Showing posts with label arthritis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label arthritis. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Umbilical Cord Cells May Treat Arthritis, Studies Suggest

Source: BioMed Central
Date: November 15, 2010

Summary:

Umbilical cord stem cells may be useful in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Animal and in vitro experiments, described in BioMed Central's open access journal Arthritis Research and Therapy, have shown that mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) taken from umbilical cord blood can suppress inflammation and attenuate collagen-induced arthritis. The researchers took immune cells from RA patients and showed that the umbilical MSCs were able to suppress the cells' proliferation, invasive behavior and inflammatory responses. Systemic infusion of the umbilical MSCs into mice was shown to significantly reduce the severity of collagen-induced arthritis.

Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Researchers Convert Stem Cells into Cartilage

Source: University of Connecticut
Date: June 8, 2010

Summary:

For the millions of aging Americans who suffer from joint pain, stem cells may be riding to the rescue. Scientists at the University of Connecticut Health Center have recently developed a technique that reliably converts stem cells into cartilage cells. Someday, that might allow doctors to grow replacement cartilage in a laboratory for the surgical repair of joints lost to injury or impaired by degenerative diseases such as arthritis.

Stem cells have an unlimited capacity for self-renewal, as well as the ability to become any type of cell in the human body, so they are ideal for generating replacement cartilage tissue to repair damaged cartilage. Developmental biologists, like Dr. Caroline Dealy, an associate professor at UConn’s Center for Regenerative Medicine and Skeletal Development, are attempting to understand the signals and conditions that regulate how stem cells differentiate into articular chondrocytes – which make up the unique type of cartilage present at the surface of joints.

Research published in the Journal of Cellular Physiology in April details how Dealy and her colleague, Dr. Robert Kosher, a former professor at the Health Center, successfully developed a methodology to direct “substantially uniform and progressive in vitro differentiation of human embryonic stem cells (hESC) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) into the chondrogenic lineage.”

Friday, April 11, 2008

Stem Cells Offer Cartilage Repair Hope For Arthritis Sufferers

Source: Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
Date: April 11, 2008

Summary:

Research being presented today at the UK National Stem Cell Network Annual Science Meeting in Edinburgh could offer hope that bone stem cells may be harnessed to repair the damaged cartilage that is one of the main symptoms of osteoarthritis. Scientists at Cardiff University have successfully identified stem cells within articular cartilage of adults, which although it cannot become any cell in the body like full stem cells, has the ability to derive into chondrocytes - the cells that make up the body’s cartilage – in high enough numbers to make treatment a realistic possibility. The team have even been able to identify the cells in people over 75 years of age.