Stem Cell Grants for Spina Bifida and Diabetic Wound Treatments

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(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) - The state stem cell agency, California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM),awarded a pair of grants totaling more than $7 million to UC Davis School of Medicine researchers who are working to develop stem cell therapies for spina bifida and chronic diabetic wounds. The funding is part of what the agency considers "the most promising" research leading up to human clinical trials using stem cells to treat disease and injury. Diana Farmer, professor and chair of surgery at UC Davis Medical Center, is developing a placental stem cell therapy for spina bifida, the common and devastating birth defect that causes lifelong paralysis as well as bladder and bowel incontinence. She and her team are working on a unique treatment that can be applied in utero - before a baby is born -- in order to reverse spinal cord damage. Roslyn Rivkah Isseroff, a UC Davis professor of dermatology, and Jan Nolta, professor of internal medicine and director of the university's Stem Cell Program, are developing a wound dressing containing stem cells that could be applied to chronic wounds and be a catalyst for rapid healing. This is Isseroff's second CIRM grant, and it will help move her research closer to having a product approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that specifically targets diabetic foot ulcers, a condition affecting more than 6 million people in the country. The CIRM board, which met in Berkeley today, has high hopes for these types of research that the agency funded in this latest round of stem cell grants. "This investment will let us further test the early promise shown by these projects," said Jonathan Thomas, chair of CIRM's governing board. "Preclinical work is vital in examining the feasibility, potential effectiveness and safety of a therapy before we try it on people. These projects all showed compelling evidence that they could be tremendously beneficial to patients. We want to help them build on that earlier research and move the projects to the next level." The CIRM grants are designed to enable the UC Davis research teams to transition from preclinical research to preclinical development over the next 30 months to be able to meet the FDA's rigorous safety and efficacy standards for Investigative New Drugs. As the former surgeon-in-chief at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital, Farmer helped pioneer fetal surgery techniques for treating spina bifida before birth. The condition, also known as myelomeningocele, is one of the most common and devastating birth defects worldwide, causing lifelong paralysis as well as bowel and bladder incontinence in newborns. Farmer has been investigating different stem cell types and the best way to deliver stem cell-based treatments in the womb for the past six years. She and her research colleagues recently discovered a placental therapy using stem cells that cures spina bifida in animal models. That discovery requires additional testing and FDA approval before the therapy can be used in humans. With the CIRM funding, Farmer and her team plan to optimize their stem cell product, validate its effectiveness, determine the optimal dose and confirm its preliminary safety in preparation for human clinical trials. Isseroff, who also serves as chief of dermatology and director of wound healing services for the VA Northern California Health Care System, has long been frustrated by the challenges of treating the chronic, non-healing wounds of diabetics. In 2010, she and Nolta received a CIRM grant to begin developing a bioengineered product for treating chronic diabetic wounds. Foot ulcers, in particular, affect about 25 percent of all diabetic patients and are responsible for most lower-limb amputations. Isseroff and her research team created a treatment using stem cells derived from bone marrow (mesenchymal stem cells) along with a FDA-approved scaffold to help regenerate dermal tissue and restart the healing process. Their studies found the technique to be highly effective for healing wounds in animal models. With this latest CIRM grant, Isseroff's team will refine their therapeutic technique by determining the safest dosage for regenerating tissue and testing their product in skin-wound models that closely resemble those in diabetic humans. Nolta also plans to create a Master Cell Bank of pure and effective human mesenchymal stem cells, and establish standard operating procedures for use in diabetic wound repair. The results of their efforts will enable UC Davis to move closer to FDA approval for human clinical trials in the next two and a half years. "These amazing research efforts are giant steps forward in turning stem cells into cures," said Nolta, who also directs the UC Davis Institute for Regenerative Cures in Sacramento. "This preclinical research is the most crucial, and often the toughest, stage before we move scientific discoveries from the laboratory bench to the patient's bedside. We are now poised as never before to make a big difference in the lives of people with spina bifida and non-healing diabetic wounds." For more information, visit UC Davis School of Medicine at http://medschool.ucdavis.edu.

