(The Telegraph via MSN) – But while stem cells have long been regarded as one of the great hopes of regenerative medicine, with long-standing applications in leukaemia and ongoing clinical trials in a whole host of diseases from age-related macular degeneration to multiple sclerosis and motor neurone disease, they are also highly misunderstood. For while there are very few evidence-based stem cell therapies which are officially approved by governmental authorities, there are numerous private clinics located in countries such as Switzerland, China, Mexico, India and the United States, operati ..read more

(MIT Technology Review) – One of the immune system’s roles is to detect and kill cells that have acquired cancerous mutations. However, some early-stage cancer cells manage to survive. A new study on colon cancer from MIT and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has identified one reason why: they turn on a gene called SOX17, which renders them essentially invisible to immune surveillance. (Read More) The post An Invisibility Cloak for Would-Be Cancers first appeared on bioethics.com ..read more

(The Atlantic) – “It really is a game changer,” says Steve Devine, the chief medical officer of the nonprofit NMDP, which runs the U.S. donor registry and has led research into the use of mismatched donors. Today, agonizing searches for a matched donor are largely a thing of the past. The drug powering this breakthrough is actually very old. Cyclophosphamide was first developed in the 1950s for chemotherapy. Fifty years later, researchers at Johns Hopkins began studying whether it could be repurposed to prevent a common and sometimes deadly complication of bone-marrow transplants called graf ..read more

(Nature) – Bioengineered immune cells have been shown to attack and even cure cancer, but they tend to get exhausted if the fight goes on for a long time. Now, two separate research teams have found a way to rejuvenate these cells: make them more like stem cells. Both teams found that the bespoke immune cells called CAR T cells gain new vigour if engineered to have high levels of a particular protein. These boosted CAR T cells have gene activity similar to that of stem cells and a renewed ability to fend off cancer. Both papers were published today in Nature. (Read More) The post How to Su ..read more

(Nature) – Cells taken from the fluid around growing fetuses have been used to make organoids, 3D bundles of cells that mimic tissue. These organoids could help researchers to understand diseases that develop in the fetus during pregnancy. The researchers grew organoids from lung, kidney and small intestine cells shed into amniotic fluid collected from 12 pregnancies between the 16th and 34th weeks of gestation. This is the first time that organoids have been grown directly from cells taken from ongoing pregnancies, says Mattia Gerli, a stem-cell biologist at University College London and a ..read more

(STAT News) – As a fetus develops, its body is bathed in amniotic fluid: a warm, salty soup of nutrients, hormones, and antibodies produced by its mother. And into that fluid, a fetus is constantly sloughing off or peeing out cells, which provide genetic material that doctors can pull out with a needle and examine for signs of disease in a process called amniocentesis. Now, researchers working in the U.K. have discovered that some of those cells are still alive, and they can be grown up into three-dimensional organoids — mini lung, kidney, and small intestines — providing a possible new tool ..read more

(STAT News) – A growing body of data show that South Asians are at greater risk of developing heart disease than white people, and they tend to get complications at younger ages, but it’s not been fully clear what explains this disparity. A new study suggests one potential reason is that South Asians have a decreased ability to repair blood vessels that get injured from cardiovascular problems. In a small trial comparing people of South Asian and white European descent, researchers found that South Asian people had lower levels of certain stem cells that are critical in regenerating blood ve ..read more

(STAT News) – Unfortunately, early cord clamping, essential for successful cord-blood banking, can do genuine harm to newborn babies in the name of protecting their health. Yes, stem cells collected from the baby’s blood have remarkable healing and regenerative powers. They can turn into many other types of cells and help treat diseases from anemia to cancer. But research, including my own, shows that these same properties are even more important to the newborn baby in transitioning to life outside the womb. Instead of saving them for a potential future emergency, babies will benefit more fr ..read more

(STAT News) – Fewer than 15 other people with beta thal have started the Zynteglo process, but gene therapies for the far more common sickle cell disease, from Bluebird and from Vertex and CRISPR Therapeutics, were approved in the U.S. last week. Treatments for immune diseases and cystine buildup are on the way as well. All of these gene therapies will require stem cell transplants like Shelby’s, meaning thousands more patients will go through the same arduous process in the near future. In chronicling Shelby’s journey, STAT visited her in the hospital and spent more than a year talking to t ..read more

(MIT Technology Review) – Brain organoids, clumps of human brain cells grown in a dish, can be hooked up to an electronic chip and carry out simple computational tasks, a new study shows. Feng Guo and his team at Indiana University Bloomington generated a brain organoid from stem cells, attached it to a computer chip, and connected their setup, known as Brainoware, to an AI tool. They found that this hybrid system could process, learn, and remember information. It was even able to carry out some rudimentary speech recognition. (Read More) The post Human Brain Cells Hooked Up to a Chip Can ..read more