mens health 34

Allogeneic (meaning from a donor) hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) is a curative therapy for cancers of the blood and lymph system, including leukemia and lymphoma. It works by introducing healthy immune cells, or T cells, that eliminate tumor cells and prevent the cancer from relapsing. Unfortunately, the same donor T cells can also attack the healthy tissue of the recipient's body such as gut, liver, lung, and skin, leading to induction of graft- (T cell) versus-host (recipient's body) disease, or GVHD. Symptoms can be mild to severe and often include mouth ulcers, gastrointestinal distress, and rashes. "Currently, immunosuppressive drugs have been used to prevent GVHD, but immune-suppressants also subdue the anti-cancer effects of the donor T cells, potentially resulting in cancer relapse, in addition to other side effects such as an increased risk of infection," explains Zeng. "Therefore, prevention of GVHD while preserving anti-cancer effects rem...

Mice given the priming protein recover muscle function more quickly after damage, their skin heals more rapidly and even the shaved area around the injury regrows hair more quickly, the study found. Harnessing the power of this protein may one day help people recover more quickly from surgery or restore youthful vigor to aging stem cells. "We're trying to better understand wound healing in response to trauma and aging," said Thomas Rando, MD, PhD, professor of neurology and neurological sciences. "We've shown that muscle and bone marrow stem cells enter a stage of alertness in response to distant injury that allows them to spring into action more quickly. Now we've pinpointed the protein responsible for priming them to do what they do better and faster." Rando, who also directs Stanford's Glenn Center for the Biology  of Aging, is the senior author of the study, which will be published April 18 in  Cell Reports . Former postdoctoral scholar Jos...

A brand new twin examine sheds gentle on epigenetic patterns in stem cells. Credit score: © pololia / Fotolia Salk scientists and collaborators have make clear a long-standing query about what results in variation in stem cells by evaluating induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) derived from an identical twins. Even iPSCs created from the cells of twins, they discovered, have vital variations, suggesting that not all variation between iPSC traces is rooted in genetics , because the twins have an identical genes. As a result of they will differentiate into nearly any cell kind within the physique, stem cells have the potential for use to create wholesome cells to deal with quite a few ailments. However stem cells are available two varieties: embryonic stem cells (ESCs), that are remoted from embryos, and iPSCs, that are created within the lab from grownup cells which can be reprogrammed utilizing mixtures of signa...

In order to enable foreign stem cells to multiply in the body and produce healthy blood cells, doctors first need to make room for them. This is achieved by destroying existing cells in the bone marrow using drugs or radiation. One of the risks resulting from this pre-treatment is GVHD, which occurs in about half of all treatments. In simple terms, during GVHD the transplanted stem cells become T lymphocytes. These immune cells, which are supposed to fight intruders such as bacteria, take a wrong turn and start attacking the recipient's already weakened body. In a paper published in the journal  Science Translational Medicine , an international team headed by TUM adjunct teaching professor Dr. Hendrik Poeck and Dr. Tobias Haas, heads of a research group at the third medical clinic of TUM's Klinikum rechts der Isar, and Professor Marcel van den Brink at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York City, describes how this process could be prevented. ...