Regenerative Bandage Accelerates Wound Healing

A simple scrape or sore might not cause alarm for most people. But for diabetic patients, an untreated scratch can turn into an open wound that could potentially lead to a limb amputation or even death. A Northwestern University team has developed a new device, called a regenerative bandage, that quickly heals these painful, hard-to-treat sores without using drugs. During head-to-head tests, Northwestern's bandage healed diabetic wounds 33 percent faster than one of the most popular bandages currently on the market. "The novelty is that we identified a segment of a protein in skin that is important to wound healing,…
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Regenerative Medicine the Pain Management Alternative

Injuries happen to almost everyone, but for some they can be far worse. For those with chronic pain, arthritis and a host of other ailments, it can mean a lifetime of discomfort. While many of those symptoms can be treated, it’s often with invasive surgery or only partially effective treatments like cortisone shots. Regenerative medicine offers an alternative to going under the knife, while achieving lasting results. Relievus, a pain management and neurology specialist practice, offers these treatments at both its Havertown and Philadelphia locations. Here, clinician Dr. Uplekh Purewal offers insight. Q: What is regenerative medicine? A: It’s a form…
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Regenerative Stem Cell Therapy for Knees & Shoulders

The power of the body to heal itself is amazingly evident in a promising newer treatment known as regenerative stem cell therapy. Which orthopedic surgeon Kevin D. Plancher, MD, founder of Plancher Orthopedics & Sports Medicine, is tapping more frequently to help restore pain-free movement in patients with stubborn knee or shoulder problems. A branch of healthcare known as regenerative medicine, stem cell therapy uses immature, self-renewing cells found in the bone marrow to rejuvenate a wide variety of tissues. This rapidly evolving field, the focus of mounting research, is helping people heal faster and more naturally. As well as…
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Manufactured Stem Cells Might Boost New Diabetes Therapies

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) can be generated from adult cells. iPSCs have the potential to develop into any cell type in the human body. These cells hold an enormous therapeutic potential in a variety of conditions. Including but not limited to cardiac diseases, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injury, and diabetes. A team of researchers from Lonza, developed clinical-grade iPSCs from human umbilical cord blood cells collected following a healthy birth. These cells, described in the study “cGMP-Manufactured Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Are Available for Pre-Clinical and Clinical Applications,” published in Stem Cell Reports. iPSCs are now available for…
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Stem Cells for Personalized Pain Therapy Testing

Using patient-derived stem cells, researchers create laboratory neuron models that reflect a patient’s response to a pain drug. Pain can be tough to take, and it’s also difficult to study: rodent models for pain do not necessarily translate to human pain conditions and expression of disease-causing mutations in cell lines may not precisely mimic the physiology of human pain disorders. Now, researchers have developed a new way to test pain—and, potentially, other sensory-targeting medications. Edward Stevens and James Bilsland of the Pfizer’s U.K.-based neuroscience and pain research units and their colleagues have shown that induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) derived…
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