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Stem cells cultured by researchers on a simple contact lens miraculously restored sight to sufferers of blinding corneal disease.

The simple and inexpensive procedure, considered a breakthrough, requires a minimal hospital stay and significantly improves vision within weeks.

University of New South Wales (UNSW) researchers from its School of Medical Sciences harvested stem cells from patients’ own eyes to rehabilitate the damaged cornea.

The stem cells were cultured on a common therapeutic contact lens which was then placed onto the damaged cornea for 10 days, during which the cells were able to re-colonise the damaged eye surface.

While the novel procedure was used to rehabilitate damaged corneas, the researchers say it offers hope to people with a range of blinding eye conditions and could have applications in other organs.

The trial was conducted on three patients; two with extensive corneal damage resulting from multiple surgeries to remove ocular melanomas (a cancer of the eye), and one with the genetic eye condition aniridia.

Other causes of cornea damage can include chemical or thermal burns, bacterial infection and chemotherapy.

“The procedure is totally simple and cheap,” said study author, UNSW’s Nick Di Girolamo. “Unlike other techniques, it requires no foreign human or animal products, only the patient’s own serum, and is completely non-invasive.

“There’s no suturing, there is no major operation: all that’s involved is harvesting a minute amount — less than a millimetre — of tissue from the ocular surface,” Mr. Di Girolamo said.

“If you’re going to be treating these sorts of diseases in third world countries all you need is the surgeon and a lab for cell culture. You don’t need any fancy equipment.”

Because the procedure uses the patient’s own stem cells harvested from their eye, it is ideal for sufferers of unilateral eye disease. However, it also works in patients who have had both eyes damaged, Mr. Di Girolamo said, according to an UNSW release.

“If we can do this procedure in the eye, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work in other major organs such as the skin, which behaves in a very similar way to the cornea,” Mr. Di Girolamo said.

At 19, Kent Klawer had the arthritic left shoulder of an 80-year-old man.

The damage almost forced the Riverside college student to forsake competitive swimming.

Now 23, he’s the beneficiary of a promising surgical procedure called the Graftjacket that saved his shoulder, salvaged his swimming stroke and eased his pain.

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Through tiny incisions into the bone, an orthopedic surgeon covered Klawer’s shoulder socket with transplanted cadaver tissue, its cells removed to prevent rejection. The goal was to allow Klawer’s bone marrow to seep into the graft and eventually regenerate cartilage through his own stem cells.

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That’s exactly what happened, said Klawer’s doctor, Joseph Burns. In fact, he said it was the best outcome he’d ever seen in such a severe case of arthritis. Anecdotal testimonials from Klawer and two biopsies have revealed almost-normal cartilage, Burns said.

“My shoulder is so much better,” said Klawer. He got married, enrolled in a master’s program in counseling at California Baptist University and works as a barista at Starbucks.

“I couldn’t hold my arm up at all,” he said. “We’d go out to eat, the waiter would hand me water, and I’d drop the glass on the table.”

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PIONEERING EFFORT

A swimmer since youth, Klawer’s troubles flared up four years ago when he was an undergraduate at Cal Baptist. “The burning and throbbing in my left shoulder was chronic,” he said.

His pain worsened after traditional arthroscopic surgery in March 2006. That summer he returned home to Santa Clarita and consulted Burns at the Southern California Orthopedic Institute in Van Nuys. A shoulder specialist, he’s considered a pioneer in the use of potentially regenerative material instead of the standard plastic or metal.

After Klawer weighed his options, he agreed that August to the surgery, which his insurance covered.

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Burns vetoed the usual shoulder replacement for Klawer — a metal ball and a thick plastic socket– as a poor option for a young person with advanced arthritis. The inserts work well for people in their 70s and 80s, but eventually wear out, Burns said.

Instead, he turned to the burgeoning field of biologics, using materials that come back to life and is especially widespread in hernia repair, wound healing, foot and ankle surgeries.

Burns noted that surgeons have grafted tissues from cadavers in patients’ shoulders to repair torn rotator cuffs with “very good success” in the past eight years. But using grafts to reconstruct an arthritic shoulder socket is fairly rare, said Burns.

“When you put the graft in, you’re asking the body to grow into the new matrix, make it come alive,” Burns said. He compared the cadaver tissue to an empty building, populated by the body’s own regenerated cells.

The doctor placed a 4.5-by-3.5 centimeter of skin patch from a cadaver’s low back onto Klawer’s shoulder. With the graft’s cells removed, the patient’s body recognizes the tissue as its own rather than as foreign material to cast off. “The patient’s own stem cells inside the shoulder joint from the bone marrow will differentiate into cartilage cells,” Burns said

Klawer began to feel better in three months when the cells started to regenerate. Unlike a shoulder replacement with a plastic insert, the two-hour Graftjacket procedure can be repeated, Burns said.

Klawer needed 1 ½ years to rehabilitate his shoulder.

“The recovery was long and hard,” Klawer said. He still exercises his rotator cuff and is delighted that the shoulder doesn’t hurt when he swims or lifts his left arm.

