Adult stem cells cures...a success!!

[Bottesini]

Oh I see, that sounds like not good.

I diagnosed with usher syndrome type 2 when I was 13 years old, you can call retinitis pigmentosa if you desired, both are similar since usher syndrome is combination of deaf and blind. After I found about it, I was very scared and unhappy about what is my life will going on with it so I'm start slowly used with it.

It isn't good. I am blind in my right eye and the left is going. I have been dealing with it for years, and I am still afraid about when I will be both deaf and blind.

 

[netrox]

Retinal restoration

Early stage retina created from stem cells - UPI.com

Kokonut, thanks for the links... but notice the last link cited, "To mimic early stage retinal development, the researchers needed to build microscopic gradients for solutions in which to bathe the stem cells to initiate specific differentiation paths."

That requires transplant and that approach makes more sense.

Now, remember the other thread when stemcell guy showed dubious links about a girl who claim to be cured of deafness by getting injections. That's baloney. You cannot be cured by just getting injections. You have to "mold" it.

Stem therapy works for certaion blood diseases BUT that's BECAUSE they are free cells... not a complex tissue. You can easily put a healthy cell in blood and have it divide many times. That's EASY.

But to create a complex organ with stem cell is a tall order. You have to "mold" them to become what you want them to.

That's why I don't believe what the article said about the woman being cured.

 

[kokonut]

And I hope there'd be a cure for those blindness, too. Just as I hope there'd be a cure for hearing loss, too.

 

[Foxrac]

And I hope there'd be a cure for those blindness, too. Just as I hope there'd be a cure for hearing loss, too.

Thank you, man and you will make me go back to work and become successful in my life instead of depend on welfare due unable to find a job because of blindness.

 

[Foxrac]

It isn't good. I am blind in my right eye and the left is going. I have been dealing with it for years, and I am still afraid about when I will be both deaf and blind.

Same here.

 

[kokonut]

Kokonut, thanks for the links... but notice the last link cited, "To mimic early stage retinal development, the researchers needed to build microscopic gradients for solutions in which to bathe the stem cells to initiate specific differentiation paths."

That requires transplant and that approach makes more sense.

Now, remember the other thread when stemcell guy showed dubious links about a girl who claim to be cured of deafness by getting injections. That's baloney. You cannot be cured by just getting injections. You have to "mold" it.

Stem therapy works for certaion blood diseases BUT that's BECAUSE they are free cells... not a complex tissue. You can easily put a healthy cell in blood and have it divide many times. That's EASY.

But to create a complex organ with stem cell is a tall order. You have to "mold" them to become what you want them to.

That's why I don't believe what the article said about the woman being cured.

rebuilding lungs with stem cells:

Rats Breathe With Lab-Grown Lungs - ScienceNOW


Also, latest news from 3 days ago:

Scientists agree that the key to reversing hearing loss - as well as a wide range of diseases that are currently deemed incurable -lies in human stem cells derived from embryos that have been fertilized in vitro and used for research purposes with consent of the donors.

In this country, this issue remains controversial, even though President Obama lifted the longstanding ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

How can these cells be used to cure deafness and hearing loss? British scientists discovered a way to turn stem cells into ones that act like hair cells, which could be surgically inserted into the ear to restore hearing.

That is just one of several studies carried out in various countries that found that stem cells are instrumental in curing deafness.

The latest evidence comes from the Stanford University School of Medicine, where a team of researchers started out with the idea that if they could create hair cells in the laboratory from stem cells, better treatments for deafness and hearing loss would follow.

Stefan Heller, PhD, professor of otolaryngology at the Stanford University School of Medicine and a leader in stem cell-based research on the inner ear, found a way to develop mouse cells that look and act just like the animal's inner-ear hair cells.

Eventually, scientists will need human hair cells to experiment on so they can perfect their formula for hair regeneration in the inner ear. However, in these early stages of experimentation, mice are adequate models. In fact, further tests show that mice cells responded to vibrations in a similar way to hair cells in the (human) inner ear.

"We made hair-cell-like cells in a petri dish," said Kazuo Oshima, MD, PhD, a research instructor at Stanford who works in Heller's lab. "This is an important step toward development of future therapies."

What does this all mean for millions of people with hearing loss around the world? "Our study offers a protocol to generate millions of functional hair cells from a renewable source," Heller said of the study's findings. "We can now generate these cells and don't have to go through dozens of mice for a single experiment. This allows us to do molecular studies with much higher efficiency."

