Researchers used induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) derived from a young patient with Long QT syndrome (LQTS), a congenital heart disorder, to determine a course of treatment that helped manage the patient’s life-threatening arrhythmias.
Scientists at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio have for the first time demonstrated that baboon embryonic stem cells can be programmed to completely restore a severely damaged artery. These early results show promise for eventually developing stem cell therapies to restore human tissues or organs damaged by age or disease.
Researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, collaborating with scientists from San Diego-based biotech company ViaCyte, Inc., looked at the differences and similarities between two types of hESC-derived endocrine cell populations and primary human endocrine cells, with the longer-term goal of developing new stem cell therapies for diabetes.
Apparent stem cell transplant success in mice may hold promise for people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease. The results of the study were released today and will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 65th Annual Meeting in San Diego, March 16 to 23, 2013.
Scientists propose a new way to isolate early stage embryonic stem cells.
Unlike less versatile muscle or nerve cells, embryonic stem cells are by definition equipped to assume any cellular role. Scientists call this flexibility “pluripotency,” meaning that as an organism develops, stem cells must be ready at a moment’s notice to activate highly diverse gene expression programs used to turn them into blood, brain, or kidney cells.
An international team, headed by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, has identified a key enzyme in the reprogramming process that promotes malignant stem cell cloning and the growth of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), a cancer of the blood and marrow that experts say is increasing in prevalence.
Growing new blood vessels in the lab is a tough challenge, but a Johns Hopkins engineering team has solved a major stumbling block: how to prod stem cells to become two different types of tissue that are needed to build tiny networks of veins and arteries.
A joint team of scientists from The New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) Laboratory and Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) has developed a technique that may prevent the inheritance of mitochondrial diseases in children. The study is published online today in Nature.
Donated umbilical cord blood establishes a new blood supply in patients more quickly after transplantation when it is first expanded in the lab on a bed of cells that mimics conditions in the bone marrow, researchers report in the Dec. 13 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Just like the bones that hold up your body, your cells have their own scaffolding that holds them up. This scaffolding, known as the extracellular matrix, or ECM, not only props up cells but also provides attachment sites, or “sticky spots,” to which cells can bind, just as bones hold muscles in place.
A new method for generating stem cells from mature cells promises to boost stem cell production in the laboratory, helping to remove a barrier to regenerative medicine therapies that would replace damaged or unhealthy body tissues.
Next week, more than 1,200 people from 25 countries are expected to attend the 8th Annual World Stem Cell Summit in West Palm Beach, Fla., a gathering co-sponsored by Mayo Clinic. As those close to the science explore potential stem cell applications, many patients have questions about what stem cells are and how they are being used. Timothy Nelson, M.D., Ph.D., director of Mayo Clinic’s Regenerative Medicine Consult Service, answers some of the most commonly asked questions about stem cells.
Johns Hopkins researchers report concrete steps in the use of human stem cells to test how diseased cells respond to drugs. Their success highlights a pathway toward faster, cheaper drug development for some genetic illnesses, as well as the ability to pre-test a therapy’s safety and effectiveness on cultured clones of a patient’s own cells.
Thanks to some careful detective work, scientist better understand just how iPS cells form – and why the Yamanaka process is inefficient, an important step to work out for regenerative medicine. The findings uncover cellular impediments to iPS cell development that, if overcome, could dramatically improve the efficiency and speed of iPS cell generation.
Canadian and Italian stem cell researchers have discovered a new “master control gene” for human blood stem cells and found that manipulating its levels could potentially create a way to expand these cells for clinical use.
For the first time, Wisconsin researchers have taken skin from patients and, using induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology, turned them into a laboratory model for an inherited type of macular degeneration.
Using polymer nanofibers thinner than human hairs as scaffolds, researchers have coaxed a type of brain cell to wrap around fibers that mimic the shape and size of nerves found in the body.
Claudio Anasetti, M.D., chair of the Department of Blood & Marrow Transplant at Moffitt Cancer Center, and colleagues from 47 research sites in the Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network conducted a two-year clinical trial comparing two-year survival probabilities for patients transplanted with peripheral blood stem cells or bone marrow stem cells from unrelated donors. The goal was to determine whether graft source, peripheral blood stem cells or bone marrow, affects outcomes in unrelated donor transplants for patients with leukemia or other hematologic malignancies.
One of the world’s leading bone marrow transplant experts is recommending a significant change to current transplant practice for patients who need marrow or adult stem cells from an unrelated donor to treat hematologic malignancies. Fred Appelbaum, M.D., director of the Clinical Research Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, asserts that bone marrow – not circulating, peripheral blood, which is the current norm – should be the source for unrelated donor adult stem cells for most patients who require a transplant. The reason: because there is less incidence of chronic graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), which can be a debilitating side effect of transplantation.
While it is well known that starfish, zebrafish and salamanders can re-grow damaged limbs, scientists understand very little about the regenerative capabilities of mammals. Now, researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine report on the regenerative process that enables rats to re-grow their bladders within eight weeks.
Scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have taken the first steps to create neural-like stem cells from muscle tissue in animals. Details of the work are published in two complementary studies published in the September online issues of the journals Experimental Cell Research and Stem Cell Research.
The unexpected survival of embryonic neurons transplanted into the brains of newborn mice in a series of experiments at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) raises hope for the possibility of using neuronal transplantation to treat diseases like Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s and schizophrenia.
A Phase I clinical trial led by investigators from the University of California, San Francisco and sponsored by Stem Cells Inc., showed that neural stem cells successfully engrafted into the brains of patients and appear to have produced myelin.