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Stem Cell Grants for Spina Bifida and Diabetic Wound Treatments

Sight Restoration Through Stem Cell Therapy – Subject of June Symposium of Experts

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Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) March 31, 2015

This June 13th, a distinguished group of Ph.Ds, M.Ds and Professors from the top U.S and International Medical Schools will come together in Santa Monica, California, to share their latest research on the application of stem cell therapy in treatments and cures for blinding eye diseases. The symposium is organized and funded by the Ocular Research Symposia Foundation, Inc. (ORSF), an independent nonprofit that has been convening intimate meetings of top experts in the field of eye research since 2002 to move the research discussed forward at an accelerated pace.

Gerald J. Chader, Ph.D., Executive Director of the Ocular Stem Cell Project in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Southern California, and Dr. Michael Young of Harvard Medical School are co-chairs of this year's symposium. "ORSF has the unique ability to bring together experts in the key foundational issues of stem cell research, as well as a range of clinical applications," states Dr. Chader. "Beyond the academic presentations on stem cell therapy relating to glaucoma, corneal diseases, macular degeneration and other incurable eye diseases, the participants will devote time to discussing strategies to move the most promising research forward toward clinical trials and effective treatments and cures. Our approach is unique. We believe we can accomplish more in a few hours of frank discussions among colleagues than can be achieved in a week-long conference of hundreds of attendees."

After each symposium, ORSF produces a comprehensive report bringing together the many discussions and findings from the latest meeting. In 2013, their report on "The Aging Eye" was published as a special issue of "IOVS: Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science," the Journal of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. They will also be publishing this year's report. The reports offer a prime vehicle for spreading information beyond the symposium participants themselves to other researchers, clinicians,corporations, medical schools, government entities and the interested public. The reports are available free of charge through the ORSF web site.

ABOUT OCULAR RESEARCH SYMPOSIA FOUNDATION, INC.

The Ocular Research Symposia Foundation emerged from the Drabkin Research Symposia, held from 2002 to 2011. Founded by Robert Drabkin, the early symposia were presented biennially through The Washington Advisory Group. When this advisory group disbanded, ORSF was incorporated in California with ongoing support from the Drabkin Foundation, continuing the catalytic role of the symposia breaking down academic silos and making the exchange of critical information possible. Tax deductible donations to the organization go toward programming future meetings, inviting experts to the symposia, publishing reports, and spreading information throughout the ocular research field. This month, the Foundation was pleased to receive a small peer review grant for this symposium from the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine.

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Sight Restoration Through Stem Cell Therapy - Subject of June Symposium of Experts

Spirituality (3) – Spiritual Meanings of Salah – Abdallh Khadra – Video

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Spirituality (3) - Spiritual Meanings of Salah - Abdallh Khadra
Spirituality (3) - Spiritual Meanings of Salah - Abdallh Khadra Cary Masjid, NC Some lights on the spiritual meanings and aspects of salah based mostly on Imam Al-Ghazali #39;s Ihya #39;.

By: Abdallh Khadra

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Spirituality (3) - Spiritual Meanings of Salah - Abdallh Khadra - Video

How to raise a spiritual child: 3 exercises to try with your family

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On the show

Dr. Lisa Miller TODAY contributor

20 hours ago

Lisa Miller, Ph.D., is director of clinical psychology and founder of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at Columbia University, Teachers College. The author of "The Spiritual Child," she has spent over a decade researching the impact of religion and spirituality.

Every child is born a spiritual child. We all are hardwired with a natural spirituality. But this inborn capacity can be strengthened into the greatest of all our human resources through parenting.

The most important thing we can do for our children is to support their natural spirituality. Adolescents with a strong spirituality are protected against depression, substance abuse and risk-taking, and are far more likely to have meaning, purpose and thrive. Parenting for strong spirituality can start with early childhood, but we can "jump in" at any point.

