Can I rebuild /replace my smoking damaged alveoli ?
I smoked for decades, is there anything I can do to recreate, rebuild or regenerate my damaged alveoli ? one Emphysema sufferer
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Can I rebuild /replace my smoking damaged alveoli ?
I smoked for decades, is there anything I can do to recreate, rebuild or regenerate my damaged alveoli ? one Emphysema sufferer
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
$6.4 million to the Lung Repair and Regeneration Consortium at Duke University
The DCRI’s Scott Palmer to oversee the Lung Repair and Regeneration Consortium
—The Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI) and the Duke Translational Research Institute (DTRI) were recently awarded a five-year, $6.4 million grant to develop and support the Lung Repair and Regeneration Consortium (LRRC). Scott Palmer, MD, MHS, director of the DCRI’s Pulmonary Research program is leading the project with support from DTRI Chief Operating Officer Victoria Christian.
The DCRI and DTRI will serve together as the administrative coordinating center, working closely with six research centers that make up the consortium. Awarded under separate grants, the research centers are located across the United States, including a center headed by Drs. Brigid Hogan and Barry Stripp from Duke and Dr. Scott Randell from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) created the LRRC to address the growing burden of lung disease and its importance in public health. According to the National Institutes of Health, respiratory disease is now the third leading cause of death in the United States, and for many lung conditions there are no effective treatments. Researchers in the consortium will focus on developing new regenerative and restorative therapies to reverse the debilitating effects of severe lung conditions such as emphysema, cystic fibrosis, and pulmonary fibrosis.
The consortium includes experts in numerous fields, including:
- Developmental biology
- Stem cell biology
- Pulmonary medicine
- Lung injury
- Genomics
- Nanotechnology
- Bioengineering
The consortium website will be available sometime in 2012.
Please e-mail lrrc@duke.edu for more information.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Regenerative medicine for lung disease gets some funding
Regenerative medicine for lung disease focus of $2.5 million Penn grant
A study exploring lung repair and tissue regeneration to fight lung diseases by a team at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia has received a $2.5 million grant.
The grant was awarded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s Lung Repair and Regeneration Consortium to six institutions, including Penn, according to a statement on Penn Medicine’s website. The grant money will be distributed over a five-year period.
Lung disease is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Cases of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are rising. Both diseases are thought to involve a chronic injury-repair cycle that leads to the eventual breakdown of normal airway structure and function, according to the statement.
Penn’s research team will be led by Edward Morrissey, a professor of cell and developmental biology and director of the Penn Institute for Regenerative Medicine. It will seek to identify and characterize cell types that affect lung repair and regeneration, according to the statement. It will also look at developing new therapies to help patients with asthma and other airway diseases.
How smoking causes 'destructive' emphysema
How smoking causes 'destructive' emphysema
Exposure to smoking activates genes and portions of the immune system, causing inflammation that triggers life-shortening emphysema, a new study has revealed.
The scientists, including two from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, described the track the toxic smoke takes through the tissues and how they accomplish their destructive work.
"It's like walking into a crime scene," said Dr. Farrah Kheradmand, professor of medicine and immunology at BCM and a senior author of the report.
In their current work, the scientists took cells present in the "crime scene" apart, piece by piece to elucidate what occurred when, and how.
It is a complicated story that took more than four years for her, her co-senior author Dr. David Corry and members of their laboratories and colleagues in the Dan L. Duncan Cancer Center at BCM to unravel, she said.
"Previously, emphysema was thought to be a non-specific injurious response to long-term smoke exposure," she said.
"These studies show for the first time that emphysema is caused by a specific immune response induced by smoke."It is a combination of little genes affected by an epigenetic factor."
Epigenetics are factors that affect the way genes are expressed after DNA forms. Cigarette smoke is an environmental epigenetic factor.
"If you have enough genes affected by epigenetic factors strung together, it can tip you over into lung damage and emphysema. The inflammation that drives emphysema could also drive cancer development, a testable hypothesis that we have begun to pursue," said Kheradmand.
This study showed that the cigarette recruited antigen-presenting cells (cells that orchestrate the immune system's response to antigens) as co-conspirators in the lung-destroying crime, using specific genes that regulate proteins in their deadly role.
To uncover the cause of tobacco- induced emphysema, they studied mice exposed to conditions that closely simulated how humans smoke.
These animals developed the lung disease in three to four months. Certain inflammatory cells and genes proving crucial to the process, she asserted.
When they analyzed "gene chips" to screen the disease-causing antigen-presenting cells recovered from lungs with emphysema, they uncovered the gene for osteopontin, which promotes initiation of the inflammatory cascade that damages lungs.
Kheradmand added that mice that lacked this gene were resistant to emphysema.
The study has been published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. (ANI)
see the actual article about:smoking causes destructive emphysema
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Was the CBS 60 Minutes special on stem cells wrong?
Was the CBS 60 Minutes special on stem cells wrong?
Local Group Says Stem Cell Regeneration Worked For Themposted January 16, 2012
The CBS 60 Minutes broadcast on Sunday, Jan. 8, exposed shysters selling dead stem cells for $5,000, who falsely promised cures with these stem cells, but members of a local group said stem cell regeneration has worked for them.
