An infusion of cells from a child’s own umbilical cord blood appears to improve brain connectivity and motor function in children with spastic cerebral palsy.
The results of the randomized clinical trial were recently published by Stem Cells Translational Medicine.
The placebo-controlled, phase two trial included 63 children with varied types and severities of spastic cerebral palsy, a condition usually caused by brain damage before or at birth.
Children who received one intravenous dose of at least 25 million stem cells per kilogram of their body weight saw improvements in motor function a year later.
The improvements were greater than those typically observed for children of similar age and condition, and exceeded the gains made by children who received a lower dose of cells or a placebo.
“We are encouraged by the results of this study, which shows that appropriately dosed infusions of cord blood cells can help lessen symptoms in children with cerebral palsy,” said senior author Joanne Kurtzberg, M.D., director of Duke’s Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant Program and the Robertson Clinical and Translational Therapy Program.
“We still have a lot to learn about this therapy so that it can be optimized and accessible to more children with cerebral palsy,” said Kurtzberg, who is also director of the Carolinas Cord Blood Bank at Duke.
“Previous research has indicated it’s safe for children with cerebral palsy to receive an infusion of their own cord blood,” Kurtzberg said. “Now that we have identified a dosing threshold, we are planning additional studies testing the benefits of multiple doses of cells, as well as the use of donor cells for patients whose own cord blood was not banked.”
Kurtzberg has been a pioneer in testing the therapeutic potential of umbilical cord blood, which has been found to be a rich source of blood stem cells to treat cancers, neurological disorders and genetic diseases. Cord blood also contains other therapeutic cells that researchers believe could influence the formation of new neural connections in children with cerebral palsy.
In the cerebral palsy trial, Kurtzberg and colleagues tested doses from 10 million cells per kilogram of body weight up to 50 million cells per kilogram, based on the amount and quality of the cord blood each child had in storage. Among the tools used to evaluate the children’s progress were MRI to measure brain connectivity and the Gross Motor Function Measure (GMFM-66), a standardized analysis of a child’s ability to crawl, roll, kneel, and complete other movements based on age and development.
Children who have cerebral palsy are expected to gain motor function as they grow and develop and receive traditional therapies, including occupational and physical therapy, said Jessica Sun, M.D., a pediatric hematologist-oncologist at Duke and lead author of the paper. The GMFM-66 attempts to account for this expected growth based on age and the severity of the cerebral palsy, she said, and most participants improved when retested on the GMFM-66 a year after receiving an infusion, even those who received a placebo.
However, the improvements for children who received doses of at least 25 million cells per kilogram of body weight progressed beyond their expected increases when they were tested a year after infusion.
“For each child, the improvements are different and could be subtle, but sometimes even a seemingly small difference is significant,” Sun said. “For example, a child’s ability to turn their hand from facing down to facing up can change their ability to hold or grasp something, which can make a big difference in their everyday life.”
The study had some limitations, including the requirement that participants have cord blood in storage and be able to travel to Duke, both of which required financial means, the authors said. Being from well-resourced families, most participants were also receiving frequent physical and occupational therapy, Sun said, and those advantages could have influenced the results.
“We are hopeful that cord blood and cell therapy may have a role in treating children with cerebral palsy and brain injury and are encouraged to continue this promising research,” Sun said.
When he was born at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Jack was not breathing and was non-responsive.
Doctors whisked him away from his mother and started efforts to resuscitate him. They managed to save his life but soon had to deliver some bad news to his parents, Stephen Pankratz and Kim Kucher.
Their son had Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy (HIE), brain damage caused by lack of oxygen and compounded by low blood flow to vital organs. Jack would likely suffer extensive cognitive and physical problems.
But at only 12 days old Jack was re infused with his own stem cells – the youngest person ever to undergo stem cell therapy in Canada and the first person in the country to be treated for HIE with stem cells.
Doctors believe he may turn out to be the first of many.
Two years later, Jack is thriving. He has cerebral palsy and faces many challenges, but his development has exceeded doctor’s expectations. His mother attributes his progress to the re-infusion.
Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg, a researcher at Duke University in Durham, N.C, has been leading clinical trials to determine whether cord blood can help to repair the brain. Research results published by Duke University indicate that early transfusion of cord stem cells is effective.
Jack’s parents discovered Kurtzberg’s findings while doing research on HIE in the days following their son’s birth. They brought them to the attention of his neonatologist, Dr Karen Pape.
“She was open to hearing what we had to say and she read the research findings that we had given her,” says Pankratz. “She came to the same conclusion as us — that the potential benefits of a stem cell transplant outweighed the risks.
In scientific and medical circles, many stem cell experts are predicting the dawn of a new era in the treatment of HIE, autism and other brain disorders – with cord blood stem cells treatment playing a key role.
Umbilical cord blood could provide a lifesaving treatment for heart failure patients, a new study has found.