To help you as a parent start to explore spirituality in your own family, here are a few exercises that I do with children, adolescents and adults. You may find that your entire family becomes quite at home with these exercises, and comes to count on them for anchoring and guidance.

EXERCISE ONE: HOSTING COUNCIL

The most important exercise I have discovered is Hosting Council in your own inner life. This is a practice that is done by all members of a family parents or grandparents, children and teens. The practice is a reflection, a meditation or visualization. I honor its original developer, Dr. Gary Weaver, who called council with thousands of teens in pain, who were separated from their personal spirituality. It is the most effective practice I have seen at welcoming teens into a personal spirituality.

Breathe in and clear a space in your inner being.

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How to raise a spiritual child: 3 exercises to try with your family

The science is in: God is the answer

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Eighteen years ago, Lisa Miller, now the director of clinical psychology at Columbia Universitys Teachers College, had an epiphany on a New York subway car. She had been poring over the mountains of data generated by a three-generation study of depressed women and their children and grandchildren. The biological trend was clear: Women with severeand particularly with recurrentdepression had daughters at equally high risk for the psychological disorder. At puberty, the risk was two to three times greater than for other girls. But the data seemed to show that the onset and, even more so, the incidence of recurring bouts with depression, varied widely.

Miller couldnt discern why. Raised in a close-knit Midwestern Jewish community, she had already looked for what she says psychologists rarely bothered to seekreligious belief and practiceand found some mild benefit for both mothers and children, but nothing that stood out among the other variants, such as socio-economic status. Then came the subway ride.

There I was, on a Sundayquite invested in this question, wasnt I, going up to the lab on a Sunday, recalls Miller in an interview. She was in a subway car crowded at one end and almost empty at the other, because that end was occupied by a dirty, dishevelled man brandishing a piece of chicken at everyone who boarded while yelling, Hey, do you want to sit with me? You want some of this chicken? The awkward scene continued for a few stops until an older woman and a girl of about eightgrandmother and granddaughter, Miller guessedgot on. The man bellowed his questions, and the pair nodded at one another and said, Thank you, in unison, and sat beside him. It astonished everyone in the car, including Miller and the man with the chicken, who grew quieter and more relaxed.

The childs evident character traitscompassion, acceptance, fearlessnessat so young an age prompted Millers eureka moment. What struck her was the nod and all it implied: It was clear as day that the grandchild fully understood how one lives out spiritual values in her family. Twenty minutes later, Miller was in her lab, running equations on the data that were, in effect, a search for the statistical nod. She was looking for mother-teen pairs who had reported a shared religion or non-religious spirituality. She calls the results the most amazing science I had ever seen. In the pairs Miller found in the data, shared spirituality (religious or otherwise)if it reached back to the childs formative yearswas 80 per cent protective in families that were otherwise at very high risk for depression.

It was the start of a long and sometimes rocky road for both Miller and the place of spiritualityhowever definedin mainstream psychological thinking. She remembers doors literally slammed in her face and people walking out of talks I was giving. But Miller and other researchers, including so-called spiritual neuroscientists like Montreals Mario Beauregard and the much-cited American psychologist Kenneth Kendler continued to explore the intersection of religiosity and mental health in studies published in major, peer-reviewed science journals. By the end of it, as Miller sets out in a provocative new book, The Spiritual Child, out later this spring, she was convinced not only of spiritualitys health benefits for people in general, but of its particular importance for young people during a stage of human development when we are most vulnerable to impulsive, risky or damaging behaviours.

Related: Inside your teenagers scary brain

In fact, Miller declares, spirituality, if properly fostered in childrens formative years, will pay off in spades in adolescence. An intensely felt, transcendental sense of a relationship with God, the universe, nature or whatever the individual identifies as his or her higher power, she found, is more protective than any other factor against the big three adolescent dangers. Spiritually connected teens are, remarkably, 60 per cent less likely to suffer from depression than adolescents who are not spiritually oriented. tweet this Theyre 40 per cent less likely to abuse alcohol or other substances, and 80 per cent less likely to engage in unprotected sex. Spiritually oriented children, raised to not shy from hard questions or difficult situations, Miller points out, also tend to excel academically.

