Philippine elite fight aging with stem cell therapy

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BECOMING A FAD. Stem cell therapy for health and cosmetic purposes is popular in China, India and many other Asian countries

MANILA, Philippines - Cynthia Carrion-Norton flits high-heeled around the Philippine capital with energy levels belying her years, thankful for a controversial treatment she highly recommends to fellow 60-somethings.

Carrion-Norton, 66, a member of the Philippine Olympic Committee and a former undersecretary for medical tourism, credits her vitality to adult stem cell therapy.

"The day I got the therapy, I went to a dinner party and everyone told me: 'Cynthia, you're blooming!," Carrion-Norton told AFP.

The procedure involves harvesting the patient's stem cells from their own fat and injecting them into their blood, which she likened to being injected with intravenous fluid in the arm.

In a country where many elite are obsessed with anti-aging, wealthy Filipinos are shelling out between US$12,500 and US$18,000 per session of stem cell therapy in the belief it will improve their overall health and make them look younger.

Rich businessmen and public officials mostly male are the most eager customers, according to Florencio Lucero, a doctor in Manila who said he started performing adult stem cell therapy in 2006.

"They do it because they want to work longer," Lucero told AFP.

"And then they tell their wives or girlfriends."

Lucero said Filipinos had been receiving anti-aging stem cell treatment since the 1970s, often flying abroad to do so.

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Philippine elite fight aging with stem cell therapy

Human muscle stem cell therapy gets help from zebrafish

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7-Nov-2013

Contact: B. D. Colen bd_colen@harvard.edu 617-495-7821 Harvard University

Harvard Stem Cell Scientists have discovered that the same chemicals that stimulate muscle development in zebrafish can also be used to differentiate human stem cells into muscle cells in the laboratory, an historically challenging task that, now overcome, makes muscle cell therapy a more realistic clinical possibility.

The work, published this week in the journal Cell, began with a discovery by Boston Children's Hospital researchers, led by Leonard Zon, MD, and graduate student Cong (Tony) Xu, who tested 2,400 different chemicals in cultures of zebrafish embryo cells to determine if any could increase the numbers of muscle cells formed. Using fluorescent reporter fish in which muscle cells were visible during their creation, the researchers found six chemicals that were very effective at promoting muscle formation.

Zon shared his results with Harvard Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology professor Amy Wagers, PhD, and Mohammadsharif Tabebordbar, a graduate student in her laboratory, who tested the six chemicals in mice. One of the six, called forskolin, was found to increase the numbers of muscle stem cells from mice that could be obtained when these cells were grown in laboratory dishes. Moreover, the cultured cells successfully integrated into muscle when transplanted back into mice.

Inspired by the successful application of these chemicals in mice, Salvatore Iovino, PhD, a joint postdoctoral fellow in the Wagers lab and the lab of C. Ronald Kahn, MD, at the Joslin Diabetes Center, investigated whether the chemicals would also affect human cells and found that a combination of three chemicals, including forskolin, could induce differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, made by reprogramming skin cells. Exposure of iPS cells to these chemicals converted them into skeletal muscle, an outcome the Wagers and Kahn labs had been striving to achieve for years using conventional methods. When transplanted into a mouse, the human iPS-derived muscle cells also contributed to muscle repair, offering early promise that this protocol could provide a route to muscle stem cell therapy in humans.

The interdisciplinary, cross-laboratory collaboration between Zon, Wagers, and Kahn highlights the advantage of open exchange between researchers. "If we had done this screen directly on human iPS cells, it would have taken at least 10 times as long and cost 100 times as much," said Wagers. "The zebrafish gave us a big advantage here because it has a fast generation time, rapid development, and can be easily and relatively cheaply screened in a culture dish."

