Stem Cell: Newsletter:

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Newsletter:

View this newletter online to get all the info!

Dear manoj kumar valluru,

Last week 5 patents of relevance to the area of stem cells were issued.

1. # 7,305,064 (Patent Spotlight), teaches how to use X-rays to inhibit scarring and augment stem cell efficacy for brain and spinal cord injury.

2. # 7,304,129 covers peptides that stimulate the FGF-2 receptor and induce neurite outgrowth.

3. # 7,303,769 claims methods of purifying heterogenous populations of mesenchymal stem cells from Dexter cultures.

4. # 7,304,204 covers cloning by nuclear transfer using donor nuclei in G1 phase.

5. # 7,303,912 discloses a cell culture capable of differentiating into neurons, said cell culture containing cells being GFAP and nestin positive.

In The News

Hematopoietic Stem Cells Patrolling The Body for Danger

Wednesday December 5th, 2007 @ 11:20:16 EST

Boston, MA -

A potentially new role for stem cells has been described. In most cases, various stem cells such as mesenchymal stem cells as well as hematopoietic stem cells possess immune suppressive characteristics. In a recent publication (Massberg et al. Immunosurveillance by Hematopoietic Progenitor Cells Trafficking through Blood, Lymph, and Peripheral Tissues. Cell. 2007 Nov 30;131:994-1008) it was demonstrated that hematopoietic stem cells may actually comprise an arm of the immune system.

The researchers found that hematopoietic stem cells may be extracted from lymphatic tissue, and that the cells leave the bone marrow, circulate in the lymph nodes and then go back into the bone marrow.

Interestingly, these hematopoietic stem cells have toll like receptors on them and upon activation they differentiate into dendritic cells. This paper is very interesting since toll like receptor activation has been demonstrated to make mesenchymal stem cells lose immune suppressive properties

Ask a question OR leave your comments.

This Week's Patent Spotlight

Methods for assisting recovery of damaged brain and spinal cord using arrays of X-Ray microplanar beams

Patent Number: 7,305,064

Assignee | Inventor

It has always been the belief of StemCellPatents.com that the future of stem cell therapeutics is not only in the development and use of stem cell types, but the integration of stem cells with other modalities to attain synergy. For example, while FDA/EMEA development of cellular product candidates takes years and hundreds of millions of dollars, the same, or very similar stem cell products are already commercialized clinically by off-shore institutions. Clinical results are impressive in some situations, however, numerous limitations still are found. Accordingly, we believe that the “cutting edge" of stem cell therapeutics will be mixing and matching therapeutic modalities with stem cells to attain synergies.

The current invention does exactly that. The invention covers the use of X-rays administered as "at least one array of microbeams comprising at least two parallel, spatially distinct microbeams” to deliver a therapeutic dose to injured spinal cord or brain tissue, with the idea that these X-rays will accelerate the healing of the microvasculature and glia at the injury site, as well as inhibit scarring.

Although it appears that no examples were provided in the patent, the author published a paper (Dilmanian et al. Tissue-sparing effect of x-ray microplanar beams particularly in the CNS: is a bystander effect involved? Exp Hematol. 2007 Apr;35:69-77) describing that such microplanar beams may elicit cytokine production which could have therapeutic effects.

Ask a question OR leave your comments.

LATEST JOBS