Texas Heart Institute

Hits and Myths as people celebrate Stem Cell Awareness Day

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment
UC Davis #1

Stem Cell Awareness Day at UC Davis

Every year, the second Wednesday in October is set aside as Stem Cell Awareness Day, a time to celebrate the progress being made in the field and to remind us of the challenges that lie ahead.

While the event began here in California in 2008, with then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger highlighting the work of CIRM, saying: ”The discoveries being made today in our Golden State will have a great impact on many around the world for generations to come.” It has since grown to become a global event.

Here in California, for example, UC Davis and the University of Southern California (USC) both held events to mark the day.

At UC Davis Jan Nolta, PhD., the Director of the Stem Cell Program, introduced a series of speakers who highlighted the terrific work being done at the university. Peter Belafsky talked about using stem cells to repair damaged trachea and to help people who are experiencing voice or swallowing disorders. Mark Lee highlighted the progress being made in using stem cells to repair hard-to-heal broken bones. Aijun Wang focused on some really exciting work that could one day lead to a therapy for spina bifida (including some ridiculously cute video of English bulldogs who are able to walk again because of this therapy.)

USC hosted 100 local high school students for a panel presentation and discussion about careers in stem cell research. The panel featured four scientists talking about their experience, why the students should think about a career in science and how to go about planning one. USC put together a terrific video of the researchers talking about their experiences, something that can help any student around the US consider becoming part of the future of stem cell research.

Similar events were held in other institutions around California. But the celebration wasn’t limited to the Golden State. At the Texas Heart Institute in Houston, Texas, they held an event to talk to the public about the clinical trials they are supporting using stem cells to help people suffering from heart failure or other heart-related issues.

RegMedNet

Finally, the UK-based RegMedNet, a community site that unites the diverse regenerative medicine community, marked the day by exploring some of the myths and misconceptions still surrounding stem cells and stem cell research.

You can read those here.

Every group takes a different approach to celebrating Stem Cell Awareness Day, but each is united by a common desire, to help people understand the progress being made in finding new treatments and even cures for people with unmet medical needs.

At World Stem Cell Summit: Why results in trials repairing hearts are so uneven

/ Don Gibbons / Leave a comment

Just as no two people are the same, neither are the cells in their bone marrow, the most common source of stem cells in clinical trials trying to repair damage after a heart attack. Doris Taylor of the Texas Heart Institute in Houston, which is just a couple hours drive from the site of this year’s World Stem Cell Summit in San Antonio, gave a key note address this morning that offered some good reasons for the variable and often disappointing results in those trials, as well as some ways to improve on those results.

THI's Dr. Doris Taylor

THI’s Dr. Doris Taylor

The cells given in a transplant derived from the patient’s own bone marrow contain just a few percent stem cells and a mix of adult cells, but for both the stem and adult cells the mix is highly variable. Taylor said that in essence we are giving each patient a different drug. She discussed a series of early clinical trials in which cell samples from each patient were banked at the National Heart and Lung and Blood Institute. There they could do genetic and other analysis on the cells and compare that data with how each individual patient faired.

In looking at the few patients in each trial that did better on any one of three measures of improved heart function, they were indeed able to find certain markers that predicted better outcome. In particular they looked at “triple responders,” those who improved in all three measures of heart function. They found there were both certain types of adult cells and certain types of stem cells that seemed to result in improved heart health.

They also found that two of the strongest predictors were gender and age. Women generally develop degenerative diseases of aging like heart disease at an older age than men and since many consider aging to be a failure of our adult stem cells, it would make sense that women have healthier stem cells.

Taylor went on to discuss ways to use this knowledge to improve therapy outcomes. One way would be to select for the more potent cells identified in the NHLBI analysis. She mentioned a couple trials that did show better outcomes using cells derived from heart tissue. One of those is work that CIRM funds at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.

Another option is replace the whole heart and she closed with a review of what is probably her best-known work, trying to just that. In rats and pigs, she has taken donor hearts and used soap-like solutions to wash away the living cells so that all that is left behind are the proteins and sugars that make of the matrix between cells. She then repopulates the scaffolds that still have the outlines of the chambers of the heart and the blood vessels that feed them, with cells from the recipient animal. She has achieved partially functional organs but not fully functional ones. She—along with other teams around the world—is working on the remaining hurdles to get a heart suitable for transplant.

Don Gibbons