McMaster University researchers have revealed the location of human blood stem cells that may improve bone marrow transplants. The best stem cells are at the ends of the bone.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report a simple, easily reproducible RNA-based method of generating human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) in the August 1 edition of Cell Stem Cell. Their approach has broad applicability for the successful production of iPSCs for use in human stem cell studies and eventual cell therapies.
Could harvesting stem cells for therapy one day be as simple as asking patients for a urine sample? Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine and colleagues have identified stem cells in urine that can be directed to become multiple cell types.
Scientists reprogrammed skin cells from patients with rare blood disorders into human induced pluripotent stem cells, highlighting the great promise of iPSCs in advancing understanding of and eventually treating such diseases.
A new stem cell-based approach to studying epilepsy has yielded a surprising discovery about what causes one form of the disease, and may help in the search for better medicines to treat all kinds of seizure disorders.
The pulmonary vasculature, the blood vessels that connect the heart to the lung, develops even in the absence of the lung. Mice in which lung development is inhibited still have pulmonary blood vessels, which revealed to the researchers that cardiac progenitors, or stem cells, are essential for cardiopulmonary co-development.
Stem-cell researchers at UC San Francisco have found a key role for a protein called BMI1 that may help scientists direct the development of tissues to replace damaged organs in the human body.
Stem cells are key to the promise of regenerative medicine: the repair or replacement of injured tissues with custom grown substitutes. Essential to this process are induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which can be created from a patient's own tissues, thus eliminating the risk of immune rejection. However, Shinya Yamanaka's formula for iPSCs, for which he was awarded last year's Nobel Prize, uses a strict recipe that allows for limited variations in human cells, restricting their full potential for clinical application.
Genomic imprinting maintains a reserve pool of blood-forming stem cells in mouse bone marrow
Researchers at Johns Hopkins have coaxed stem cells into forming networks of new blood vessels in the laboratory, then successfully transplanted them into mice. The stem cells are made by reprogramming ordinary cells, so the new technique could potentially be used to make blood vessels genetically matched to individual patients and unlikely to be rejected by their immune systems, the investigators say.
Indiana University scientists have transformed mouse embryonic stem cells into key structures of the inner ear. The discovery provides new insights into the sensory organ's developmental process and sets the stage for laboratory models of disease, drug discovery and potential treatments for hearing loss and balance disorders.
By using gelatin-based microparticles to deliver growth factors, researchers are creating three-dimensional structures from stem cells and reducing the use of growth factors needed to promote differentiation.
Whitehead Institute researchers have determined that the transcription factor Nanog, which plays a critical role in maintaining the self-renewal of embryonic stem cells, is expressed in a manner similar to other pluripotency markers. This finding contradicts the field’s presumptions about this important gene and its role in the differentiation of embryonic stem cells.
Vitamin C affects whether genes are switched on or off inside mouse stem cells, and may thereby play a previously unknown and fundamental role in helping to guide normal development in mice, humans and other animals, a scientific team led by UC San Francisco researchers has discovered.
UCLA Researchers have successfully established the foundation for using hematopoietic (blood-producing) stem cells from the bone marrow of patients with sickle cell disease to treat the disease.
Research focused on the regulation of the adult stem cells that line the gastrointestinal tract of Drosophila suggests new models for the study of Barrett’s esophagus. Barrett’s esophagus is a condition in which the cells of the lower esophagus transform into stomach-like cells. In most cases this transformation has been thought to occur directly from chronic acid indigestion. A new study suggests a change in stem cell function for this transformation.
A new breast cancer clinical trial is testing the idea a major reason why breast cancer returns after treatment and spreads to other parts of the body is because current chemotherapy and radiation treatments do not kill the cancer stem cells. The trial involves combining standard chemotherapy with a drug that has been found in laboratory studies to attack cancer stem cells.
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists provide the first statistically-based guidelines for determining whether stem cell transplant is appropriate for patients older than 60 with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS).
The findings of the published study suggest that the intramuscular treatment with placenta-based cell therapies may serve as a highly effective “off the shelf” therapy to mitigate Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS).
Pancreatic cancer carries a dismal prognosis. Researchers and clinicians don’t have a non-invasive way to even detect early cells that portent later disease. Scientists have created a research cell line from a patient with advanced pancreatic cancer. This first-of-its-kind human-cell model of pancreatic cancer progression is the first example using induced pluripotent stem cells to model cancer progression directly from a solid tumor and to model pancreatic cancer from early to invasive stages.
Study is first step towards generating patient-specific blood products for cell-replacement therapy.
Mammals possess the remarkable ability to regenerate a lost fingertip, including the nail, nerves and even bone. In humans, an amputated fingertip can sprout back in as little as two months, a phenomenon that has remained poorly understood until now. In a paper published today in the journal Nature, researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center shed light on this rare regenerative power in mammals, using genetically engineered mice to document for the first time the biochemical chain of events that unfolds in the wake of a fingertip amputation. The findings hold promise for amputees who may one day be able to benefit from therapies that help the body regenerate lost limbs.
New research from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, published in the journal Cell Stem Cell today, suggests that it may one day become possible to regenerate a liver using cell therapy in patients with liver disease. Investigators discovered that a human embryonic stem cell can be differentiated into a previously unknown liver progenitor cell, an early offspring of a stem cell, and produce mature and functional liver cells.
A new study by Boston University researchers provides evidence that Wolbachia target the ovarian stem cell niches of its hosts—a strategy previously overlooked to explain how Wolbachia thrive in nature.
