Injecting hydrogels containing stem cell or exosome therapeutics directly into the pericardial cavity could be a less invasive, less costly, and more effective means of treating cardiac injury.
While the amazing regenerative power of the liver has been known since ancient times, the cells responsible for maintaining and replenishing the liver have remained a mystery. Now, research from the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) has identified the cells responsible for liver maintenance and regeneration while also pinpointing where they reside in the liver.
David Kaplan, the Stern Family Professor of Engineering at Tufts University School of Engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering in recognition of his contributions to silk-based materials for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.
The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) has elected to its College of Fellows Evan Y. Snyder, M.D., Ph.D., professor and founding director of the Center for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute. Snyder was nominated, reviewed, and elected by his peers and members of the College of Fellows for his seminal contributions to regenerative medicine.
A new study from UCLA and Stanford University researchers finds that three-dimensional human stem cell-derived brain organoids can mature in a manner that is strikingly similar to human brain development.
In November 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy (RMAT) designation for a promising engineered cellular therapy called AB-205. AB-205 acts promptly to repair injured vascular niches of organs to prevent or reduce severe toxicities in patients who have Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) or non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) undergoing high dose chemotherapy and autologous stem cell transplantion.
The 2021 Kappa Delta Young Investigator Award was presented to Lin Han, PhD, for research on the structure and function of cartilage extracellular matrix (ECM) and its impact on tissue regeneration and disease evolution in osteoarthritis (OA).
Cato T. Laurencin, MD, PhD, was named the 2021 Kappa Delta Ann Doner Vaughn Award recipient for his 30 years of scientific research in musculoskeletal regenerative engineering, the field which he founded and brought to the forefront of translational medicine.
Working with fish, birds and mice, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers report new evidence that some animals’ natural capacity to regrow neurons is not missing, but is instead inactivated in mammals. Specifically, the researchers found that some genetic pathways that allow many fish and other cold-blooded animals to repair specialized eye neurons after injury remain present in mammals as well, but are turned off, blocking regeneration and healing.
Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research in Japan have discovered a recipe for continuous cyclical regeneration of cultured hair follicles from hair follicle stem cells.
Scientists from Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago were able to regenerate functional urinary bladder tissue in a rodent model using human bone marrow derived stem and progenitor cells. Their findings, published in Scientific Reports, offer great promise to children suffering from end stage bladder dysfunction, for whom surgery carries significant risks.
Researchers from the Uniformed Services University (USU) recently identified pint-sized antibodies, or “nanobodies,” that could protect against COVID-19. At least one of these nanobodies – produced by a llama named Cormac – also appears to work well in either liquid or aerosol form, suggesting it could also help protect a person’s lungs from infections.
Injecting a gene therapy vector into one eye of someone suffering from LHON, the most common cause of mitochondrial blindness, significantly improves vision in both eyes, scientists have found.
UCLA researchers are the first to create a version of COVID-19 in mice that shows how the disease damages organs other than the lungs. Using their model, the scientists discovered that the SARS-CoV-2 virus can shut down energy production in cells of the heart, kidneys, spleen and other organs.
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have combined synthetic biology with a machine learning algorithm to create human liver organoids with blood and bile handling systems. When implanted into mice with failing livers, the lab-grown replacement livers extended life.
DALLAS – Dec. 3, 2020 – A team led by UT Southwestern has derived a new “intermediate” embryonic stem cell type from multiple species that can contribute to chimeras and create precursors to sperm and eggs in a culture dish.
Scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute have created a drug that can lure stem cells to damaged tissue and improve treatment efficacy—a scientific first and major advance for the field of regenerative medicine. The discovery, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), could improve current stem cell therapies designed to treat such neurological disorders as spinal cord injury, stroke, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other neurodegenerative disorders; and expand their use to new conditions, such as heart disease or arthritis.
Laurencin will accept the honor during the 2020 Virtual MRS Spring/Fall Meeting, where at 4:00 pm (ET), Wednesday, December 2, he will present his award lecture, Regenerative Engineering: Materials and Convergence.
A team at Aalto University has used bacteria to produce intricately designed three-dimensional objects made of nanocellulose. With their technique, the researchers are able to guide the growth of bacterial colonies through the use of strongly water repellent – or superhydrophobic – surfaces.
A newly developed light-sensing protein called the MCO1 opsin restores vision in blind mice when attached to retina bipolar cells using gene therapy. The National Eye Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, provided a Small Business Innovation Research grant to Nanoscope, LLC for development of MCO1. The company is planning a U.S. clinical trial for later this year.