Scientific Breathroughs Offer Hope for H... | Healthy Hearing

 

[melissa]

I'm glad for the people who got blinded by chemicals being able to see again, if they wanted to. But I'm paranoid and I can see it leading to a world where deaf or blind babies get 'cured' by the state. I think I'd have a different opinion about it all if I hadn't been hoh all my life- it's part of who I am, just like being left handed or having ginger hair- incidentally teachers used to force people to write with their right hands decades ago- if you change that then you change a big part of me.

 

[A]

It isn't good. I am blind in my right eye and the left is going. I have been dealing with it for years, and I am still afraid about when I will be both deaf and blind.

((hugs))

 

[kokonut]

I'm glad for the people who got blinded by chemicals being able to see again, if they wanted to. But I'm paranoid and I can see it leading to a world where deaf or blind babies get 'cured' by the state. I think I'd have a different opinion about it all if I hadn't been hoh all my life- it's part of who I am, just like being left handed or having ginger hair- incidentally teachers used to force people to write with their right hands decades ago- if you change that then you change a big part of me.

It wouldn't matter when this cure is done while so young as a baby or toddler. You'd have already by then built up your own experience in being able to see or hear like others can and with a totally different perspective and outlook had you not been cured early on while as a very young child/baby.

 

[Bottesini]

((hugs))

Thanks.

 

[jillio]

rebuilding lungs with stem cells:

Rats Breathe With Lab-Grown Lungs - ScienceNOW


Also, latest news from 3 days ago:

url=http://www.healthyhearing.com/articles/47482-hearing-loss-cure-hope]Scientific Breathroughs Offer Hope for H... | Healthy Hearing[/url]

Yep. FETAL stem cells. Not adult stem cells. Thank Obama for opening the research back up for fetal stem cells. A man called Bush put the nix on it.

 

[shel90]

:dj:

Let's have a party and have fun, shall we?

 

[kokonut]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYDSPFuWFDM&feature]YouTube - Sight for sore eyes[/ame]

Be sure to go to the main YouTube and click on CC. A 50-50 shot on getting the right captions. The narrator's captioning is better.

 

[kokonut]

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) recently granted $230 million in Disease Team Research Awards to get stem cell-based therapies into the clinic within 4 years (California Institute for Regenerative Medicine). Up to $20 million will go to each of 14 California-based interdisciplinary research groups, with the first funding checks to be sent out next month. The expectation is that within 4 years each group will submit an Investigational New Drug (IND) application to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a phase I clinical trial. To receive the funding, the research teams are required to include basic scientists and clinicians from academia and industry, with the goal of getting test agents rapidly into clinical trials and addressing clinical issues early in the research process. CIRM's President, Alan Trounson, estimates that 75% of the projects funded will result in IND applications to the FDA within the 4 year funding period. “I am impressed with these teams—some have already had pre-application meetings with the FDA,” says Trounson. He emphasizes that all of the Disease Teams include researchers that have been through the IND application process.

The CIRM-funded projects propose to develop new stem cell therapies to treat 11 diseases including AIDS, diabetes, sickle-cell anemia, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), ischemic heart disease, several different types of cancer, stroke, macular degeneration, and the rare genetic skin disease dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa. “We were open to all stem cell approaches and wanted to include as many diseases as possible, especially those with no cures…we wanted to see creative uses of stem cells and encouraged investigators to aim higher and bite off bigger chunks than in most grant applications,” says Bettina Steffen, Science Officer at CIRM. The review committees “considered any role of the stem cell as part of the actual therapeutic or even as part of a screening platform to identify drugs,” she adds.

Read the rest at:

ScienceDirect - Cell : Stem Cell Therapies: California Dreamin'?

 

[Beowulf]

I've got a good friend who has Usher's Syndrome, and he is following this closely. I hope it doesn't take long to help him.

 

[Foxrac]

Yep. FETAL stem cells. Not adult stem cells. Thank Obama for opening the research back up for fetal stem cells. A man called Bush put the nix on it.

Does he support fetal stem cell? Just wonders.

 

[deafdyke]

Don't know the exact percentage, but it is up there. Especially when you include accidents occurring during the birth process. Genetic blindness is, like genetic deafness, one of the lesser causes. More often, it is the result of a secondary complication suffered with an auto immune disorder. .

I know that most blind folks are blind due to age related issues. It's sort of like how there are a lot of dhh kids and many dhh age related folks.... but with blindness accidents can be a BIG cause of blindness with young adults...right?

