Stem-cell pioneer banks on future therapies - Japanese researcher plans cache of induced stem...

Nature News ^ | 07 August 2012 | David Cyranoski

[neverdem]

Japanese researcher plans cache of induced stem cells to supply clinical trials.

Progress toward stem-cell therapies has been frustratingly slow, delayed by research challenges, ethical and legal barriers and corporate jitters. Now, stem-cell pioneer Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan plans to jump-start the field by building up a bank of stem cells for therapeutic use. The bank would store dozens of lines of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, putting Japan in an unfamiliar position: at the forefront of efforts to introduce a pioneering biomedical technology.

A long-held dream of Yamanaka’s, the iPS Cell Stock project received a boost last month, when a Japanese health-ministry committee decided to allow the creation of cell lines from the thousands of samples of fetal umbilical-cord blood held around the country. Yamanaka’s plan to store the cells for use in medicine is “a bold move”, says George Daley, a stem-cell biologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. But some researchers question whether iPS cells are ready for the clinic.

Yamanaka was the first researcher to show, in 2006, that mature mouse skin cells could be prodded into reverting to stem cells1 capable of forming all bodily tissues. The experiment, which he repeated2 with human cells in 2007, could bypass ethical issues associated with stem cells derived from embryos, and the cells could be tailor-made to match each patient, thereby avoiding rejection by the immune system.

Japan is pumping tens of millions of dollars every year into eight long-term projects to translate iPS cell therapies to the clinic, including a US$2.5-million-per-year effort to relieve Parkinson’s disease at Kyoto University’s Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA), which Yamanaka directs. That programme is at least three years away from clinical trials. The first human clinical trials using iPS cells, an effort to repair...

[neverdem]

Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS is a keyword, IIRC) didn't find much genomic difference between the Japanese and the Han Chinese.

[neverdem]

NEW SMART DRUG TO BEAT CRIPPLING PAIN OF ARTHRITIS

FReepmail me if you want on or off my combined microbiology/immunology and/or stem cell ping list.

[B4Ranch]

"I have literally seen tens of thousands of people who have had a regrowth of cartilage, ligaments, tendons, connective tissue, bone foundation, bone matrix. Doesn't matter if they are 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, I've seen people 97 years old regrow cartilage and bone, even if they had bone to bone arthritis. If there's blood supply to that joint and that bone, they will regrow bone and cartilage."

Arthritis

[neverdem]

Thanks for the link.