Futurist Transhuman News Blog

The SF Business Times published an article highlighting CBR’s Wendy Grant as the founder of the nation’s first cord blood bank and as the creator of an industry.

(Bloomberg) — Umbilical cord blood, rich in stem cells, may provide raw material to repair the hearts of thousands of babies born each year with defective heart valves, according to researchers.

Children born with heart defects could someday get new valves using stem cells from their own umbilical cord blood.

The New York Times reports today that European physicians have successfully transplanted a human windpipe using the recipient’s own bone marrow stem cells to reline a donor trachea, thus preventing its rejection by her immune system. Using a new technique developed in Milan, physicians incubated stem cells removed from the patient’s bone marrow, growing them into “a large population” which was then used to “seed” the donated windpipe. This is yet another interesting use of autologous stem cells, demonstrating their quickening pace of use in regenerative medicine.

Includes the recent issue of Stem Cells Under the Microscope which covers cord blood stem cells in the use of congenital heart defect.

WASHINGTON, Jan 23 (Reuters) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has cleared the way for the first trial to see if human embryonic stem cells can treat people safely, a company involved in the controversial research on Friday. Geron Corp (GERN.O: Quote, Profile, Research), a California biotechnology company, said it plans a clinical trial to try to use the stem cells to regrow nerve tissue in patients with crushed, but not severed, spinal cords.

President Barak Obama Reverses Bush’s Stem Cell Policies

This week the Obama administration has given embryonic stem cell researchers what they’ve been seeking: the potential to receive funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Here’s the irony: now that the funding restrictions are lifted, embryonic stem cells may not be the primary focus of stem cell research anyway.

Autologous use of stem cells (in this case, from bone marrow) show promising results and is noteworthy because the treatment is cheaper, safer and less invasive than other alternatives (angioplasty or bypass) for peripheral artery disease. Medicare is said to be looking into the treatment.

This feature story highlights the many positive reasons a local family decided to bank with CBR

Federal bill that directs the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to conduct an education campaign on cord blood stem cells so that every pregnant woman can make a more informed decision about cord blood banking.

The article highlights the frequency of stroke in children and calls attention to the potential consequences of neurological deficit. The story reinforces the significance of the research being conducted at Duke University using a childs own cord stem cells to help heal the damage caused by stroke. Chloe Levine is one example of a child who has experienced positive changes since her infusion.

Women are in as much danger when it comes to heart disease as men, although a full half of all American women don’t know that fact. TheraVitae, creators of VesCell for Heart Disease adult stem cell therapy, offers these women health heart attacks facts to help make sense of the very real heart failure epidemic that affects women, too.

Learn more health facts on the heart, such as the fact that groundbreaking biotechnology now uses adult stem cells for heart repair, known as VesCell.

VesCell adult stem cell treatment is a simple, safe procedure, starting with the patient giving a small amount of blood, which is then treated and re-injected back into his/her body to repair damage from heart disease or peripheral artery disease.

Rest pain in one’s leg is one of the symptoms of peripheral artery disease (PAD), a serious blockage of circulation that can lead to the loss of limb often related to diabetes. A treatment known as VesCell PAD uses the adult patient’s own stem cells to treat the limb suffering the effects of PAD. This painless stem cell therapy was chosen by a middle-aged American diabetic woman who traveled to Thailand in the summer of 2008 in the hopes of avoiding amputation.

The groundbreaking adult stem cell treatment, called VesCell, offers relief and a return to active living for patients with coronary artery disease, as well as other conditions of heart failure and peripheral artery disease.

The United States, and indeed other nations, are experienced an epidemic of heart failure. Cardiovascular disease claims about as many lives annually as accidents, cancer, diabetes and chronic lower respiratory diseases combined. Patients can gain significant healing from heart failure with the VesCell adult stem cell treatment for Heart Disease

Medical research indicates that stunned or dying tissue can be awakened, or revascularized, by the injection of adult stem cells into your heart, such as is the case with VesCell adult stem cell therapy.

VesCell for Heart Disease and VesCell for PAD are adult stem cell therapies using the patient’s own stem cells for treatment of various kinds of heart disease as well as for peripheral artery disease.