And teenagers can use all the help they can get. Recent research has revealed their neurological development to be as rapid and overwhelming as their bodily change. The adolescent brain is simultaneously gaining in intellectual power and losing in emotional control; its neural connectionsits basic wiringis a work in progress, with connections between impulse and second (or even first) thought slower than in adults. There is a surge in unfamiliar hormones and, as it turns out, a surge in spiritual longing.

Related:Why teens are getting upset over One Directionand why thats a good thing

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The science is in: God is the answer

Aghori monks: Indian tribe feasts on human flesh, drink from skulls and live among the dead – Video

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Aghori monks: Indian tribe feasts on human flesh, drink from skulls and live among the dead
Real cannibal tribes - India: The exiled Aghori monks of Varanasi feast on human flesh and reside near cremation sites in search of spiritual enlightenment. The mysterious tribe members live...

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'Going Clear' on Scientology: Inside the Church Popular in Hollywood

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Power Players

While it boasts of membership from Hollywoods A-list, including Tom Cruise and John Travolta, the inner-workings of the Church of Scientology remain largely a mystery to onlookers. But a new HBO documentary claims to expose the church's secrets through accounts of former members.

Much like the faith it seeks to demystify, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief has spurred a wave of controversy in the wake of its explosive allegations about life inside the church, its practices, and its deceased founder: Science-fiction author L. Ron Hubbard.

Author and journalist Lawrence Wright, who wrote the book upon which the film is based, sat down with Power Players at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, D.C., for a discussion on the belief system and founding origin of Scientology.

The idea is that it's a step-by-step ladder to spiritual enlightenment, and if you follow the techniques ... you will purge your mind of fears and neuroses, Wright explained. Then, you'll be enlisted in this cause, which is to clear the planet, to save the planet and keep it from destroying itself.

In the film, former members of the church explain how the introductory principles of the techniques initially drew them to the religion. But in progressing up the ladder to spiritual enlightenment, one former member -- Academy Award-winning film director Paul Haggis, who spent 35 years in the faith -- recalls being presented with a head-scratching theory about the origin of the Earth.

They gave him a locked briefcase, which he lashed to his wrist, and went into a room that was locked. And then he opened up the briefcase, and inside -- in Hubbard's handwritten script -- is the story of the origin of the universe, which is the Xenu story of a galaxy far, far away, back in time, Wright said.

People were shipped on airplanes ... dropped in volcanoes and blown up with hydrogen bombs.

It was a turning point for Haggis. Paul read it, and thought, What? Wright recalled. It occurred to him that this is an insanity test, and, If I say I believe it, they'll think I'm insane and kick me out, but it turned out that that wasn't true.

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'Going Clear' on Scientology: Inside the Church Popular in Hollywood

U.S., Russian crew blasts off for year-long stay on space station – Video

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U.S., Russian crew blasts off for year-long stay on space station
NASA #39;s Scott Kelly and two Russian cosmonauts launched to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket on Friday. Rough Cut (no reporter narration). Subscribe: http://smarturl.it/...

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[ISS] Soyuz TMA-16M Docks to Space Station, Year Long Mission Underway – Video

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[ISS] Soyuz TMA-16M Docks to Space Station, Year Long Mission Underway
A Russian Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft with Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Korniyenko as well as NASA astronaut Scott Kelly onboard docked to the International Space Station ...

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[ISS] Soyuz TMA-16M Docks to Space Station, Year Long Mission Underway - Video

Space Engineers, The Ghost Station (Joint Survival S3, Ep #30) – Video

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Space Engineers, The Ghost Station (Joint Survival S3, Ep #30)
Remember all that lag we were getting? The stuttering? Well, we found out just what was causing it, far away, just out of sight. ---------------------------What is this game?----------------------...

