StemCellWorx Articles

“I know it’s a miracle,” Mason Thomas said of the stem cell implant surgery that healed his wife Helen’s foot and saved it from amputation. The couple live in Hastings.

New stem cell procedure helps Hastings woman regain use of leg, beat peripheral arterial disease. As reported by John Agar | The Grand Rapids Press February 20, 2010, 7:00AM

HASTINGS — Suffering a painful circulation problem in her leg, Helen Thomas rarely left her home. On most days, the 80-year-old was so wiped out by painkillers she didn’t want to get up.

Amputation looked to be her only option.

Then her physician, Kenneth Merriman of Hastings, started asking around at a medical conference in late 2008. He spoke with Dr. Randall Franz. Franz was studying a new procedure using a patient’s own stem cells, the biological building blocks with potential to develop into different cell types. The stem cells are injected into the leg, causing new blood vessels to grow.

A few days later, Thomas left for Grant Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio. “It was a miracle,” she said this week. “I’m walking, and I wouldn’t be walking without the stem cells. I have my leg.” Therein lies the hope for millions of people.

Thomas suffered peripheral arterial disease, or PAD, which affects the lower limbs of 10 million Americans. Untreated, it can lead to strokes, amputations and death. “They saved my life. I told them they saved my life,” Thomas said. She was part of the Ohio study conducted by Franz, Dr. Kaushal Shah and Dr. Thomas Hankins. Of 16 patients who underwent the procedure, 13 avoided major amputations, the researchers said.

 “This technique sheds new light on stem-cell treatment and has the potential to become the gold standard for PAD,” Hankins said. Franz, medical director of Grant Vascular and Vein Center, said: “We were pleasantly surprised by our results. … This is cutting-edge technology that could benefit millions of Americans.” The study was published in the December issue of “The Journal of Vascular Surgery.”

The procedure involves extraction of specialized stem cells from a patient’s hip and putting them into arteries and muscles where blood flow is blocked, the hospital said. “We actually grew new collateral blood vessels that restored circulation,” Franz said. Merriman, who has treated Thomas’ family for decades, said the procedure uses “high-tech and low-tech components” to treat patients such as Thomas, who had virtually no blood flow in the lower part of her leg.

 A diabetic who also has had several heat bypass surgeries, Thomas’ troubles started with an ingrown toenail. Once removed, the site would not heal and the toe eventually was removed. “The next step was amputation of the leg,” Merriman said. After the treatment, Merriman noticed significant improvement in three weeks. While the procedure gives hope to many who face severe pain and amputation, he doubted it would be covered by insurance for some time. “It’s a hassle if you’re not in a program, getting it paid for, in a study. I think this is one of the most important things I’ve seen for years.”

Thomas’ daughter, Mary Burghdoff, credits Merriman’s initiative and the study’s doctors for her mother’s newfound health. “Dr. Merriman, he’s just tickled pink because it just worked so well. He specifically went to this conference and asked if anybody knew anything, or had any programs going on. (Franz) happened to be there.” She drove her mother to Ohio the next week. “Dr. Franz said, ‘I think I can help you.

Now Thomas and her husband, Mason, can visit their six children, along with grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and hit the casinos, one of her favorite pastimes.  “It’s just life-changing,” her daughter said.

FACT SHEET What is PAD? Here’s a look at peripheral arterial disease and a promising new treatment. Cases: 10 million people in the U.S. Causes: Most commonly fatty deposits in arteries, causing poor blood circulation. Risk factors: Smoking, diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and age, particularly after 50, and family history of PAD, heart disease or stroke. Affects: Extremities, usually legs, causing pain for about one in 10. Impact: Severe cases lead to amputation or death. How stem-cells help: These “master cells” can divide and form different cells, including blood, brain, muscle and bone. Why PAD?: Treatments show the cells can cause new blood vessels to grow. Source: MayoClinic.com; Grant Medical Center, Columbus, Ohio. http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2010/02/new_stem_cell_procedure_helps.html

19 February 2010

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In a surprise result that can help in the understanding of both aging and cancer, researchers working with an engineered type of stem cell said they reversed the aging process in a rare genetic disease.

The team at Children’s Hospital Boston and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute were working with a new type of cell called induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells, which closely resemble embryonic stem cells but are made from ordinary skin cells.

In this case, they wanted to study a rare, inherited premature aging disorder called dyskeratosis congenita. The blood marrow disorder resembles the better-known aging disease progeria and causes premature graying, warped fingernails and other symptoms as well as a high risk of cancer.

It is very rare and normally diagnosed between the ages of 10 and 30. About half of patients have bone marrow failure, which means their bone marrow stops making blood and immune cells properly.

One of the benefits of stem cells and iPS cells is that researchers can make them from a person with a disease and study that disease in the lab. Harvard’s Dr. George Daley and colleagues were making iPS cells from dyskeratosis congenita patients to do this.

But, reporting in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature, they said the process of making the iPS cells appeared to reverse one of the key symptoms of the disease in the cells.

In this disease, the cells lose telomerase, an enzyme that helps maintain the telomeres. These are the little caps on the ends of the chromosomes that carry the DNA.

When telomeres unwind, a cell ages. This leads to disease and death.

BECOMING IMMORTAL

But in cancer, telomerase appears to help tumor cells become immortal and replicate out of control. Some experimental cancer drugs target telomerase.

A gene called TERC helps restore the telomeres and Daley’s team said it may be that tumor cells make use of TERC to become immortal.

In making the iPS cells and getting them to grow in the lab, Daley’s team discovered they had three times as much TERC as the diseased cells they were made from.

Simply turning the skin cells into iPS cells helped restore their damaged telomeres, Daley’s team reported. This in theory stops a major component of the aging process as well.

“We’re not saying we’ve found the fountain of youth, but the process of creating iPS cells recapitulates some of the biology that our species uses to rejuvenate itself in each generation,” Daley’s colleague Suneet Agarwal said in a statement.

Treatments that restore TERC may help dyskeratosis congenita patients, they said.

“This paper illustrates how reprogramming a patient’s skin cells into stem cells can teach us surprising lessons about human disease,” Daley added in a statement.

Agarwal says the team is now seeking funding to study this more.

Patients with dyskeratosis congenita often die when they get bone marrow transplants, Agarwal said.

“For these patients, and for patients with other bone marrow failure syndromes, it would be ideal to give them a gentler stem cell transplant from their own cells,” he said.