The report from the American Heart Association, published in September 2017, revealed that stem cells from cord blood boosted patients’ heart function when administered.
Experts are hopeful that the study could improve the lives of the 37 million people worldwide who live with heart failure, as current treatments involve invasive procedures and medications that take a toll on patients’ bodies.
The study involved 30 heart failure patients aged 18 to 75. While some were treated with umbilical cord blood, others got a placebo drug.
The heart muscles of those who were injected with umbilical cord cells saw ‘significant’ improvement during the year following the trial. This included an improved ability to pump blood and function at a higher level.
The effects resulted in an improved quality of life for the patients who had received the cells, the study said.
Study author Dr Jorge Bartolucci said that the treatment could transform the way doctors think about heart failure treatments because current options for treating the fatal disease are complicated and ineffective.
‘Standard drug-based regimens can be suboptimal in controlling heart failure, and patients often have to progress to more invasive therapies such as mechanical ventricular assist devices and heart transplantation,’ Dr Bartolucci said.
Another researcher who worked on the study, Dr Fernando Figueroa, echoed the excitement over the study’s potential.
‘We are encouraged by our findings because they could pave the way to a non-invasive, promising new therapy for a group of patients who face grim odds,’ he said.
The study pointed out that, even though recent medical advances have improved these odds, half of the people who are diagnosed with heart failure die within five years of their diagnosis.
The American Heart Association journal, Circulation Research published the results of the study.
Dementia patients have been offered hope that their memory could be repaired after scientists showed that cord blood restores brain function.
Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine in the US discovered that cord blood contains an important protein which vanishes as humans get older. It is believed the protein encourages neuroplasticity in the brain, allowing neurons to adapt and communicate more effectively.
When human cord blood was injected into elderly mice they performed far better in learning and memory tests and even started nesting again, gathering up cotton wads to make beds, an instinctive behaviour that is largely forgotten in old age.
Alzheimer’s Society head of research Dr James Pickett said: “Everyone experiences some decline in memory as they get older. The possibility that this process can be reversed by an infusion of young blood sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but this is what the study is beginning to show.”
“This study finds that a factor in human umbilical cord blood can enter the brain and restore some of the processes that are essential for forming new memories.”
The researchers think the cord blood repairs the hippocampus, a part of the brain which in both mice and humans is critical for converting experiences into long-term memories.
In particular, the hippocampus is essential for helping people remember spatial information, such as how to find your way back to your car or information about autobiographical events, such as what you ate for breakfast.
The new study marks the first demonstration that human blood can aid older mice’s memory and learning, which the authors say increases the likelihood that it could have a similar beneficial effect in people.
“Neuroscientists have ignored it and are still ignoring it, but to me it’s remarkable that something in your blood can influence the way you think,” said the study’s senior author, Dr Tony Wyss-Coray, PhD, professor of neurology and neurological sciences at Stanford.
“For largely unknown reasons, the hippocampus is especially vulnerable to normal ageing. With advancing age, the hippocampus degenerates, loses nerve cells and shrinks. Hippocampal deterioration is also an early manifestation of Alzheimer’s disease.
“Our results argue that systemic factors which present early in life may be beneficial for revitalisation of aged tissue and that (the protein) represents such a restorative factor for the aged hippocampus.”
The Stanford team had already proved that young blood can reverse some of the signs of ageing in mice but have never shown it could restore learning and memory.
For the new experiment, they injected either cord blood plasma, or the blood from people aged between 19 and 24, or 61 and 82.
When the older mice received human umbilical-cord blood plasma every fourth day for two weeks, their memory, learning and hippocampal function improved notably, as well as their ability to navigate through a complex maze. Plasma from older people, on the other hand, was no help at all, while young-adult plasma only induced an intermediate effect.
After realising that something in the umbilical cord blood was making the old brains act younger, the scientists set about trying to work out what it was, and discovered a protein called TIMP2
Injecting TIMP2 by itself into elderly mice largely duplicated the beneficial effects of umbilical-cord blood.
“TIMP2’s effects in the brain have been studied a little, but not much and not in ageing,” added study author Dr Joseph Castellano, an instructor of neurology and neurological sciences at Stanford.
“In our study, it mimicked the memory and learning effects we were getting with cord plasma. And it appeared to do that by improving hippocampal function.
“In the current study, we have focused on age-related cognitive decline, but future studies will probe the extent to which TIMP2 might be beneficial in the context of more severe synaptic and neuronal dysfunction, for example, in Alzheimer’s disease.”
Experts in Britain said the research was interesting but called for more work on whether TIMP2 could also influence the brain activity in humans.
The study was published in the journal Nature.
An Australian toddler is the youngest person in the world to receive an infusion of her own umbilical cord blood in the hope of preventing diabetes.
Since her birth, doctors have routinely tested Lucy’s blood for an antibody indicating she was on the path to develop type-1 diabetes. When her sister Ava (now 7) was a toddler, she developed the condition – increasing the odds that Lucy would too.