"This research demonstrates that over 300 million years of evolution, the pathways used in the fish are conserved through vertebrates all the way up to the human," said Wagers' fellow HSCRB professor Leonard Zon, chair of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute Executive Committee and director of the stem cell program at Boston Children's Hospital. "We can now make enough human muscle progenitors in a dish to allow us to model diseases of the muscle lineage, like Duchenne muscular dystrophy, conduct drug screens to find chemicals that correct those disease, and in the long term, efficiently transplant muscle stem cells into a patient."

In a similar biomedical application, Kahn, who is chief academic officer at the Joslin, plans to apply the new ability to quickly produce muscle stem cells for diabetes research. His lab will generate iPS-derived muscle cells from people who are at risk for diabetes and people who have diabetes to identify alterations that lead to insulin resistance in the muscle.

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Human muscle stem cell therapy gets help from zebrafish

Elite fight ageing with stem cell therapy

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Ms. Carrion-Norton, 66, a member of the Philippine Olympic Committee and a former undersecretary for medical tourism, credits her vitality to adult stem cell therapy.

"The day I got the therapy I went to a dinner party and everyone told me: Cynthia, youre blooming!", she told AFP.

The procedure involves harvesting the patients stem cells from their own fat and injecting them into their blood, which she likened to being injected with intravenous fluid in the arm.

In a country where many elite are obsessed with anti-ageing, wealthy Filipinos are shelling out between $12,500 and $18,000 per session in the belief stem cell therapy will improve their health and make them look younger.

Rich businessmen and public officials -- mostly male -- are the most eager customers, said Florencio Lucero, a Manila doctor who said he started performing adult stem cell therapy in 2006.

"They do it because they want to work longer," Mr. Lucero told AFP. "And then they tell their wives or girlfriends."

Mr. Lucero said Filipinos had been receiving anti-ageing stem cell treatment since the 1970s, often flying abroad to do so.

Thai medical entrepreneur Bobby Kittichaiwong says he has a lucrative business catering to the Filipino elite, who pay $20,000 to visit his Villa Medica clinic in Germany for a more controversial form of stem cell therapy.

The clinic harvests cells from unborn sheep to be injected into a patients muscles, known as fresh cell therapy, and Mr. Kittichaiwong said 400 Filipinos visited last year. "After 14 days, the patients skin will glow and their digestive and immune systems will improve," he told AFP.

Among Villa Medicas high-profile clients is former president Joseph Estrada, 76, who has staged a remarkable political comeback in recent years after being forced to stand down from the nations top job in 2001 because of corruption. "Now I sleep better, my knees are no longer a problem, my skin has been radiant like this ever since," reads a testimonial from Mr. Estrada in a Villa Medica brochure.

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Elite fight ageing with stem cell therapy

Scythe Plays Space Station Silicon Valley – E17 – [JZ] Level 22 (Let’s Play 100% Walkthrough) – Video

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Scythe Plays Space Station Silicon Valley - E17 - [JZ] Level 22 (Let #39;s Play 100% Walkthrough)
Click Here to Subscribe!!! ? http://bit.ly/17QJQyO EPISODE 17 JUNGLE ZONE [JZ] 00:46 LEVEL 22: JUNGLE JUMPS (Trophy: Go through the Blue Rings as various ani...

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Scythe Plays Space Station Silicon Valley - E17 - [JZ] Level 22 (Let's Play 100% Walkthrough) - Video

Russian Soyuz rocket flies Olympic torch to space station

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* Olympic torch to go into space unlit

* Torch to be taken on spacewalk for first time

* Orbiting crew will increase to nine (Updates with torch brought aboard space station)

By Alissa de Carbonnel

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan, Nov 7 (Reuters) - A three-man crew took the Olympic torch to the International Space Station on a Russian rocket on Thursday, ready to send it on its first space walk in a showcase for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi.

An onboard camera showed Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata pumping the air with his fist as the Soyuz rocket, painted with snowflake patterns, lifted off from the Russian-rented Baikonur launch facility on a crisp, clear morning on the Kazakh steppe.

