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Just thought I would post "Scarcrash's" link to Stemedica's stem cell treatment for scarring as it is clearly relevant to our discussion here:
http://www.stemedica.com/treatmentcenters/
"Scarcrash's" thread can be seen here:
http://www.acne.org/messageboard/index.php...p;#entry2052965
It would be excellent if we were able to be accepted on to one of their programs at a nearby clinic for stem cell treatment against scarring. Although, clearly I would like to know more about the exact operation, potential side-effects and of course the cost.
Has anyone else heard any other details about this company or other current treatments using stem cells? Anna?
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Neca,
I HATE it when the speak generically of TGF. GRRR!
Anyway, I thought it was an interesting article, especially since when you get the big research dollars surrounding heart disease involved things REALLY start happening!
Also,
This is a link to Stemedica's contact page:
http://www.stemedica.com/company/contactus/
Stemedica Cell Technologies, Inc.
5375 Mira Sorrento Pl, Suite 100
San Diego, CA 92121
Phone: 858-658-0910
Fax: 858-658-0986
Somebody should stop by and pay them a visit! DFO, aren't you a CA man?
Thanks, Anna
Study is on hold. Acell has FDA approval but no facilities for producing human grade. Cook and Co took them to court and practically bankrupted them in a sly effort to keep them out of the human market. They lost but it has slowed the progress by years.
I believe they are up and running again. They released a new batch of product in August I believe. Fivetotenyears, where did you hear that the Fort Sam Houston study was on hold?
Thanks, Anna
i talked to acell a few days ago.
Did they give an estimate as to when they will be manufacturing the human grade product? I was informed by a representative in August that they had a new batch produced. This must have been the veterinarian grade. I guess the lawsuit stopped the manufacturing of both grades. Sad!
I feel bad cause they called me back and wanted more information before they sent me an email with attached info. It was a message and I never called back.
When I called the first time I fibbed and said I was grad student from a major univ. (I am a student there) and that we might be interested doing a clinical study (which they may, who knows). So technically I wasn't lying, but I didn't want to call them back and lead them on.
I'm sure their also paranoid about industrial espionage or harrassment from Cook and Co. after the lawsuit.
If you have guts just call them and be honest. At first you get an operator and it sounds like a big company. But they will put you through to Mark who sounded like a nice 30-40 something guy. I think him and the older scientist (his father?) are really the only people in the company right now.
Was there some news break on this topic that I haven't seen yet?! The 8th top search topic on YAHOO today is 'Limb Regeneration'. That usually only happens when some news report is generated...
Links please!!!
Anna,
This is all I could find...you might have already seen it but other people interested might want to read it. Really cool stuff.
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews...950765720071101
Same story, different take: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtm...ciregrow101.xml
and one more that is probably not useful:
Perfect! Thank you hopeseed! I knew there had to be something brewing. Anything that brings us closer to creating a blastema brings us closer to regenerating lost dermal and epidermal tissue and a myriad of other things.
Now I want to know if scientists have created a little divet or pock mark in the skins of these newts, and if so, if the newts regenerated perfect skin. Do newts still scar and only regenerate when it is something BIG missing like a limb?
Someone a few months back quite possibly anna asked me to post about an acticle i read in the paper about scarless healing, well i found it so i guess better late than never.
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/stor...5006050,00.html
Hope you find it interesting.
Tom
Wow that is great the term "limb regeneration" hit Yahoo's top 10 search entries list. The more attention this topic gets the better for us all. Thanks for the Reuters link, Hopeseed, it's great to see a news agency as big as Reuters covering this topic.
I also think this amazing article in Time magazine has helped bring about some notoriety for the topic of "tissue regeneration":
TIME.com: The Science of Growing Body Parts
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,...1679115,00.html
Things in Dr. Anthony Atala's lab at Wake Forest University are not always what they seem. On one lab bench, surrounded by gutted printer cartridges, lie the inner workings of an inkjet printer. But this isn't the scene of some document-printing job gone awry. Instead, the printer has been jury-rigged to handle something much more extraordinary than ink ‚ it now sprays tiny living cells into the three-dimensional forms of human organs.
The concept is to use the body's own cells to make new tissues and organs for patients who need them," he says. "We have had so many advances in various fields of science ‚ cell biology, materials science, and stem cell biology ‚ and all of them are coming together now to allow us to go one step further in the field of regenerative medicine, and to start to think of creating more complex organs to help patients.
The first patients to receive Atala's regenerated organs were seven young children who were transplanted with bladders grown from their own cells. Eight years after their surgery, the children are doing well, and their bladders continue to function normally.
This Dr. Anthony Atala guy and his team at Wake Forest University are geniuses! "It takes Atala about six weeks to grow a new body part," that's astonishing and NOTE> these guys haven't just come up with this technology, eight years is pretty advanced so maybe we should all email him asking whether he can print out some nice smooth skin cells for us?