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Space Engineers, The Ghost Station (Joint Survival S3, Ep #30) - Video

Astronaut Already Feels at Home in Space as 1-Year Journey Begins

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NASA TV NASA astronaut Scott Kelly (left) gives a thumb's up sign while floating next to fellow one-year crewmate Mikhail Kornienko of Russia on the International Space Station after a video chat with NASA chief Charles Bolden and others on March 30, 2

NASA's Scott Kelly one of two people spending a year on the International Space Station already feels like the orbiting outpost is home.

"It's great to be up here," veteran astronaut Kelly said during a live interview from the space station with NASA administrator Charles Bolden today (March 30). "It's like coming to my old home."

Kelly has been to the station multiple times, but his current mission is unlike anything attempted on the space laboratory before. Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko (who launched to orbit on March 27) will spend about a year on the space station, the longest amount of time anyone has ever spent living and working on the lab. [See photos from the yearlong mission]

NASA officials hope that the research Kornienko and Kelly conduct on the station during their stay could help send astronauts to Mars by the 2030s. A crew of Mars explorers might need to spend 500 days or more in space, so learning more about what happens to the body in microgravity is important for any space agency hoping to venture farther into the solar system.

NASA TV NASA Administrator Charles Bolden (right) speaks to one-year astronaut Scott Kelly on the International Space Station via a video link on March 30, 2015. At the moment, NASA scientists know a lot about what happens to astronauts after six months in weightlessness the usual amount of time a crewmember spends on the station. But they have little-to-no information about what happens when a person stays in space for a longer amount of time.

"I really want to thank you for taking on this challenge," Bolden told Kelly during the interview. "It really is important that we get it all right because we do plan to put humans on Mars in the next few decades. The 2030s is the target the president set, and we think we can really make that."

First lady Michelle Obama wished Kelly well via social media when he launched to space Friday: "We have liftoff! @StationCDRKelly just launched for the @Space_Station on his #YearInSpace," she said via Twitter. "Good luck, Captain."

Kelly also responded in kind, taking the chance to post his first photo from space during the yearlong mission.

"@FLOTUS Thank you," Kelly posted on Twitter. "Made it! Moving into crew quarters on @space_station to begin my #yearinspace."

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Astronaut Already Feels at Home in Space as 1-Year Journey Begins

Astronaut Scott Kelly sets out to break an American record in space

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JUDY WOODRUFF: Finally, a conversation about an out-of-this-world experience: living in space.

Astronaut Scott Kelly arrived this weekend at the International Space Station. He will stay there for almost a year, the longest duration an American has ever spent in space. Hes the identical twin brother of former astronaut Mark Kelly. And both will participate in a study to see the effects of living in space.

After Scott Kelly lifted off on Friday, Jeffrey Brown spoke with a former astronaut, Chris Hadfield, whose final stay on the space station lasted five months.

JEFFREY BROWN: Chris Hadfield, welcome to you.

The twin study is especially interesting this time, right, the research on the two brothers, Scott and Mark Kelly, one in space, one on the ground. What kinds of things are being looked at?

CHRIS HADFIELD, Canadian Space Agency: Yes, it sounds like science fiction, doesnt it, to have an identical twin on a space ship and another one down on the ground?

But its just luck, but, boy, it sure provides some interesting medical and scientific opportunity. You take two people that are as identical as they can be. You put them in wildly different environments, one of them that is really brand-new for humanity, living in weightlessness off the planet, and then you watch how they change over a year. You measure all of those subtle things, bone density, muscle strength, psychology, vision, blood pressure, blood pressure regulation, all of those, liver function, everything.

And it is really going to help us not only understand spaceflight for long-term flight, for going from here to the moon and Mars and beyond, but also just understand the effects on the body of flight itself, the subtle changes that happen within the body, and teach us inherently about physiology. Its a really cool thing. Its never been done before.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, so, then, of course, there is the length of time. This would be twice as long, I think, twice longer than any American up to this point.

Whats the why go longer? And lets start to talk a little bit about the new difficulties that that presents in staying up that long.

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Astronaut Scott Kelly sets out to break an American record in space