After a six-hour trip to the station, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin crawled through a hatch and handed the unlit torch to his beaming countryman on board, Fyodor Yurchikhin.

"It was great ride and we're happy to be here," said U.S. astronaut Rick Mastracchio, who travelled with Tyurin and Wakata, in a videolink with relatives and space officials 250 miles (400 km) below back on Earth.

Inspired by the Firebird of Russian folklore, the meter-long, red-and-silver torch weighs almost 2 kilograms (4.4 lbs) on Earth, but it floated lazily in zero gravity as Tyurin slowly twirled it in the weightlessness of the orbital outpost.

"It's just an outstanding day and a spectacular launch," William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations, told Reuters at Baikonur.

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Russian Soyuz rocket flies Olympic torch to space station

Astronauts take Sochi Olympic torch to space station

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Moscow (AFP) - An international trio of astronauts arrived Thursday at the International Space Station with an unlit Olympic torch that will for the first time be taken on a spacewalk to mark the Sochi Winter Games.

The crew blasted off Thursday morning from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in a Soyuz-TMA capsule powered by a Soyuz-FG rocket, both emblazoned with symbols of the Sochi games as well as the Olympic rings.

NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio, Russia's Mikhail Tyurin and Japan's Koichi Wakata shared the capsule with the same torch that Russia will use to light the cauldron at its first post-Soviet Olympic Games in Sochi next year.

The capsule then docked with the ISS around six hours later, after four orbits of the Earth.

The newly arrived astronauts joined six incumbent crew: station commander Fyodor Yurchikhin of Russia and flight engineers Karen Nyberg and Mike Hopkins of NASA, Italy's Luca Parmitano and Russians Sergei Ryazansky and Oleg Kotov.

It is the first time since 2009 that there have been nine astronauts on board instead of the usual six.

Cosmonaut Tyurin was the first to float through the open hatch into the ISS, brandishing the torch and grinning broadly. He shook hands with cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin and gave him the torch.

Minutes later, the nine astronauts crowded together to make a videoconference call to family members. Tyurin let the angular silver torch twirl in weightlessness while they spoke.

In an unprecedented move, two cosmonauts who are already on board the ISS, Kotov and Ryazansky, are set to take the torch on a space walk from 1430 GMT on Saturday aimed at promoting the Sochi Games.

Russian officials have made it clear that the torch will remain unlit at all times for safety reasons.

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Astronauts take Sochi Olympic torch to space station

Astronaut Karen Nyberg Invites Quilters to Help Create a Space Quilt | NASA Science HD – Video

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Astronaut Karen Nyberg Invites Quilters to Help Create a Space Quilt | NASA Science HD
Visit my website at http://www.junglejoel.com - astronaut Karen Nyberg is inviting fellow crafters to join her in stitching together a global community space...

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Astronaut Karen Nyberg Invites Quilters to Help Create a Space Quilt | NASA Science HD - Video

#EarthNow NASA Social – 10 a.m. to noon PT (1 to 3 p.m. ET) Nov. 4, 2013 – Video

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#EarthNow NASA Social - 10 a.m. to noon PT (1 to 3 p.m. ET) Nov. 4, 2013
Join us for a preview of three Earth-observing missions being prepared for launch in 2014 and JPL #39;s role in studying our home planet. Speaker Program Welcome...

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#EarthNow NASA Social - 10 a.m. to noon PT (1 to 3 p.m. ET) Nov. 4, 2013 - Video

Mighty Eagle Lunar Lander Prototype – Hazard Avoidance Test | NASA Space Science HD – Video

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Mighty Eagle Lunar Lander Prototype - Hazard Avoidance Test | NASA Space Science HD
Visit my website at http://www.junglejoel.com - the Mighty Eagle tested a new, low-cost hazard avoidance system over simulated lunar terrain, September 20th ...

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Mighty Eagle Lunar Lander Prototype - Hazard Avoidance Test | NASA Space Science HD - Video