“Unfortunately 60 Minutes failed to report the bigger exciting news on stem cells,” said Chattanooga resident Mary Alice Crápo, a member of adultstemcellfoundation.org and board member of 4CHEO.org, the Complimentary Health Educational Organization in Chattanooga.
She said, “The 60 Minutes broadcast lead viewers to believe that all stem cell therapy is fraud. What the public needs to know is that there are at least three natural products available that enable adults to increase their own adult stem cells.”
She said on July 30, 2011, she began adult stem cell enhancement which meant taking four capsules every morning. “In five weeks, it was obvious I no longer would need a cornea transplant. Dr. Izak Wessels, my eye surgeon, was impressed about the improvement of my vision especially my chronic dry eye in five weeks on adult stem cell stimulation. Five months later both of my eyes that suffered with chronic dry eye are producing tears off the top of the chart.”
She said Dan Robinson in Texas fell 30 feet 20 years ago. He states, “My entire body has regenerated in six months on a stem cell enhancement. I want to shout it to the mountain tops. After 22 years of suffering, I am 90 percent pain free. This year I can walk without stumbling and have improved from head to toe.”
Mrs. Crapo said, "So many people are experiencing major health rejuvenation with adult stem cell stimulation. The other side of the CBS 60 Minutes story needs to be told since it is an established medical fact that stem cells can rebuild a kidney, heart, liver, brain, joint, lung, vision and can basically rebuild any soft tissue in the body.
"The exciting news is that expensive costly surgeries to implant these stem cells aren’t necessary if you provide the ingredients or tools the body needs to make these amazing cells naturally.
There will be a meeting Monday, Jan. 23, at 6:30 p.m. at the Glass Building attached to the Village Market in Collegedale. On hand will be "first-person accounts from those who have already experienced amazing results with stem cell enhancement," she said.
Allan Fontenot from Cleveland, Tn., will be there to share his story. She said, "Allan’s eyes did not track together from birth until this year. Find out how adult stem cells changed his life and there will be others there as well sharing their stories."
see the adult stem cell foundation org website
Local Group Says Stem Cell Regeneration Worked For Themposted January 16, 2012
The CBS 60 Minutes broadcast on Sunday, Jan. 8, exposed shysters selling dead stem cells for $5,000, who falsely promised cures with these stem cells, but members of a local group said stem cell regeneration has worked for them.
“Unfortunately 60 Minutes failed to report the bigger exciting news on stem cells,” said Chattanooga resident Mary Alice Crápo, a member of adultstemcellfoundation.org and board member of 4CHEO.org, the Complimentary Health Educational Organization in Chattanooga.
She said, “The 60 Minutes broadcast lead viewers to believe that all stem cell therapy is fraud. What the public needs to know is that there are at least three natural products available that enable adults to increase their own adult stem cells.”
She said on July 30, 2011, she began adult stem cell enhancement which meant taking four capsules every morning. “In five weeks, it was obvious I no longer would need a cornea transplant. Dr. Izak Wessels, my eye surgeon, was impressed about the improvement of my vision especially my chronic dry eye in five weeks on adult stem cell stimulation. Five months later both of my eyes that suffered with chronic dry eye are producing tears off the top of the chart.”
She said Dan Robinson in Texas fell 30 feet 20 years ago. He states, “My entire body has regenerated in six months on a stem cell enhancement. I want to shout it to the mountain tops. After 22 years of suffering, I am 90 percent pain free. This year I can walk without stumbling and have improved from head to toe.”
Mrs. Crapo said, "So many people are experiencing major health rejuvenation with adult stem cell stimulation. The other side of the CBS 60 Minutes story needs to be told since it is an established medical fact that stem cells can rebuild a kidney, heart, liver, brain, joint, lung, vision and can basically rebuild any soft tissue in the body.
"The exciting news is that expensive costly surgeries to implant these stem cells aren’t necessary if you provide the ingredients or tools the body needs to make these amazing cells naturally.
There will be a meeting Monday, Jan. 23, at 6:30 p.m. at the Glass Building attached to the Village Market in Collegedale. On hand will be "first-person accounts from those who have already experienced amazing results with stem cell enhancement," she said.
Allan Fontenot from Cleveland, Tn., will be there to share his story. She said, "Allan’s eyes did not track together from birth until this year. Find out how adult stem cells changed his life and there will be others there as well sharing their stories."
see the adult stem cell foundation org website
Use of plastics for the production of human organs in a laboratory
The next big boom area for plastics in the medical market could be regenerative medicine, the production of human organs in a laboratory.
Harvard Bioscience, a leader in the field, estimates that the total revenue opportunity for disposables used in organ transplants is $728 million per year. That's based on an estimated global transplant market of
145,590 and a disposable cost per procedure of $5,000.
Until very recently, this concept was in the realm of science fiction. But scientists at leading institutions such as Wake Forest University, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the University of South Carolina and Cornell have been making steady progress growing a person's own stem cells on a synthetic structure, often bioresorbable, using bioreactors. Scaffolds are often made on bioprinters, which print out polymers in three-dimensional forms dictated by a CAD file.