So when Lucy tested positive for the antibody she was given an infusion of her own cord blood at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead, where Professor Maria Craig is running this ground-breaking trial.
“We’re using the cord blood to switch off the immune process that has already commenced in Lucy and set her on the pathway to type-1 diabetes,” Prof Craig said.
“We believe the right strategy is to get in very early at this young age, when we have the greatest chance of success at resetting her immune system.”
Cord blood is rich in important and unique immune cells known as regulatory T-cells and stem cells that can be used to treat diseases.
Professor Maria Craig is interested in recruiting more babies for the ground-breaking trial in Sydney.
Watch the video and read Lucy’s story here
New research out of Sweden, has found that having children adds as much as two years to your life expectancy. Author of the study, Dr Karin Modig from the Karolinska Institutet, calls the years “payback time”.
The research, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, showed that men and women with at least one child will have an increased longevity in their old age because of support from their adult children.
As part of the study everyone born in Sweden between 1911 and 1925 was identified, as were their children. Age-specific death risks were assigned to the cohort of parents and to the cohort of older Swedes who did not have children.
“Men and women having at least one child experienced lower death risks than childless men and women. At 60 years of age, the difference in life expectancy was 2 years for men and 1.5 years for women,” the authors of the study concluded.
At 3 and a half years old, most children know around 800 words and can talk in complete sentences, however little Isabella Barney from New York was not most children. Diagnosed with Childhood Apraxia Syndrome (CAS), she had difficulty moving the body parts that are required for clear speech – lips, jaw and tongue. Although she was undoubtedly a bright child, she couldn’t even say her brother’s name.
While a diagnosis of CAS usually means years of speech therapy, Isabella was lucky enough to have far-sighted parents. When she was born, Steven and Rosa Barney had arranged to have her cord blood collected and cryogenically frozen.
Having cord blood stem cells available opened new doors for Isabella’s CAS treatment. Steven discovered that Duke University in North Carolina was doing cord blood transfusions to treat apraxia and was having success. Deciding to give Isabella the benefit of her banked stem cells was a logical decision.
The transfusion process took around 10 minutes and Isabella was only in hospital for a couple of hours. Within three weeks, her speech had improved noticeably. Not only could she say her brother Matthew’s name clearly, she could form complete sentences. Every day she gained new words, as well as the confidence that comes with being able to express herself easily.
Isabella’s family liken their cord blood experience to winning the lottery. If they hand’t stored their little girl’s cord blood, treating her apraxia would have been a long and frustrating process – potentially years of therapy.
Every day Isabella gets chattier and more confident as her brain learns how to plan the precise facial movements required for speech.
Stem cell scientists have accidentally found a treatment for eczema that could bring hope to millions.
Even if you don’t suffer from Eczema yourself, you probably know someone who does. The familiar, inflamed, red and itchy skin – often on the face, arms and hands – causes discomfort to thousands of Kiwis.
In New Zealand, Eczema currently affects up to 2% of adults and up to 20% of children. It is the result of a genetically inherited condition that causes too much of a certain type of antibody to be made. Similar to disorders like rheumatoid arthritis, the body actually begins to attack itself, resulting in painful inflammation symptoms that are hard to manage.
All that may be about to change, though. Recent UK research into adverse reactions to stem cell transplants revealed that the proteins in cord blood, could actually treat a whole host of inflammation-related conditions.
The newly discovered proteins play an essential role in the pregnancy process, disabling “natural killer cells” so the mother’s immune system doesn’t attack her baby. The results, published in the European Journal of Immunology, show so many exciting applications, but top of the list is Eczema.
“Currently, conditions such as eczema are hard to manage, so this accidental discovery could potentially offer a major breakthrough,” says Aurore Saudemont PhD, senior research scientist at Anthony Nolan, a blood cancer charity in the UK. “This could be life-changing for patients, as their symptom such as inflammation, itching and redness can be a serious problem.”
Summer is fast approaching… and sadly, drowning remains one of the leading causes of death for children. But one family’s decision to bank their daughters cord blood at birth gave her a second chance after drowning.
After falling into her family swimming pool Sparrow Morris was without oxygen for 45 minutes, the outlook for one year old Sparrow Morris was bleak.
Sparrow suffered severe brain damage – which left her functioning at the level of a 3 month old. Tonya Morris, her mother, said Sparrow wasn’t able to sit or speak and was in a vegetative state.
Here in New Zealand, drowning remains the 3rd highest cause of death – after road accidents and falls.
And, according to Water Safety New Zealand, for every actual drowning there are another eight near fatal drowning incidents.
Drowning affects all New Zealanders regardless of age, ethnicity, gender or social economic background.
But because Sparrows parents had banked her cord blood at her birth. She was re-infused with these precious stem cells.
Just days after the treatment her mother said Sparrow began speaking again.
Tonya said cord blood has saved her daughters life.