Cord blood donation available at two additional metro hospitals

Beginning today, Menorah Medical Center and Shawnee Mission Medical Center have joined Saint Lukes Hospital's Cord Blood Program and now offer mothers the option to donate their newborn babys umbilical cord blood to help those in need of a stem cell transplant.

According to a news release from Saint Luke's Hospital, umbilical cord blood, like bone marrow, is rich in hematopoietic stem cells, which create all of a persons blood cells. Cord blood cells can be used in the treatment of leukemia, sickle cell anemia and dozens of other diseases. Cord blood stem cells are collected after the birth of a healthy infant and pose no risk to the donating mother or baby.

Through this partnership, our hospitals are helping increase the worlds supply of stem cell-rich umbilical cord blood and helping those who suffer from any one of 80 life-threatening diseases, said Bill Ward, director of the Cord Blood Program for Saint Lukes Hospital of Kansas City.

Prior to today, the Cord Blood Program at Saint Lukes Hospital, the areas only free cord blood donation program, collected and processed donations from the four metro area Saint Lukes hospitals, as well as Overland Park Regional Medical Center.

Since its inception in 2008, the Cord Blood Program at Saint Lukes has received more than 9,000 donations and banked 939 units of cord blood at the St. Louis Cord Blood Bank. Cord blood units are made available to anyone, anywhere in the world, who needs a stem cell transplant.

Cord blood collected from the hospitals is processed and cryopreserved at Saint Lukes before being sent to the St. Louis Cord Blood Bank, which distributes the blood units to hospitals upon request. Donations are made anonymously, and the process is safe, painless, easy and free to families. The cord blood is collected after the baby has delivered, so it does not interfere with the birthing process. The collection does not take place if there is concern for the safety of the mother or newborn.

For more information about Saint Lukes Cord Blood Program, click here.

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Cord blood donation available at two additional metro hospitals

Most Cosmetic Procedures Based on Stem Cells Are Bogus, Experts Say

MONDAY, Aug. 4, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Could stem cell injections help rejuvenate your face or body? Probably not, plastic surgery experts say, but ads for these types of bogus procedures abound on the Internet.

"Stem cells offer tremendous potential, but the marketplace is saturated with unsubstantiated and sometimes fraudulent claims that may place patients at risk," a team led by Dr. Michael Longaker, of Stanford University Medical Center, wrote in a review published in the August issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

The experts say consumers need to be wary of advertisements promoting the benefits of "minimally invasive, stem cell-based rejuvenation procedures." Claims for stem cell procedures for facelifts, breast augmentation and vaginal rejuvenation are not only unsubstantiated, but also risky, Longaker's team said.

They note that, to date, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved only one cosmetic stem cell procedure designed to treat fine facial wrinkles. And since that single procedure was approved, the product involved has been monitored extensively.

Overall, cosmetic stem cell procedures have not undergone significant scientific scrutiny, the Stanford team said. The risks associated with stem cell and tissue processing have not been closely examined. The effects of aging on stem cells are also not well established, the researchers explained.

To investigate concerning claims being made about cosmetic stem cell procedures, the researchers performed a basic Internet search. They found the most common result was "stem cell facelifts." Most of the procedures used stem cells isolated from fat but did not provide details on the quality of the stem cells.

More than 100 clinical trials are currently evaluating stem cells derived from fat, but few are focusing on cosmetic treatments. The researchers cautioned that the products used in these cosmetic procedures likely involves additional types of cells unless they utilized sophisticated cell-sorting techniques.

Many blood plasma-enriched "platelet protein treatments" are also incorrectly advertised as stem cell therapy, the study's authors noted.

Meanwhile, there is only minimal evidence that cosmetic stem cell procedures have any anti-aging effects, the researchers said. They warn that stem cell facelifts may actually be "lipo-filling" procedures -- fat injections with no prolonged anti-aging effect.

Although stem cells do hold potential for cosmetic procedures in years to come, today's advertising claims for these procedures are going beyond any scientific evidence on safety and effectiveness, the researchers conclude.

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Most Cosmetic Procedures Based on Stem Cells Are Bogus, Experts Say

Stem cell beauty treatments? Be wary, experts say

Could stem cell injections help rejuvenate your face or body? Probably not, plastic surgery experts say, but ads for these types of bogus procedures abound on the Internet.