Another reason why I say use the research to work on cures for the auto immune disorders. Cure the auto immune disorders and you will prevent some of the leading causes of both deafness and blindness

And most autoimmune disorders are adult onset and the hearing and sight complications are also adult onset.

 

[Bottesini]

I know that most blind folks are blind due to age related issues. It's sort of like how there are a lot of dhh kids and many dhh age related folks.... but with blindness accidents can be a BIG cause of blindness with young adults...right?


And most autoimmune disorders are adult onset and the hearing and sight complications are also adult onset.

Auto immune disease is not the main cause of blindness. And this research is very promising for a variety of disorders that damage the retina.

 

[kokonut]

The first link in the beginning of my thread dealt with adult stem cells.
Stem cells reverse blindness caused by burns - Yahoo! News

As for CIRM, ya'll need to look at the funding and where most of the grant money is geared toward to and that's adult stem cells. Adult stem cells show more promises than embryonic.

As a result, the Investor's Business Daily wrote, "So supporters are embracing research they once opposed." Last October, the Institute distributed $230 million in fresh funding to 14 different research teams. Only 4, or 29%, are working with embryonic stem cells, while the other 71% are focused on various forms of adult stem cell research. Adult stem cell research "..not only has treated people with real results; it also does not come with the moral baggage ESCR does."

Assessing the scientific results of California's 2004 stem cell research initiative | CAIVN
Out of 14 different research teams, 10 of them focus on adult stem cells while only 4 focus on embyronic stem cells.

Bioethics: Five years after a budget-busting $3 billion was allocated to embryonic stem cell research, there have been no cures, no therapies and little progress. So supporters are embracing research they once opposed.

California's Proposition 71 was intended to create a $3 billion West Coast counterpart to the National Institutes of Health, empowered to go where the NIH could not — either because of federal policy or funding restraints on biomedical research centered on human embryonic stem cells.

Supporters of the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, passed in 2004, held out hopes of imminent medical miracles that were being held up only by President Bush's policy of not allowing federal funding of embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) beyond existing stem cell lines and which involved the destruction of embryos created for that purpose.

Five years later, ESCR has failed to deliver and backers of Prop 71 are admitting failure. The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state agency created to, as some have put it, restore science to its rightful place, is diverting funds from ESCR to research that has produced actual therapies and treatments: adult stem cell research. It not only has treated real people with real results; it also does not come with the moral baggage ESCR does.

To us, this is a classic bait-and-switch, an attempt to snatch success from the jaws of failure and take credit for discoveries and advances achieved by research Prop. 71 supporters once cavalierly dismissed. We have noted how over the years that when funding was needed, the phrase "embryonic stem cells" was used. When actual progress was discussed, the word "embryonic" was dropped because ESCR never got out of the lab.

Prop 71 had a 10-year mandate and by 2008, as miracle cures looked increasingly unlikely, a director was hired for the agency with a track record of bringing discoveries from the lab to the clinic. "If we went 10 years and had no clinical treatments, it would be a failure," says the institute's director, Alan Trounson, a stem cell pioneer from Australia. "We need to demonstrate that we are starting a whole new medical revolution."

The institute is attempting to do that by funding adult stem cell research. Nearly $230 million was handed out this past October to 14 research teams. Notably, only four of those projects involve embryonic stem cells.

Among the recipients, the Los Angeles Times reports, is a group from UCLA and Children's Hospital in Los Angeles that hopes to cure patients with sickle cell disease by genetically modifying their own blood-forming stem cells to produce healthy red blood cells. Researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center will use their grant to research injecting heart-attack patients with concentrated amounts of their own cardiac stem cells that naturally repair heart tissue.

Dr. Bernadine Healy, director of the National Institutes of Health under Bush 41, wrote in her U.S. News & World Report column recently that "embryonic stem cells, once thought to hold the cure for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes, are obsolete."

Even worse, they can be dangerous. They are difficult to control, to coax into the specific type of tissue desired. Unlike adult stem cells taken from a patient's own body, ES cells require the heavy use of immunosuppressive drugs. Their use can lead to a form of tumor called a teratoma.

And lastly, even though it's embryonic stem cells they are still trying to figure out how to prevent rejections.

CIRM Commits $25M to Overcome Immune Rejection of Stem Cell Therapies

With adult stem cells you don't have to worry about your body rejecting your own tissues/cells. Hence, why it's heavily favored as a source of possible cures.

 

[Foxrac]

Someone told me that embryonic stem cell is outdated, is it true?