SBP researchers have identified specific ways in which fetal muscle stem cells remodel their environment to support their enhanced capacity for regeneration, which could lead to targets for therapies to improve adult stem cells’ ability to replace injured or degenerated muscle.
The Coriell Institute for Medical Research today announces the in-licensing of PluriTest, a cost-effective, accurate, animal-free bioinformatics assay for determining the pluripotency of human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC).
Scientists have used a new gene-editing technology called CRISPR, to repair a genetic mutation responsible for retinitis pigmentosa (RP), an inherited condition that causes the retina to degrade and leads to blindness in at least 1.5 million cases worldwide.
Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have successfully converted human skin cells into fully-functional pancreatic cells. The new cells produced insulin in response to changes in glucose levels, and, when transplanted into mice, the cells protected the animals from developing diabetes in a mouse model of the disease.
New research by UC San Francisco stem cell biologists has revealed that a DNA-binding protein called Foxd3 acts like a genetic traffic signal, holding that ball of undifferentiated cells in a state of readiness for its great transformation in the third week of development.
Mayo Clinic researchers have taken what they hope will be the first step toward preventing and reversing age-related stem cell dysfunction and metabolic disease, including diabetes. The researchers discovered methods for reducing these conditions in naturally aged mice.
Su-Chun Zhang, a pioneer in developing neurons from stem cells at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has created a specialized nerve cell that makes serotonin, a signaling chemical with a broad role in the brain.
Ghosts are not your typical cell biology research subjects but scientists at the Carnegie Institution for Science and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) who developed a technique to observe muscle stem/progenitor cells migrating within injury sites in live mice, report that “ghost fibers,” remnants of the old extracellular matrix left by dying muscle fibers, guide the cells into position for healing to begin.
In a study published in this week’s edition of NATURE, scientists from the Research Institutes of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) and Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna and from the Harvard Medical School in Boston have identified a long-sought “roadblock factor” in stem cell engineering that prevents the conversion of adult cells into induced pluripotent stem cells. By suppressing this factor, the team discovered a way to
An international team of scientists, headed by researchers at UC San Diego School of Medicine and UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, report that decreases in a specific group of proteins trigger changes in the cancer microenvironment that accelerate growth and development of therapy-resistant cancer stem cells (CSCs). The findings are published in the November 30 online issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers at the University of Louisville have identified the role of TNF receptor-associated factor 6 (TRAF6), an adaptor protein and E3 ubiquitin ligase, in ensuring the vitality of stem cells that regenerate muscle tissue.
Johns Hopkins researchers have developed a method to efficiently turn human stem cells into retinal ganglion cells, the type of nerve cells located within the retina that transmit visual signals from the eye to the brain.
A particular location in DNA, called the Dlk1-Gtl2 locus, plays a critical role in protecting hematopoietic, or blood-forming, stem cells—a discovery revealing a critical role of metabolic control in adult stem cells, and providing insight for potentially diagnosing and treating cancer, according to researchers from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research.
Scientists at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have demonstrated in lab animals that a family of therapeutic stem cells lessen consequences of a damaging immune response and preserve function that would otherwise be lost. Their findings appear in the Nov. 19 Scientific Reports.
• After researchers transplanted kidney tissue generated from human induced pluripotent stem cells into a mouse kidney, the animal’s blood vessels readily connected to the human tissue.
Imagine you have a bone injury but you heal slowly. Instead of forming bone, you could form fat. UNC researchers may have found a way to tip the scale in favor of bone. They used cytochalasin D, a naturally occurring substance, to alter gene expression in stem cells to force them to become bone.
A discovery made by investigators from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Boston University School of Medicine may help lead to the development of a cell-based regenerative therapy which could be used to restore thyroid function in cancer patients or children born with congenital hypothyroidism.
Neural stem cells transplanted into damaged brain sites in mice dramatically improved both motor and cognitive impairments associated with dementia with Lewy bodies, according to University of California, Irvine neurobiologists with the Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center and the Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders.
Working with gut stem cells from humans and mice, scientists from the Johns Hopkins Children's Center and the University of Pittsburgh have successfully grown healthy intestine atop a 3-D scaffold made of a substance used in surgical sutures.
When it comes to treating blood cancers like leukemia and lymphomas, new research shows that a half-matched donor bone marrow transplant may be just as good as a full match, in the first apples to apples type comparison of its kind.
Age-related macular degeneration (AMRD) could be treated by transplanting photoreceptors produced by the directed differentiation of stem cells, thanks to findings published today by Professor Gilbert Bernier .
When rats modeled with stroke were transplanted with newly discovered and unique Muse cells, neuronal regeneration resulted in significant improvements in neurological and motor functions and did not cause cancer, as other cells often do.
A sticky, protein-rich gel created by Johns Hopkins researchers appears to help stem cells stay on or in rat hearts and restore their metabolism after transplantation, improving cardiac function after simulated heart attacks, according to results of a new study.
Glioblastoma is the most common and the most aggressive form of brain tumor, so funding an equally aggressive approach to treating it was a no-brainer for CIRM, California’s stem cell agency.