The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) continues to demonstrate its commitment to advancing the quality of musculoskeletal care in a fully transparent and scientific way. Debuting today as a new member benefit, the AAOS Biologics Dashboard is a dynamic online tool designed to help orthopaedic surgeons navigate the approval status of biologic-based interventions. The development of the AAOS Biologics Dashboard is just one of several efforts within the Academy’s Biologics Initiative that offers evidence-based guidance to the musculoskeletal health community. An additional effort is the revision of two biologics-related position statements, recently approved by the AAOS Board of Directors.
NuShores Biosciences, a spin-off company of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, has received a three-year, $2.8 million contract from the Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium, a biomedical technology consortium associated with the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command. The contract will enable NuShores to develop intelligent automated production of its NuCress™ bone void filler scaffold products using its factory-in-a-box concept. Key collaborators on the project include UA Little Rock and MiQ Partners of Cincinnati.
Research in pigs shows that using the exosomes naturally produced from a mix of heart muscle, endothelial and smooth muscle cells — all derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells — yields regenerative benefits equivalent to the injected human induced pluripotent stem cell-cardiac cells.
Imagine this: A patient learns that they are losing their sight because an eye disease has damaged crucial cells in their retina. Then, under the care of their doctor, they simply grow some new retinal cells, restoring their vision.
Although science hasn’t yet delivered this happy ending, researchers are working on it – with help from the humble zebrafish. When a zebrafish loses its retinal cells, it grows new ones. This observation has encouraged scientists to try hacking the zebrafish’s innate regenerative capacity to learn how to treat human disease. That is why among the National Eye Institute’s 1,200 active research projects, nearly 80 incorporate zebrafish.
Scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys, Fondazione Santa Lucia IRCCS, and Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Rome have shown that pharmacological (drug) correction of the content of extracellular vesicles released within dystrophic muscles can restore their ability to regenerate muscle and prevent muscle scarring. The study, published in EMBO Reports, reveals a promising new therapeutic approach for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), an incurable muscle-wasting condition.
University of Miami Miller School of Medicine researchers are about to start recruiting for the first U.S. clinical trial looking at treating Peyronie’s disease, a painful and agonizing condition common in men, with platelet-rich plasma (PRP).
Hepatocytes – the chief functional cells of the liver – are natural regenerators, and the lymph nodes serve as a nurturing place where they can multiply. Researchers demonstrated that large animals with ailing livers can grow a new organ in their lymph nodes from their own hepatocytes.
Researchers have identified a microRNA (miRNA) that could promote hair regeneration. This miRNA – miR-218-5p – plays an important role in regulating the pathway involved in follicle regeneration, and could be a candidate for future drug development.
Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute has received an award from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to advance promising drug candidates for COVID-19. The research team will test two existing drugs against “mini lungs in a dish” that have been infected with SARS-CoV-2.
Researchers have developed a new drug that prevents blood clots without causing an increased risk of bleeding, a common side effect of all antiplatelet medications currently available. A new study published in the journal Science Translational Medicine describes the drug and its delivery mechanisms and shows that the drug is also an effective treatment for heart attack in animal models.
The National Institutes of Health has renewed a five-year grant for $5 million for the Alliance for Regenerative Rehabilitation and Training (AR3T) to continue its work expanding scientific knowledge, expertise and methodologies focused on science and regenerative medicine.
New research published in Nature Communications uses a technology first developed at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine to enhance the oxygenation of cultured tissues that will likely be able to conduct real-time regeneration and development studies in the human pancreas.
New UCLA research conducted in mice could explain why some people suffer more extensive scarring than others after a heart attack. The study, published in the journal Cell, reveals that a protein known as type 5 collagen plays a critical role in regulating the size of scar tissue in the heart.
WFIRM scientists were able to show that bioengineered uteri in an animal model developed the native tissue-like structures needed to support normal reproductive function.
Using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and deleting a key gene, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have created natural killer cells — a type of immune cell — with measurably stronger activity against a form of leukemia, both in vivo and in vitro.
Using skin cells from human volunteers, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have created fully functional mini livers, which they then transplanted into rats. In this proof-of-concept experiment, the lab-made organs survived for four days inside their animal hosts.
A new study finds the use of HGH treatment in patients that have undergone ACL reconstructive surgery may prevent the loss of muscle strength and weakness.
A recent study from the Mechanobiology Institute at the National University of Singapore has shown that rejuvenated fibroblasts can recover their ability to self-contract. This encouraging discovery holds great potential for applications in regenerative medicine and stem cell engineering.
Scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute and Loma Linda University Health have demonstrated the promise of applying magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to predict the efficacy of using human neural stem cells to treat a brain injury—a first-ever “biomarker” for regenerative medicine that could help personalize stem cell treatments for neurological disorders and improve efficacy. The study was published in Cell Reports.