Feature Channels: Stem Cells

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Whether caused by an undetected birth defect or by a heart attack (myocardial infarction), when a heart sustains damage, it can be difficult to repair.

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Researchers have identified a lung stem cell that repairs the organ’s gas exchange compartment. They isolated and characterized these progenitor cells from mouse and human lungs and demonstrated they are essential to repairing lung tissue damaged by severe influenza and other respiratory ailments.

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Newly identified stem cells in the lung that multiply rapidly after a pulmonary injury may offer an opportunity for innovative future treatments that harness the body’s ability to regenerate. Scientists describe cells that could become a new tool to treat lung diseases across the lifespan, from premature infants to the elderly.

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Led by researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, a diverse team of neuroscientists and surgeons successfully grafted human neural progenitor cells into rhesus monkeys with spinal cord injuries. The grafts not only survived, but grew hundreds of thousands of human axons and synapses, resulting in improved forelimb function in the monkeys.

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Researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas have devised a new technique to isolate aggressive cells thought to form the root of many hard-to-treat metastasized cancers, a significant step toward developing new drugs that might target these cells.

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UCLA researchers used fluorescent colored proteins to trace how cardiomyocytes — cells in heart muscle that enable it to pump blood — are produced in mouse embryos. The findings could eventually lead to methods for regenerating heart tissue in human adults.

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A team of researchers at the University of Georgia's Regenerative Bioscience Center and ArunA Biomedical, a UGA startup company, have developed a new treatment for stroke that reduces brain damage and accelerates the brain's natural healing tendencies in animal models.

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People with a mutated ATF6 gene have a malformed or missing fovea, severely limiting vision. UC San Diego School of Medicine researchers first linked ATF6 to this type of vision impairment. Now the team discovered that a chemical that activates ATF6 converts patient stem cells into blood vessels.

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Replenishing a naturally occurring heart protein could improve stem cell therapy after a heart attack

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In fruit flies, repeating genetic elements shrink with age, but then expand in future generations, a resurgence that may help explain how some cells stay immortal.

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Cleveland Clinic researchers have published findings in Nature Communications on a new stem cell pathway that allows a highly aggressive form of breast cancer - triple-negative breast cancer - to thrive.

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Before medical science can bioengineer human organs in a lab for therapeutic use, two remaining hurdles are ensuring genetic stability—so the organs are free from the risk of tumor growth—and producing organ tissues of sufficient volume and size for viable transplant into people. Scientists report in Stem Cell Reports achieving both goals with a new production method for bioengineered human gut and liver tissues.

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Moffitt Cancer Center researchers are trying to identify new drug targets to reduce the risk of GVHD. Their new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows a drug that targets the protein JAK2 may reduce the risk of GVHD.

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In breakthrough colon cancer research, scientists at Christiana Care Health System’s Center for Translational Cancer Research (CTCR) of the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center & Research Institute have discovered that over-expression of HOXA4 and HOXA9 genes in colon cancer stem cells promotes cell replication and contributes to the overpopulation of stem cells that drives colon cancer development. The findings suggest treatment with vitamin A derivatives, called retinoid drugs, could provide a therapeutic strategy for decreasing the expression of these HOX genes and for targeting highly resistant cancer stem cells.

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Two different proteins work separately as well as synergistically to feed a small pool of stem cells that help bladder cancer resist chemotherapy, research led by a Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center scientist suggests. The finding, published online in Cancer Research, could lead to new targets to fight this deadly disease and potentially other cancers as well.

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Scientists often struggle to predict how these cells will act in different environments in the body.

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Researchers have data that diabetes impairs removal of dead heart-muscle cells by macrophages after heart attacks, and that exosomes can improve this removal. Impaired removal may be the reason diabetes increases the risk for cardiovascular disease, including heart failure.

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Long-term consequences can happen years after an ACL injury. One Michigan Medicine researcher is investigating new therapies that could minimize those unwanted effects.

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The approach could represent the first new treatment to improve survival in patients with severe scleroderma in more than four decades.

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A multi-institutional research team led by Indiana University School of Medicine scientists has developed a new way to harvest blood stem cells for bone marrow donation that is faster and more effective than the current standard of care.