Researchers at Cedars-Sinai’s Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute have found that a blood vessel-building gene boosts the ability of human bone marrow stem cells to sustain pancreatic recovery in a laboratory mouse model of insulin-dependent diabetes.
An experimental treatment for blindness, developed from a patient’s skin cells, improved the vision of blind mice in a study conducted by Columbia ophthalmologists and stem cell researchers.
Studying leukemia in mice, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have reduced a life-threatening complication of stem cell transplants, the only curative treatment when leukemia returns.
Working with mice, Johns Hopkins researchers have solved a key part of a muscle regeneration mystery plaguing scientists for years, adding strong support to the theory that muscle mass can be built without a complete, fully functional supply of muscle stem cells.
Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center have discovered that the micro ribonucleic acid miR-214 plays a critical role in regulating ovarian cancer stem cell properties. This knowledge, said the researchers, could pave the way for a therapeutic target for ovarian cancer.
Mayo Clinic researchers have found a way to detect and eliminate potentially troublemaking stem cells to make stem cell therapy safer. Induced Pluripotent Stem cells, also known as iPS cells, are bioengineered from adult tissues to have properties of embryonic stem cells, which have the unlimited capacity to differentiate and grow into any desired types of cells, such as skin, brain, lung and heart cells. However, during the differentiation process, some residual pluripotent or embryonic-like cells may remain and cause them to grow into tumors.
The promise of stem cells seems limitless. If they can be coaxed into rebuilding organs, repairing damaged spinal cords and restoring ravaged immune systems, these malleable cells would revolutionize medical treatment. But stem cell research is still in its infancy, as scientists seek to better understand the role of these cells in normal human development and disease.
Salk scientists have identified a unique molecular signature in induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), "reprogrammed" cells that show great promise in regenerative medicine thanks to their ability to generate a range of body tissues.
In a study at the University of California, San Diego and VA San Diego Healthcare, researchers were able to regenerate “an astonishing degree” of axonal growth at the site of severe spinal cord injury in rats. Their research revealed that early stage neurons have the ability to survive and extend axons to form new, functional neuronal relays across an injury site in the adult central nervous system (CNS).
New genetic markers identified by researchers at Whitehead Institute and MIT could help make the process for reprogramming regular body cells into pluripotent stem cells more efficient, allowing scientists to predict which treated cells will successfully become pluripotent.
UCLA stem cell researchers have found that a gene therapy regimen can safely restore immune systems to children with so-called “Bubble Boy” disease, a life threatening condition that if left untreated can be fatal within one to two years.
University of Maryland School of Medicine researchers have found that cardiac stem cells (CSCs) from newborns have a three-fold ability to restore heart function to nearly normal levels compared with adult CSCs. Further, in animal models of heart attack, hearts treated with neonatal stem cells pumped stronger than those given adult cells.
Scientists at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have discovered a subpopulation of cells that display cancer stem cell properties and resistance to chemotherapy, and participate in tumor progression. This breakthrough could lead to the development of new tests for early cancer diagnosis, prognostic tests, and innovative therapeutic strategies, as reported in Cancer Cell.
Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a protein essential to repairing the intestine’s inner lining.
Using a stepwise trans-differentiation process, Whitehead Institute researchers have turned skin cells into embryonic Sertoli-like cells.
UCLA researchers have discovered a type of cell that is the “missing link” between bone marrow stem cells and all the cells of the human immune system, a finding that will lead to a greater understanding of how a healthy immune system is produced and how disease can lead to poor immune function.
Stowers scientists show how pluripotent stem cells mobilize in wounded planarian worms, to better understand stem cell behavior in regeneration and disease.
Johns Hopkins scientists have developed a reliable method to turn the clock back on blood cells, restoring them to a primitive stem cell state from which they can then develop into any other type of cell in the body.
In a finding that could be important to the use of all kinds of stem cells in treating disease, scientists have discovered the crucial role of a protein called Mof in preserving the ‘stem-ness’ of stem cells, and priming them to become specialized cells in mice.
Working with mice, Johns Hopkins researchers say they have figured out how stem cells found in a part of the brain responsible for learning, memory and mood regulation decide to remain dormant or create new brain cells. Apparently, the stem cells “listen in” on the chemical communication among nearby neurons to get an idea about what is stressing the system and when they need to act.
Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, the University of Manchester, and the MD Anderson Cancer Center have found a new role for an oncogenic signaling pathway in embryonic stem cell (ESC) self-renewal and in reprogramming adult cells into an ESC-state, which will aid in the development of future cancer therapies.
UCLA stem cell researchers have found for the first time a surprising and unexpected plasticity in the embryonic endothelium, the place where blood stem cells are made in early development. Scientists found that the lack of one transcription factor, a type of gene that controls cell fate by regulating other genes, allows the precursors that normally generate blood stem and progenitor cells in blood forming tissues to become something very unexpected - beating cardiomyocytes, or heart muscle cells.
In the first human study of its kind, researchers found that using stem cells to re-grow craniofacial tissues—mainly bone—proved quicker, more effective and less invasive than traditional bone regeneration treatments.
Stem cells can actually replace dead heart tissue after a heart attack very early in life — but those same cells lose that regenerative ability in adults, according to researchers at Cornell University and the University of Bonn. The study, using mice as subjects, found that undifferentiated precursor cells grow new heart cells in a two-day-old mouse, but not in adult mice, settling a decades-old controversy about whether stem cells can play a role in the recovery of the adult mammalian heart following infarction — where heart tissue dies due to artery blockage.
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