Inkjet printers at the ready scar friends 
Here is also the video accompanying the above Time article if you haven't yet clicked on it already:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/b...bctid1276240844
Wow that is great the term "limb regeneration" hit Yahoo's top 10 search entries list. The more attention this topic gets the better for us all. Thanks for the Reuters link, Hopeseed, it's great to see a news agency as big as Reuters covering this topic.
I also think this amazing article in Time magazine has helped bring about some notoriety for the topic of "tissue regeneration":
TIME.com: The Science of Growing Body Parts
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,...1679115,00.html
Things in Dr. Anthony Atala's lab at Wake Forest University are not always what they seem. On one lab bench, surrounded by gutted printer cartridges, lie the inner workings of an inkjet printer. But this isn't the scene of some document-printing job gone awry. Instead, the printer has been jury-rigged to handle something much more extraordinary than ink ‚ it now sprays tiny living cells into the three-dimensional forms of human organs.
The concept is to use the body's own cells to make new tissues and organs for patients who need them," he says. "We have had so many advances in various fields of science ‚ cell biology, materials science, and stem cell biology ‚ and all of them are coming together now to allow us to go one step further in the field of regenerative medicine, and to start to think of creating more complex organs to help patients.
The first patients to receive Atala's regenerated organs were seven young children who were transplanted with bladders grown from their own cells. Eight years after their surgery, the children are doing well, and their bladders continue to function normally.
This Dr. Anthony Atala guy and his team at Wake Forest University are geniuses! "It takes Atala about six weeks to grow a new body part," that's astonishing and NOTE> these guys haven't just come up with this technology, eight years is pretty advanced so maybe we should all email him asking whether he can print out some nice smooth skin cells for us?
Inkjet printers at the ready scar friends
Very interesting Neca! Thanks for sharing. However will this really benefit us as scar suffers? I mean they can go ahead and graft the skin from my thigh if they can fix my scars with it...
Do they generally not do this because it looks like shit? If they grow tissue outside of your body won't they still have similar grafting problems? Of course there wouldn't be tissue rejection, but there isn't tissue rejection when you graft skin from one part of the body to another. I think the real key is to reprogram the scar tissue we already have back into normal tissue.
Maybe other studies to be on the look out for is studies that result in better grafting techniques. I don't think anyone would mind trading their facial scars for a graft mark on the leg.
Very interesting Neca! I actually saw this on TV about six months ago. I saw them recreating a heart valve. Amazing!
With high resolution pixel technology wouldn't it seem like they could scan your face down to the micropixel and create custom dermal implants??? Still it would be more elegant to have our body perfectly regenerate...but everything builds toward the ultimate goal. 
Here is also the video accompanying the above Time article if you haven't yet clicked on it already:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/b...bctid1276240844
Cheers for the article.
Neca, that article has just made my day. If he has regenerated tissue, with skin being the easiest to regenerate... then
does this mean that in some lab, someone has regenerated skin? yes it does.
And knows what growth factors are needed to grow skin? yes it does.
I reckon scarless healing is around the corner.
My biggest fear is procrastination.
I have the same fear Kirk!
I thought this was the most interesting part of an overall VERY interesting article:
Creating a working organ hinges on keeping those first few cells alive, which has proven to be the biggest challenge for Atala's team. Each cell a whether from the bladder, skin, cartilage, or heart a prefers a different environment to grow, made up of unique cocktails of growth factors, enzymes, proteins and other nutrients. Once the incubated cells have multiplied to a sufficient number, Atala puts them through a series of rigorous tests to ensure that they look, act and function just like their normally grown siblings in the body.
And that's when the fun starts. In order to mold human organs from a clump of cells, Atala came up with creatively constructed scaffolds that would guide the newly grown cells into shape. In most cases a for the bladder, blood vessels and valves, for example a he uses a biodegradable material made of collagen, the structural component in skin. But in order to create more complex structures, such as the heart, he needed something far more sophisticated as a matrix. That's where the inkjet printer came in. One of Atala's colleagues had the bright idea that if a printer can spray tiny bits of ink in a pre-set pattern, why couldn't that same technique be used to scatter cells into pre-designed templates? So, instead of printing in one dimension, Atala's expert re-tooled the printer to "print" its cells in successive layers; the end result is a three-dimensional mold of cells that looks suspiciously like, for example, a rudimentary heart.
Very interesting Neca! I actually saw this on TV about six months ago. I saw them recreating a heart valve. Amazing!
With high resolution pixel technology wouldn't it seem like they could scan your face down to the micropixel and create custom dermal implants??? Still it would be more elegant to have our body perfectly regenerate...but everything builds toward the ultimate goal.
They do this now for tooth inlays. You walk in to the dentist, they clean ur teeth (and drill if necessary), a radiologist scans the tooth that needs a filling, then it goes to a computer. the computer controls a drill machine that turns a block of ceramic into the exact mold that will fit into your tooth.
They also have 3D printers that spit molten plastic into any shape you need. although all this is terribly expensive.