Well-known for her television roles as Chrissy Snow on “Three’s Company” and Carol Lambert on “Step by Step,” Somers opened up about her recent bout with breast cancer, detailing her choice to fore-go radiation in favor of alternative treatment:

“They took the fat from my stomach - boo hoo – and, this is in lay speak, in a sophisticated technology like a centrifuge, whipped it around at supersonic speed, and extracted my stem cells, separated them, cleaned them, discarded the weak ones, took the strong stem cells in a small amount of that fat, made it rich with my stem cells and then, again, for lack of a better term, took a turkey baster and injected into this breast, and poof! Wow!”

The face – and legs – behind the infamous infomercials for Thighmaster, Somers told Piers Morgan that her type of surgery may be the first step in tremendous medical progress:

“It is the blood vessels and the nerve growing,” said the 65-year-old Somers. “To me, the ramifications of what this can mean for the future uses of stem cells, I think of our enlisted people and we’re not that far away from being able to regrow limbs. I hope this just opens the door a little bit.”

Watch the clip, and listen to the interview, as the author of the new book “Bombshell: Explosive Medical Secrets That Will Define Aging” shared specific details about how she feels today.

Professor Colin McGuckin who is a director of the new foundation, is the Vatican’s advisor on stem cells. He is also a director of The Cell Therapy Research Institute in Lyon, France

Speaking at the launch, Professor McGuckin said: “Like all countries in Europe, Ireland must look to the future to protect the population and be ready for new treatments. We cannot simply look back and say, ‘I wish we had prepared for that’. In my career, I worked with children who would be alive today, if more stem cell banks had been available.”

The foundation has been set up to provide awareness and information about adult stem cells,  research, development and therapies; to support people in need of or undergoing stem cell therapy; and to support the development of an all-Ireland stem-cell bank and to support adult stem-cell research and development.

On the issue of umbilical cord blood collection, Professor McGuckin added: “Umbilical cord blood, with 130 million births per year, remains the most available stem cell source. The health of Irish citizens demands that we debate now what we can do and umbilical cord blood and adult stem cells must be part of that debate”.

Professor McGuckin believes that Ireland must fund adult stem cell research and be ready to understand the socio-economic issues surrounding cellular therapy, stem cell banking, facilities provision, law and the relevant medical technology.

Adult stem cells are found in bone marrow, peripheral blood, umbilical cord blood, skeletal muscle, skin and teeth. They have been used to successfully treat leukaemia and related blood cancers for many years.

Umbilical cord blood and bone marrow treatments have seen the highest success rate to date. These critical adult stem cells can treat leukaemia, lymphoma, sickle cell disease, thalassaemia and immune deficiencies.

Over 70 diseases are treatable with cord blood and over 15 clinical trials are under way for new conditions. Although most treatments are for third parties (“allogeneic”), cord blood can treat the same person (“autologous”) – which is essential for regenerative medicine.

Professor McGuckin’s research group was the first to identify a rare group of cells with similar characteristics to embryonic stem cells and to develop them into non-blood tissues such as the liver, brain and pancreas. His latest clinical trial includes the use of a child’s own cord blood for the treatment of severe neonatal hypoxia, which may lead to cerebral palsy.

He is also developing a treatment for children with congenital bone malformations such as Cleft Palate, using the child’s own mesenchymal stem cells to make bone implants.

For further information http://www.asfi.ie

Video Link:

Treating Parkinson’s with stem cells

Featured live on Fox News

Scientists investigating natural ways to enhance athletic performance have found that bovine colostrum can massively reduce gut permeability – otherwise known as ‘leaky gut syndrome.’  Their findings, published in the March issue of the American Journal of Physiology-Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology, could have positive implications not just for athletes but also for sufferers of heatstroke.

A research group led by Ray Playford, Professor of Medicine at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry looked at athletes who were asked to run for 20 minutes at 80 per cent of their aerobic maximum. At the end of the exercise, changes in the subjects gut leakiness were measured using urine sample – also determined were changes in the athletes’ core temperature.  Under standard conditions, gut leakiness had increased by 250 per cent and temperature had risen by 2 degrees.  However, when the group were given a drink of dairy colostrum for two weeks before the trial, the rise in gut leakiness was reduced by about 80 per cent, despite the same effort and temperature rise.

