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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Mice continue to grow stronger, as researchers at the University of Toronto have found that osteoporosis can be reversed with a single injection of stem cells [utoronto.ca]:

Imagine telling a patient suffering from age-related (type-II) osteoporosis that a single injection of stem cells could restore their normal bone structure. This week, with a publication in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine, a group of researchers from the University of Toronto and The Ottawa Hospital suggest that this scenario may not be too far away.

[...] Professor William Stanford [www.ohri.ca], senior author of the study, had in previous research demonstrated a causal effect between mice that developed age-related osteoporosis and low or defective mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in these animals. "We reasoned that if defective MSCs are responsible for osteoporosis, transplantation of healthy MSCs should be able to prevent or treat osteoporosis," said Stanford, who is a Senior Scientist at The Ottawa Hospital and Professor at the University of Ottawa.

To test that theory, the researchers injected osteoporotic mice with MSCs from healthy mice. Stem cells are "progenitor" cells, capable of dividing and changing into all the different cell types in the body. Able to become bone cells, MSCs have a second unique feature, ideal for the development of human therapies: these stem cells can be transplanted from one person to another without the need for matching (needed for blood transfusions, for instance) and without being rejected. After six months post-injection, a quarter of the life span of these animals, the osteoporotic bone had astonishingly given way to healthy, functional bone.

"We had hoped for a general increase in bone health," said John E. Davies [utoronto.ca], Professor at the Faculty of Dentistry and the Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering (IBBME) at the University of Toronto, and a co-author of the study. "But the huge surprise was to find that the exquisite inner "coral-like" architecture of the bone structure of the injected animals—which is severely compromised in osteoporosis—was restored to normal."

Found at Futurity [futurity.org].

Systemic Mesenchymal Stromal Cell Transplantation Prevents Functional Bone Loss in a Mouse Model of Age-Related Osteoporosis [alphamedpress.org] (DOI: 10.5966/sctm.2015-0231)

Original Submission