"Stem cells offer tremendous potential, but the marketplace is saturated with unsubstantiated and sometimes fraudulent claims that may place patients at risk," a team led by Dr. Michael Longaker, of Stanford University Medical Center, wrote in a review published in the August issue ofPlastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

The experts say consumers need to be wary of advertisements promoting the benefits of "minimally invasive, stem cell-based rejuvenation procedures." Claims for stem cell procedures for facelifts, breast augmentation and vaginal rejuvenation are not only unsubstantiated, but also risky, Longaker's team said.

They note that, to date, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved only one cosmetic stem cell procedure designed to treat fine facial wrinkles. And since that single procedure was approved, the product involved has been monitored extensively.

Overall, cosmetic stem cell procedures have not undergone significant scientific scrutiny, the Stanford team said. The risks associated with stem cell and tissue processing have not been closely examined. The effects of aging on stem cells are also not well established, the researchers explained.

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Tummy tucks and facelifts pale in comparison to these surprising surgeries patients request

To investigate concerning claims being made about cosmetic stem cell procedures, the researchers performed a basic Internet search. They found the most common result was "stem cell facelifts." Most of the procedures used stem cells isolated from fat but did not provide details on the quality of the stem cells.

More than 100 clinical trials are currently evaluating stem cells derived from fat, but few are focusing on cosmetic treatments. The researchers cautioned that the products used in these cosmetic procedures likely involves additional types of cells unless they utilized sophisticated cell-sorting techniques.

Many blood plasma-enriched "platelet protein treatments" are also incorrectly advertised as stem cell therapy, the study's authors noted.

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Stem cell beauty treatments? Be wary, experts say

Dramatic Growth of Grafted Stem Cells in Rat Spinal Cord Injuries

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Newswise Building upon previous research, scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System report that neurons derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) and grafted into rats after a spinal cord injury produced cells with tens of thousands of axons extending virtually the entire length of the animals central nervous system.

Writing in the August 7 early online edition of Neuron, lead scientist Paul Lu, PhD, of the UC San Diego Department of Neurosciences and colleagues said the human iPSC-derived axons extended through the white matter of the injury sites, frequently penetrating adjacent gray matter to form synapses with rat neurons. Similarly, rat motor axons pierced the human iPSC grafts to form their own synapses.

The iPSCs used were developed from a healthy 86-year-old human male.

These findings indicate that intrinsic neuronal mechanisms readily overcome the barriers created by a spinal cord injury to extend many axons over very long distances, and that these capabilities persist even in neurons reprogrammed from very aged human cells, said senior author Mark Tuszynski, MD, PhD, professor of Neurosciences and director of the UC San Diego Center for Neural Repair.

For several years, Tuszynski and colleagues have been steadily chipping away at the notion that a spinal cord injury necessarily results in permanent dysfunction and paralysis. Earlier work has shown that grafted stem cells reprogrammed to become neurons can, in fact, form new, functional circuits across an injury site, with the treated animals experiencing some restored ability to move affected limbs. The new findings underscore the potential of iPSC-based therapy and suggest a host of new studies and questions to be asked, such as whether axons can be guided and how will they develop, function and mature over longer periods of time.

While neural stem cell therapies are already advancing to clinical trials, this research raises cautionary notes about moving to human therapy too quickly, said Tuszynski.

The enormous outgrowth of axons to many regions of the spinal cord and even deeply into the brain raises questions of possible harmful side effects if axons are mistargeted. We also need to learn if the new connections formed by axons are stable over time, and if implanted human neural stem cells are maturing on a human time frame months to years or more rapidly. If maturity is reached on a human time frame, it could take months to years to observe functional benefits or problems in human clinical trials.

In the latest work, Lu, Tuszynski and colleagues converted skin cells from a healthy 86-year-old man into iPSCs, which possess the ability to become almost any kind of cell. The iPSCs were then reprogrammed to become neurons in collaboration with the laboratory of Larry Goldstein, PhD, director of the UC San Diego Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center. The new human neurons were subsequently embedded in a matrix containing growth factors and grafted into two-week-old spinal cord injuries in rats.

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Dramatic Growth of Grafted Stem Cells in Rat Spinal Cord Injuries