Harvard Bioscience (Holliston, MA) estimates that the number of bioreactors needed for annual production is 26,212 at a unit price of $150,000. The company's forecasts imply that each bioreactor can make five or six human solid organs per year.
Dr. Harald Ott of MGH used a Harvard Apparatus lung bioreactor for the world's first regeneration and transplantation of a lung in a rat. Significant work on development of synthetic lungs has also been taking place at Draper Lab, Case Western Reserve University, and elsewhere.
In an important breakthrough, artificial organs were transplanted into human patients in Sweden last year.
The tracheas in both procedures were grown in Harvard Bioscience's bioreactors that were produced in its regenerative medicine device business.
The second operation was performed Nov. 17 on Christopher Lyles, a 30-year-old U.S. citizen, at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, by Paolo Macchiarini of Karolinska University Hospital, who led an
international team. Nanofiber Solutions (Columbus, OH) designed and built the tracheal scaffold, and Harvard Bioscience produced a specifically designed bioreactor used to seed the scaffold with the patient's own stem cells.
The cells were grown on the scaffold inside the bioreactor for two days before transplantation into the patient. Because the cells used to regenerate the trachea were the patient's own, there has been no rejection of the transplant, and the patient is not taking immunosuppressive drugs.
David Green, president of Harvard Bioscience, commented: "We would like to congratulate Dr. Macchiarini and his team for successfully completing the world's second synthetic trachea transplant. This proves that the procedure is not a 'one off' but can be repeated. This is a significant achievement for regenerative medicine."
Harvard Bioscience's strategy in regenerative medicine is to create devices, not discover pharmaceuticals.
The types of devices that require plastics include:
Nanofiber Solutions scaffolds are engineered to mimic cellular-scale structures. Plastics used include polycaprolactone nanofibers averaging less than a micron in diameter. The fiber dimensions and specific physical properties are optimized to produce ideal synthetic in vitro models. Nanofiber is an Ohio State University spinoff established in 2009.
see the orginal article on replacement human parts
Harvard Bioscience, a leader in the field, estimates that the total revenue opportunity for disposables used in organ transplants is $728 million per year. That's based on an estimated global transplant market of
 |
| This trachea, produced in a bioreactor, is now providing fresh air for a 30-year-old American cancer survivor. |
145,590 and a disposable cost per procedure of $5,000.
Until very recently, this concept was in the realm of science fiction. But scientists at leading institutions such as Wake Forest University, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the University of South Carolina and Cornell have been making steady progress growing a person's own stem cells on a synthetic structure, often bioresorbable, using bioreactors. Scaffolds are often made on bioprinters, which print out polymers in three-dimensional forms dictated by a CAD file.
Harvard Bioscience (Holliston, MA) estimates that the number of bioreactors needed for annual production is 26,212 at a unit price of $150,000. The company's forecasts imply that each bioreactor can make five or six human solid organs per year.
Dr. Harald Ott of MGH used a Harvard Apparatus lung bioreactor for the world's first regeneration and transplantation of a lung in a rat. Significant work on development of synthetic lungs has also been taking place at Draper Lab, Case Western Reserve University, and elsewhere.
In an important breakthrough, artificial organs were transplanted into human patients in Sweden last year.
The tracheas in both procedures were grown in Harvard Bioscience's bioreactors that were produced in its regenerative medicine device business.
The second operation was performed Nov. 17 on Christopher Lyles, a 30-year-old U.S. citizen, at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, by Paolo Macchiarini of Karolinska University Hospital, who led an
 |
| Stem cells are injected onto a synthetic structure in a bioreactor. |
international team. Nanofiber Solutions (Columbus, OH) designed and built the tracheal scaffold, and Harvard Bioscience produced a specifically designed bioreactor used to seed the scaffold with the patient's own stem cells.
The cells were grown on the scaffold inside the bioreactor for two days before transplantation into the patient. Because the cells used to regenerate the trachea were the patient's own, there has been no rejection of the transplant, and the patient is not taking immunosuppressive drugs.
David Green, president of Harvard Bioscience, commented: "We would like to congratulate Dr. Macchiarini and his team for successfully completing the world's second synthetic trachea transplant. This proves that the procedure is not a 'one off' but can be repeated. This is a significant achievement for regenerative medicine."
Harvard Bioscience's strategy in regenerative medicine is to create devices, not discover pharmaceuticals.
The types of devices that require plastics include:
- Bioreactors systems,
- Transplant transporters,
- Stem cell delivery systems,
- Nanofiber scaffolds, which can be any shape or size and made from nearly any synthetic or natural polymer, according to Nanofiber.
- Surgical instruments,
- Infusion pumps, and
- Physiological assessment analysis tools.
Nanofiber Solutions scaffolds are engineered to mimic cellular-scale structures. Plastics used include polycaprolactone nanofibers averaging less than a micron in diameter. The fiber dimensions and specific physical properties are optimized to produce ideal synthetic in vitro models. Nanofiber is an Ohio State University spinoff established in 2009.
 |
| One of the disable devices used in regenerative medicine is a transporter. |
see the orginal article on replacement human parts
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