Recently, we have highlighted some successful stem cell treatments in Canada and United States dealing with leukemia patients.  Today, I am happy to say that Vietnam is getting into the act:

Vietnam has been successful in performing the first marrow transplant, Vietnam News Agency on Wednesday quoted the announcement of country's Central Hematology and Blood Transfusion Institute as reporting.

The transplant was operated on Nguyen Thi Lan, a local 21-year-old leukemia sufferer, and the donor of blood-forming stem cell was her elder sister.

After two-month treatment, Lan has been discharged from the institute in a normal health condition. Tests no longer found cancer cells, and her marrow is reported to be normal.

The institute's vice director Bach Quoc Khanh said a new method of chemical treatment was used in the transplant to enable the patient to accept cells resistant to cancer. The new method also helped reduce the risk of side-effects such as infection and bleeding which can lead to the patient's death.

Click here for the full article

Repair Stem Cell SAB Member Zannos Grekos is in the news again!  -- Dr. Grekos was a featured speaker at the 16th Annual World Congress on Anti-Aging Medicine & Regenerative Biomedical Technologies at the Gaylord National Resort in Washington, DC, on Friday, July 18.  And what did he have to say?  Let's take a look:

"I've seen patients go from an ejection fraction of 28 percent to 49 percent in six months with the stem cell therapy," he told the captive audience. (An ejection fraction of 50 is normal.) "Injecting a patient's own stem cells into damaged tissue is replacing damaged cells with normal functioning cells.

The group was particularly fascinated with the center's research proving that adult stem cells have the ability to engraft themselves into areas damaged by myocardial infarction (heart attacks) and turn into new heart cells and new blood vessels.

Dr. Grekos responded to the forum by stating, "Three months after treatment, cardiac nuclear scans of the areas treated reveal reversal of damage. In some cases, it's virtually impossible to identify the problems that existed before therapy. We have shown such improvement in some patients that they were taken off the heart transplant list."

This is good news.  More proof that adult (repair) stem cells do work!  For more on Dr. Grekos and his stem cell treatments- click here

For the full article- click here

This probably isn't news to our Dr. Carlos Lima, but it may be good news for spinal cord injury victims coming across this blog or website for the first time.  -  MIT researchers along with the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm have found that spinal cord stem cells that are grown/multiplied in a lab and then reintroduced into the injury site can restore some physical function in paralyzed rodents and primates.

More:

"We have been able to genetically mark this neural stem cell population and then follow their behavior. We find that these cells proliferate upon spinal cord injury, migrate toward the injury site and differentiate over several months," study author Konstantinos Meletis said in an MIT news release.

This isn't too surprising to me as it seems they have proven (or on the way to proving) that adult stem cells do their job of repairing when introduced into an injury  site in a large amount.

For more on stem cells for spinal cord injuries- click here

For the full article mentioned above- click here

Yesterday, I presented the miraculous story of Chris LoDuca- a man no longer suffering from cancer thanks to a bone marrow stem cell transplant from an anonymous donor at the time. (See yesterday's story below- they met for the first time recently).

Today, I present a letter from a woman who was also saved in a similar fashion. Tiffany Hooper wrote this letter to the editor of her local newspaper. Read it and think about what you can do to help:

Dear Editor,

I am a wife, stepmom, daughter, sister, and I am a 2-time survivor of acute leukemia.

I was diagnosed in 2002 and after chemotherapy and nearly five years in remission relapsed last October. Without a bone marrow transplant I believe there was no hope for my long-term survival. I think about what those words mean, would have meant, to my family¦no hope.

Like over 70% of patients in need of bone marrow or stem cells I had no donor match within my family. I needed the gift of an unrelated donor. And, in January in intensive care, “hope was delivered.

I can thank the doctors, nurses, and the other staff of the transplant team, but I can never truly thank the biggest hero, my anonymous marrow donor, who somewhere in the world made the choice to join a donor registry.

In a small attempt to “pay it forward I'd like to urge, better yet beg, your readers to visit www.onematch.ca or call 1 888 2 DONATE for information on joining the registry and becoming a potential donor. If people would like to ask me questions about my experience to help in making a decision they can email me at tjhrh@sympatico.ca.

What if you knew you were a match, right now, for someone whose life is being stolen by cancer or another marrow disease, and your donation could save them? If it were your spouse, your child, or your parent, what wouldn't you do?

Sincerely,

Tiffany Hopper

Petawawa, Ontario

I can never get too many of these stories. Every time I read them, the
tears want to start flowing. Cancer patient (chronic myelogenous
leukemia) Chris LoDuca, was dying and in desperate need of a stem cell
transplant. He had been waiting for a possible donor for more than 1
year. Lots of cancer victims pass away waiting for a matching donor,
but Chris was lucky. Around the world, there was a matching donor in
Germany - Manuel Raisch.  Manuel generously donated his stem cells to
a man he had never met.  These repair stem cells would save Chris'
life. And now, more than 3 years later, they met for the very first time. Chris and his wife were  overwhelmed by the moment:

With the co-operation of LoDuca's wife Pam, it(the first meeting of Chris and Manuel) was kept a surprise until the annual Camp 4 Compassion on a farm near Leamington that promotes awareness of the worldwide blood and bone marrow donation registry.
LoDuca was told he had to be there for a belated 40th birthday party.
Instead, he came face-to-face with Manuel Raisch, a tall, bearded 27-year-old theology student from Wiesenbach who spoke little English.
"I was in complete shock," said LoDuca. "I was overwhelmed."
"Sitting next to me is a real hero," he said.
How many ways can you say thank-you? LoDuca can tell you all about that now.
The tears quietly streaming down his wife's face perhaps said it best.

Click here for the whole thing Sorry, - link was removed. Click here for the same story, but edited differently