UCSF researchers have engineered a molecular “on switch” that allows tight control over the actions of T cells, immune system cells that have shown great potential as therapies for cancer.
Researchers at UCSF have succeeded in mapping the genetic signature of a unique group of stem cells in the human brain that seem to generate most of the neurons in our massive cerebral cortex.
Scientists from UC San Francisco describe capturing and studying individual metastatic cells from human breast cancer tumors implanted into mice as the cells escaped into the blood stream and began to form tumors elsewhere in the body.
A team of scientists at the Children’s Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) has become the first to use a tissue-clearing technique to localize a rare stem cell population, in the process cracking open a black box containing detailed information about where blood-forming stem cells are located and how they are maintained.
UCSF researchers have successfully isolated human muscle stem cells and shown that the cells could robustly replicate and repair damaged muscles when grafted onto an injured site.
Driven by the need to develop more effective therapies requiring less recovery time for common joint conditions such as osteoarthritis, an international team including NIBIB-funded researchers has developed an integrated two-part scaffold for implantation into damaged joints -- with cartilage scaffold made from silk, and bone scaffold made from ceramics. This combination of materials allows stem cells to successfully populate the graft and differentiate into cartilage and bone cells. The cells fill the damaged areas to reconstitute the original structure of the joint, after which the scaffold biodegrades, leaving the smooth surface required for a pain-free, functioning interface.
In a small pilot study, researchers from North Carolina State University have demonstrated a rapid, simple way to generate large numbers of lung stem cells for use in disease treatment.
Using “mini-brains” built with induced pluripotent stem cells derived from patients with a rare, but devastating, neurological disorder, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine say they have identified a drug candidate that appears to “rescue” dysfunctional cells by suppressing a critical genetic alteration.
One of the longstanding debates in science, that has, perhaps unsurprisingly, permeated into the field of stem cell research, is the question of nature versus nurture influencing development. Science on stem cells thus far, has suggested that, as one side of the existential debate holds: their fate is not predestined. But new research from the Neural Stem Cell Institute and Drexel University suggests that the cells’ tabula might not be as rasa as we have been led to believe.
In the breast, cancer stem cells and normal stem cells can arise from different cell types and tap into distinct yet related stem cell programs, according to Whitehead Institute researchers. The differences between these stem cell programs may be significant enough to be exploited by future therapeutics.
Researchers targeting colorectal cancer stem cells – the root cause of disease, resistance to treatment and relapse – have discovered a mechanism to mimic a virus and potentially trigger an immune response to fight the cancer like an infection.
UC San Francisco researchers have for the first time developed a method to precisely control embryonic stem cell differentiation with beams of light, enabling them to be transformed into neurons in response to a precise external cue.
Participants are being enrolled in the first clinical trial that tests the use of retinal progenitor cells to treat retinitis pigmentosa, reported project director Dr. Henry Klassen of UCI’s Gavin Herbert Eye Institute and Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center. The product of stem cell research at UCI, these retinal progenitors are similar to stem cells in terms of potential regenerative properties, but they’re specific to the retina.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) scientists have identified stem cells in the liver that give rise to functional liver cells. The work solves a long-standing mystery about the origin of new cells in the liver, which must constantly be replenished as cells die off, even in a healthy organ.
A new study by researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine reveals a protein’s critical – and previously unknown -- role in the development and progression of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a fast-growing and extremely difficult-to-treat blood cancer. The study was published July 23 in Cell Stem Cell.
Researchers in the Division of Hematology, Oncology and Blood & Marrow Transplantation at CHLA have shown greatly improved outcomes in using stem cell transplantation to treat patients with a serious but very rare form of chronic blood cancer called juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia (JMML).
For the first time, researchers have employed a gene-editing technique involving low-dose irradiation to repair patient cells, according to a study published in the journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine. This method, developed by researchers in the Cedars-Sinai Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute, is 10 times more effective than techniques currently in use.
A research team funded by the National Institutes of Health has generated a novel system for growing cardiac tissue from undifferentiated stem cells on a culture plate. This heart on a chip is a miniature physiologic system that could be used to model early heart development and screen drugs prescribed during pregnancy. Researchers from the University of California (UC) Berkeley; the Gladstone Institutes, in San Francisco; and UC San Francisco, reported their work in the July 14, 2015, online issue of Nature Communications.
A gene called Jarid2, may play a wider role than previously thought in co-ordinating the way that stem cells change in a developing embryo to form the specialised cells that make up our bodies.
Stem cells are key for the continual renewal of tissues in our bodies. As such, manipulating stem cells also holds much promise for biomedicine if their regenerative capacity can be harnessed. Researchers are making headway in this area by studying stem cells in their natural environment in fruitflies.
As bone marrow and lung stem cells are quite similar, the Weizmann Institute’s Prof. Yair Reisner investigated whether transplant methods used for bone marrow might also work for treating lung diseases such cystic fibrosis and asthma. When mice with lung damage were given the new stem cell treatment, their lungs healed and breathing improved.