Gut disorders induced by exercise are common in runners – the body’s response to increased permeability is to clear the gut contents, giving rise to symptoms such as diarrhoea to avoid toxins from gut organisms entering the bloodstream, as these lead to heatstroke which can result in damage to the internal organs.

Professor Playford’s research identified changes in gut barrier function in laboratory studies: gut cells were cultured at normal 37 degrees body heat and at 39 degrees to replicate the temperature after exercise. The death rate of gut cells was much increased at the higher temperature yet when colostrum was added to the culture medium the rise in cell death rate was reduced by two thirds.

Professor Ray Playford said: “Athletes’ performance can be seriously diminished due to gut symptoms during heavy exercise. We have been looking at natural approaches to reduce this problem as the range of products that athletes can legitimately take is very limited. Our findings suggest colostrum may have real value in helping our athletes perform. This is a research area we are especially interested in given our proximity to the 2012 Olympic site. In addition, extremes of temperature and exercise are often suffered by armed forces in desert war scenarios and can result in heat stroke which is life threatening. Based on our results to date, our research group is also exploring products that may be useful for protecting soldiers in life threatening situations such as these.”

More information: on the benefits of  bovine colostrum and how it assists athletes is published in the March issue of American Journal of Physiology-Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology (http://ajpgi.physiology.org/)

From Wall Street Journal, Heartbeat

London: Scientists claim to have successfully healed the damage caused to glaucoma in rats, a breakthrough they say could lead to an effective treatment for one of the most common causes of blindness in humans in just a few years.

Researchers at University College London who carried out this landmark research hoped that their new stem cell therapy could be tested on humans by 2015 and in widespread use four years later.

Glaucoma affects about 70 million people around the world and one in 10 sufferers go blind because of late diagnosis, drugs not working or the disease being particularly severe at present, a newspaper reported.

In the study, the researchers took healthy stem cells — “master” cells capable of turning into other types of cell and widely seen as a repair kit for the body — from human eyes.

Using a cocktail of chemicals, they turned them into retinal ganglion cells that die in glaucoma and then injected those into the eyes of rats with glaucoma-like damage.

After just four weeks, the cells had connected with existing nerve cells, and the animals eyes worked 50 percent better, the researches reported in the journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine.

Study author Dr Astrid Limb said: “Although this research is still a long way from the clinic, it is a significant step towards our ultimate goal of finding a cure for glaucoma and other related conditions.

“The human eye is actually very efficient. We can still have fairly good vision with very few functioning retinal nerve cells, which is why many glaucoma patients don`t show symptoms until it is too late to treat the underlying cause of their vision loss.”

“If we can restore even a small number of retinal, ganglion cells through cell therapy, and achieve functioning vision, we could potentially delay or even reverse blindness caused by glaucoma.”

However, the researchers cautioned that their work is still at an early stage but even a small improvement on vision could make a big difference to quality of life.

In glaucoma, the build-up of pressure in the fluid in the eye damages cells in optic nerve, which ferries visual information to the brain for processing.

The researcher envisions the setting up of cell banks, similar to those used to store blood.

Other possibilities include to take healthy stem cells from a person’s own eye and developing a drug that triggers the development of replacement cells inside the eye, removing the need for any sort of op.  Study co-author Prof Peng Khaw said that even a small improvement in vision could transform lives.

He added: “Research like this gives hope to the many millions of people who have lost their sight due to glaucoma.”  Dr Dolores Conroy, of charity Fight for Sight, which also helped fund the research, said: “Currently, there is no way to restore the vision of the millions of people who have lost their sight through glaucoma.”

“This research shows that in the near future, it may be possible to use adult stem cells to preserve and restore sight lost through this devastating eye condition.”

“These results bring us another step closer to treating one of the leading causes of sight loss in the UK with stem cell therapy.”