopic Fibers String Spinal Cord Back Together

With plans just approved for the first trial to treat spinal cord injuries in humans with embryonic stem cells, a team of Northwestern scientists is tackling the problem from a different angle: through microscopic messenger molecules that can tell the disconnected nerve cells to re-grow.

The molecules are called nanofibers, and scientists at Northwestern's Institute for BioNanotechnology in Medicine are exploring their potential to treat problems ranging from severed spinal cords to Parkinson?s disease.

Researchers have made nanofibers before with materials such as collagen, but most have to be constructed outside the body and implanted. The ones being researched at Northwestern can spontaneously create themselves from smaller molecules called peptide amphiphiles, allowing scientists to insert them with a simple liquid injection.

?Because they form through self-assembly, we can create therapies that are non-invasive,? said Ramille Capito, assistant director of research at the Institute who presented the team?s findings at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago Saturday.

Spinal cord injuries present a two-fold problem for the patient: First, the nerve cells are disconnected, cutting off messages from the brain that tell the body how to move. Second, shortly after the injury a scar tissue begins to form, blocking nerve cells from growing back.

Messages from nanofibers might be able to stop the process.

According to Capito, the cylinder-shaped nanofibers work by binding to a specific group of amino acids, the tiny molecules that form proteins. Nanofibers carry the amino acids to the injured area. The amino acids then bind to receptors on the cell surface, promoting the growth of nerve cells and inhibiting the growth of scar tissue.

Northwestern scientists tried the technique on rats with severed spines and found that five weeks after the injury, rats injected with nanofibers regained significantly more motion in their hind legs than a control group injected with glucose sugar.

Capito said when they tested the nanofibers on rats with Parkinson?s symptoms, 83 percent of the rats injected with them recovered.

After a few weeks the nanofibers spontaneously disintegrate into harmless amino acids.

?The nice thing about those nanomaterials is that they are completely biodegradable. They break down into amino acids, and so we don?t think there?s going to be any toxicity from them,? said Douglas Losordo, director of the Program in Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine at Northwestern?s Feinberg School of Medicine, who hopes to apply the nanofibers to his own research with adult stem cells.

Losordo is exploring the use of adult stem cells to treat ischemic heart disease, an illness in which blood is cut off from the heart. He found that special stem cells from the bone marrow called endothelial progenitor cells could enter the blood-deprived area and stimulate the growth of new blood vessels.

Losordo said he is collaborating with Capito?s team to find ways nanofibers and stem cells can work together. For example, the low blood supply in the areas he wants to regenerate makes it hard for the stem cells to take effect. The job might be easier if nanofibers could shelter them.

?It?s a challenging environment for the cells to survive,? Losordo said. ?We thought, if we could provide the cells with some survival cues, or a matrix or a soil, if you will, that they?re happier in, maybe we?ll have better luck with retention, survival, proliferation, differentiation of those cells into the target organ.?

by Kristen Minogue

Read the Full Post!