Burns predicted that Klawer’s graft should last only three or four years. But of the 15 patients with arthritic shoulders on whom he’s performed the surgery, the doctor said that Klawer has shown the most improvement.

“This surgery is the last resort,” Burns said. “I don’t have other good options.”

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Genetically engineered adult stem cells, armed with a cancer-killing protein, have proven successful at targeting several types of tumors while sparing healthy cells, new research has found.

Stem cells carrying TNF-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) destroyed lung, squamous, breast and cervical cancer cells in laboratory cultures, according to British researchers. When tried on mice, the specialized cells shrunk subcutaneous breast tumors by about 80 percent, and when injected intravenously, they helped destroy about 38 percent of metastasized lung tumors in rodents.

The study results combined findings from two previous areas of research: one that found that mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), which come from bone marrow, can work as messengers to tumors cells, and another that found TRAIL effective at killing cancer while sparing healthy cells.

“This is the first study to demonstrate a significant reduction in tumor burden with inducible TRAIL-expressing MSCs in a well-controlled and specifically directed therapy,” the authors, Dr. Michael Loebinger and Dr. Sam M. Janes of the Centre for Respiratory Research at the University College London, noted in a news release from the American Thoracic Society. The findings were to be presented Tuesday in San Diego at the society’s International Conference.

Despite the success, the authors said it could be at least two years before these specialized stem cells are tried on people. Loebinger noted, for example, that while the MSCs seem to be naturally drawn to the cancer cells, the reasons for this are not fully understood.

More information

The U.S. National Institutes of Health has more about stem cells.

LifeCell International India’s first & the largest stem cell banking service provider, which has also pioneered in stem cell research and technology, today announced its association with Harvest Technologies, a world leader in developing technologies that accelerate natural healing, to bring-in a next generation technology Bone Marrow Aspirate Concentrate (BMAC) system in India. BMAC is a USFDA and CE approved biological technology that accelerates the body’s natural healing capacity, thereby improving surgical outcomes.

Existing methods to produce a stem cell concentrate therapy are time consuming, labour intensive, and require complex logistical considerations. The BMAC System helps in safe and rapid preparation of cell concentrate from bone marrow. The process takes only about 15 minutes and can be conducted in the point of care setting.

The system is currently being used clinically in many developed countries like US and Europe for various medical disciplines. These applications range from fractures, non-unions, osteonecrosis, cartilage repair applications and critical limb ischemia (CLI). The system will soon be applied for cardio vascular regeneration.

LifeCell has implemented this technology for an ongoing Indian CLI study which is being led by Dr. K. S. Vijayragavan at Department of Vascular Surgery, SRMC. As per the data available on the interim study conduted on 30 patients after a 12 week followup major amputations were seen only in 4 patients and 6 of them went for minor amputation. The patients’s also reported significant reduction in their pain perception and considerable improvement in quality of life. The study also emphasised the fact that the BMAC process is safe and the Intra-arterial infusion does not cause any adverse reaction.

Talking on the association with Harvest Technologies, Mr. Mayur Abhaya, Executive Director, LifeCell International says, “We are excited to partner with Harvest Technologies to bring-in international standards to India. LifeCell International is today India’s only comprehensive stem cells solutions provider as we offer a complete spectrum of services and with this association we intend to accelerate the availability of advanced stem cell therapy in India.

According to Scott Shea, Managing Director, Harvests Technologies GmbH, “The Autologous regenerative cells from bone marrow offer profound potential for therapies. Harvest has conducted about 30,000 clinical procedures for various applications, the highest number of procedures in the world, using the BMAC System. Our novel technology now makes it possible to harvest the regenerative cells safely and rapidly in order to develop new therapies for heretofore incurable diseases.”
“We are delighted to be associated with LifeCell, an undisputed market leader in stem cell technology space and extend our services in India.  LifeCell has a well established network with hospitals and clinical institutions across India and we would leverage their strength to rapidly deploy our service across the country and provide HOPE in addressing unmet medical challenges by offering cellular therapeutic options.”

Commenting on the interim report presented on the studies conducted for CLI in India using the BMAC technology, Mr. Mayur added, “Through our clinical research, we have identified that the transplantation of autologous Bone Marrow Aspirate Concentrate (BMAC) into critically ischemic leg can increase blood flow and support in healing the wounds quickly. It also helps in reducing pain and avoiding leg amputation of otherwise incurable patients. This is also validated by the outcome of the CLI study which showed that 86.6% of patients could avoid amputation.”

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The 2009 World Stem Cell Summit will focus on the science, business, policy, law and ethics of all stem cell types including human embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells.

To maximize the potential of stem cell research, the 2009 World Stem Cell Summit program is designed to cover the field’s most pressing topics including: progressive research strategies, translational and preclinical findings, cross disciplinary initiatives, drug discovery, funding opportunities (federal, public and private), commercialization plans, technology transfer platforms, venture capital insight, market trends, regulatory issues, ethical and societal implications, philanthropic opportunities, medical tourism challenges, cell banking projects, intellectual property landscapes, insurance questions, international perspectives, clinical use and the 2009-10 advocacy agenda.