Archive for May, 2008

Liver Diseases

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

Liver failure
Hepatitis
Cirrhosis

Liver disease is a group of conditions of various origins that cause the liver to stop functioning properly. It can be caused by infections, excess alcohol intake, autoimmune inflammation, certain medications, or inherited metabolic disorders of iron and copper.

Patients with chronic liver disease develop cirrhosis; an irreversible scarring of the gland, which results in progressive liver failure and an increased risk for complications such as bleeding of the esophagus, retention of fluid and toxins in the body, and disorders caused by blood coagulation.

Liver cirrhosis can progress towards brain intoxication (hepatic encephalopathy) and other life threatening conditions. To date, only a liver transplant could save the life of patients affected by this disease.
However, recent tests on animals demonstrate that stem cells from bone marrow or the umbilical cord can help rescue liver failure and contribute to liver regeneration.

Bone marrow derived adult liver stem cells have the capacity to regenerate the liver, offering a potential alternative treatment to a liver transplant.

Clinical trials using autologous stem cells for patients diagnosed with severe liver disease have had encouraging results. Research shows that it is safe to mobilize stem cells from the blood marrow into the peripheral blood by collecting and re-infusing the stem cells after in vitro expansion.

For some conditions, especially autoimmune liver diseases, a combination of both peripheral blood stem cells and umbilical cord blood stem cells might be preferred as it increases the efficacy of the treatment to “reset” the immune system at a more normal level.

Cell therapy is combined with a holistic comprehensive approach. The entire treatment takes five days to complete and includes lifestyle and diet recommendations as well as personalized natural supplement prescriptions for immune system support.

Patients are followed up at regular intervals, post stem cell therapy to monitor their progress.

Cancers

Friday, May 16th, 2008
Hematological cancers (blood cancers)
Lung cancer
Breast cancer
Ovarian cancer
Neuroblastoma
Other solid tumor cancers

Cancer refers to a group of diseases characterized by an abnormal cell growth at the initial disease location that may spread to other locations in the body. Approximately 560,000 deaths in the United States were attributed to cancer in 2008.

Scientific evidence shows that one third of all cancers are related to lifestyle and environmental risk factors such as smoking, obesity, nutrition, infections, and exposure to toxins.

The use of stem cell therapy, in combination with classical therapeutic modalities such as surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, is currently being developed for the treatment of several types of cancers.

Blood stem cell transplantation is now considered a viable alternative for patients suffering from blood cancers, especially when a donor cannot be found for allogenous (from another person) bone marrow transplant.

Studies in China have shown positive results in various hematological diseases, and the survival rate of patients treated with their own peripheral blood stem cells was better than those who received the conventional therapies alone. This was especially evident for diseases such as non-Hodgkin lymphoma, acute myeloid leukemia and multiple myeloma. The conclusion of these studies is that our own peripheral blood stem cells collected through apheresis and injected back into the body after special treatment could improve the prognosis of malignant hematological diseases.

Similar results have been found in certain types of solid tumor cancers. Autologous peripheral stem cell transplantation appears to be a promising therapeutic modality for patients suffering from lung cancer, neuroblastoma (cancer of immature nerves that occurs in children), breast and ovarian cancer.

Cellulogix offers stem cell treatment for cancer with the collection of stem cells in peripheral blood through apheresis, a process that includes a reconditioning of cells and re-injection of the cells into the venous system.

Since behavioral and environmental factors play an important role in the development of cancer cells, cell therapy is combined with a holistic and comprehensive approach of the disease process. The entire treatment takes five days to complete and includes lifestyle and diet recommendations as well as personalized natural supplement prescriptions for overall health and immune system defense.

Follow-up and support is offered to all post stem cell treatment patients.

Crohn’s Disease

Friday, May 16th, 2008

Crohn’s disease is an inflammatory bowel disease caused by an abnormality in the functioning of the immune system and the accumulation of white blood cells in the intestinal tract. As a result auto-antibodies attack the lining of the gut resulting in chronic inflammation, swelling, bleeding. Patients complain of loss of appetite, malnutrition and weight loss, diarrhea, abdominal cramps, mucus and blood in the stool leading to anemia. The disease evolves overtime with symptom-free periods of remission alternating with episodes of recurrence of acute symptoms and relapses. This changing of pattern varies in degree from patient to patient. Estimates of 500,000 Americans are diagnosed with Crohn’s disease.

The goals of the treatment are to decrease the inflammatory process, control the symptoms and correct the nutritional deficiencies. Until now, with the use of specific restricted diets, combined with strong drugs that aim at suppressing the body immune function, physicians were only able to control the disease and limit the number and the intensity of the relapses; this was certainly not seen as potential cure.

Recent studies shows that stem cell therapy may play an important role in the future for the treatment of Crohn’s disease by offering a way to reset the immune system to a more normal function, thus decreasing the inflammatory process in the bowel and repairing and replacing damaged intestinal linings.  Preliminary results show that both allogenic stem cells (from umbilical cord) and autologous stem cells extracted from the patient’s own peripheral blood or bone marrow could be effective treatment for refractory Crohns’ disease.

Cellulogix offers cell therapy for Crohn’s disease that includes both umbilical cord blood stem cell treatment and/ or stem cell aphaeresis with the use of your own stem cells collected from your peripheral blood.

In addition, our cell therapy is combined with a holistic comprehensive approach of the disease process. The entire treatment takes five days to complete. Our program includes lifestyle and diet recommendations as well as personalized natural supplements prescription for gastrointestinal tract repair and immune system support.

Patients are followed up at regular intervals, post stem cell therapy to monitor their progress.

Scientists produce stem cells from ordinary mouse skin cells

Friday, May 2nd, 2008

Researchers in the United States say they have produced a stem cell made from ordinary mouse skin cells which they have coaxed into becoming three different types of heart and blood cells in mice.

The heart and blood cells were made from so-called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells which are transformed skin cells that mimic the powers of embryonic stem cells.

They say their results bring the possibility of using the cells to treat heart disease in humans closer.

The team from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) were able to make the mouse iPS cells differentiate, or mature, into cardiomyocytes – vascular smooth muscle cells, the specialized muscle cells lining the blood vessel walls and hematopoietic or blood-forming cells; these are the cardiac muscle cells that contract with the beating heart.

The most powerful kinds of stem cells are embryonic stem cells because they are potentially able generate any type of tissue.

However as they require the use of an embryo or cloning technology, they are difficult to make and also raise ethical issues for many people.

As a result in many countries funding for research into embryo or cloning technology is limited.

Recently a number of research teams have reported finding some genes which can transform everyday skin cells into iPS cells, which in turn look and act like embryonic stem cells and last year scientists in the U.S. and Japan reported successfully reprogramming human skin cells to become iPS cells.

Dr. W. Robb MacLellan, an associate professor of cardiology and physiology at UCLA says the iPS cells could prove a valuable cell source for applications in regenerative medicine.

Dr. MacLellan says the next step is to see if human iPS cells can develop into immature heart cells, and then into cardiovascular and blood cells for use in patients.

The research is published in the journal Stem Cells Express.

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