Weekly reads: diabetes, GvHD, Novo Nordisk & regenerative medicine, HDACs

Do many in the regenerative medicine field have favorite types of stem cells?

Some seem to think there’s a tension between those working on pluripotent stem cells like iPS cells and those working with MSCs. I don’t see it that way, though.

Whatever stem cells work best for a particular condition should be used and, if successful, celebrated. There are also areas of overlap between these areas, including with MSCs made from iPS cells.  Let’s talk about a new paper in this zone of overlap.

Recommended stem cell & regenerative medicine reads

• Two-year safety outcomes of iPS cell-derived mesenchymal stromal cells in acute steroid-resistant graft-versus-host disease, Nature Medicine. This early, somewhat encouraging initial data comes from a trial with Cynata as the sponsor. You can read more about GvHD and the idea of cell therapy to treat it. Do you think that MSCs made from pluripotent stem cells might be better in some ways than MSCs directly isolated from tissues like adipose or marrow? The latter might have some unique properties of their own too.
• Company Warned Over Atypical Fat-Derived Stem Cell Product, MedPage Today. As I’ve said about this one, it’s rare to see allogeneic SVF being used.
• Efficient expansion and CRISPR-Cas9-mediated gene correction of patient-derived hepatocytes for treatment of inherited liver diseases, Cell Stem Cell. The need for liver regeneration is just going to keep growing beyond genetic liver diseases including from fatty liver disease.
• Flush with cash, Novo Nordisk Foundation now plans to reinvest some GLP-1 profits into regenerative medicines, EndPoints. This could get interesting.
• Shotzi Has Stem Cell Procedure For Back Issue, Highlights ‘Silver Lining’ Of Knee Injury, Yahoo. Unproven stem cells are big in professional sports around the world, but I’ve also noticed that those in other areas like MMA and WWE are big on stem cell procedures too. I’ve never actually heard of Shotzi before, but it’s another celebrity case that could lead others astray. I wonder if Joe Rogan’s stem cell hype has anything to do with it. In this case, Shotzi is going to Mexico to get stem cells. What could go wrong?
• Inhibition of HDAC activity directly reprograms murine embryonic stem cells to trophoblast stem cells, Dev. Cell.

Stem cells for diabetes: encouraging N=1 report is overblown in media

This story of a cure for type II diabetes has been floating around for a few days now. The media have really grabbed onto the “cure” narrative. Here’s the Cell Discovery article: Treating a type 2 diabetic patient with impaired pancreatic islet function by personalized endoderm stem cell-derived islet tissue. So far this one patient is doing great, but it is just N=1 so far.