Researchers from the UCLA Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology have isolated a new population of primitive, stress-resistant human pluripotent stem cells easily derived from fat tissue that are able to differentiate into virtually every cell type in the human body without genetic modification.
A University of Missouri scientist has discovered that by combining cells from bone marrow with a new drug may help cure type 1 diabetes. The discovery is reported in the current online issue of Diabetes.
Study of 38,000 blood stem cell transplant recipients, led by Dr. Theresa Hahn of Roswell Park Cancer Institute, shows that survival rates increased significantly over 12 years, and numbers of patients receiving transplants grew dramatically.
Transplantation of human stem cells in an experiment conducted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison improved survival and muscle function in rats used to model ALS, a nerve disease that destroys nerve control of muscles, causing death by respiratory failure.
In new research published this week, Anita Bhattacharyya, a neuroscientist at the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, reports on brain cells that were grown from skin cells of individuals with Down syndrome.
Scientists have turned their view of osteoarthritis inside out. Instead of seeing the painful degenerative disease as a problem primarily of the cartilage that cushions joints, they now have evidence that the bone underneath the cartilage is also a key player and exacerbates the damage. Blocking the action of a critical bone regulation protein in mice halts progression of the disease.
The “Stem Cell Research Italy” Association (www.stemcellitaly.org) and the “Sbarro Health Research Organization” (www.shro.org) make a public plea for a correct use of stem cell therapy in Italy and Europe.
Raising hopes for cell-based therapies, UC San Francisco researchers have created the first functioning human thymus tissue from embryonic stem cells in the laboratory. The researchers showed that, in mice, the tissue can be used to foster the development of white blood cells the body needs to mount healthy immune responses and to prevent harmful autoimmune reactions.
According to findings from an early preclinical study led by Brett Mitchell, PhD, an Associate Professor of Internal Medicine in the Cardiovascular Research Institute (CVRI) at Texas A&M University College of Medicine, there is evidence that administrating placenta-derived cells may help reverse the symptoms associated with preeclampsia in a matter of days after dosing with no harmful effects to mother or baby.
Scientists have long known that control mechanisms known collectively as “epigenetics” play a critical role in human development, but they did not know precisely how alterations in this extra layer of biochemical instructions in DNA contribute to development.
UCLA researchers at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research have used induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) to advance disease-in-a-dish modeling of a rare genetic disorder, Ataxia Telangiectasia. Their discovery shows positive effects of drugs that may lead to effective new treatments for the neurodegenerative disease. iPSC are made from patient skin cells rather than from embryos and can become any type of cells in the laboratory.
The human body contains trillions of cells, all derived from a single cell, or zygote, made by the fusion of an egg and a sperm. That single cell contains all the genetic information needed to develop into a human, and passes identical copies of that information to each new cell as it divides into the many diverse types of cells that make up a complex organism like a human being.
A key type of human brain cell developed in the laboratory grows seamlessly when transplanted into the brains of mice, UC San Francisco researchers have discovered, raising hope that these cells might one day be used to treat people with Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, and possibly even Alzheimer’s disease, as well as and complications of spinal cord injury such as chronic pain and spasticity.
Epilepsy that does not respond to drugs can be halted in adult mice by transplanting a specific type of cell into the brain, UC San Francisco researchers have discovered, raising hope that a similar treatment might work in severe forms of human epilepsy.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins have identified a gene that, when repressed in tumor cells, puts a halt to cell growth and a range of processes needed for tumors to enlarge and spread to distant sites. The researchers hope that this so-called “master regulator” gene may be the key to developing a new treatment for tumors resistant to current drugs.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison research group has converted skin cells from people and monkeys into a cell that can form a wide variety of nervous-system cells — without passing through the do-it-all stage called the induced pluripotent stem cell, or iPSC.
Research findings show human central nervous system stem cells foster myelin formation following HuCNS-SC transplantation.
Many diseases – obesity, Type 2 diabetes, muscular dystrophy – are associated with fat accumulation in muscle. In essence, fat replacement causes the muscles to weaken and degenerate. Scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have discovered the biological mechanism involved in this process, which could point the way to potential therapies.
Overall importance of microglia in various brain and spinal cord diseases surprises researchers, who find patient-specific stem cells can be turned into microglia, which could be very useful in future treatment options.
In a serendipitous discovery, scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have found a way to turn bone marrow stem cells directly into brain cells.
Pluripotent stem cells can turn (differentiate) into any cell type in the body, such as nerve, muscle or bone, but inevitably some of these stem cells fail to differentiate and end up mixed in with their newly differentiated daughter cells. UCLA scientists have discovered a new agent that may be useful in strategies to kill off pluripotent stem cells from differentiated daughter cells.
For the first time, human embryonic stem cells have been transformed into nerve cells that helped mice regain the ability to learn and remember.
Declining levels of the protein BubR1 occur when both people and animals age, and contribute to cell senescence or deterioration, weight loss, muscle wasting and cataracts.
For nearly two years, Univ. of Michigan neurologist Eva Feldman, M.D., Ph.D. has led the nation’s first clinical trial of stem cell injections in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Now, a new approval from the FDA paves the way for U-M to become the second site in the trial, pending IRB approval.
Scientists have overcome a major impediment to the development of effective stem cell therapies by studying mice that lack CD47, a protein found on the surface of both healthy and cancer cells. Researchers at the National Cancer Institute discovered that cells obtained from the lungs of CD47-deficient mice, but not from ordinary mice that have the CD47 gene, multiplied in a culture dish and spontaneously converted into stem cells.
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