Top Stories 5-17-2016
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A growing body of research is revealing associations between birth defects and a father’s age, alcohol use and environmental factors, say researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center. They say these defects result from epigenetic alterations that can potentially affect multiple generations.
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Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, with colleagues in Brazil and Senegal, have described the first “direct experimental proof” that the Brazilian strain of Zika virus can actually cause severe birth defects. The findings are published in the May 11 online issue of Nature.
The Gordie Howe Initiative has been formed to fund a clinical trial to help validate the safety and efficacy of the use of stem cells in the treatment of TBI.
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Signaling a potential new approach to treating diabetes, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Harvard University have produced insulin-secreting cells from stem cells derived from patients with type 1 diabetes. The new discovery suggests a personalized treatment approach to diabetes may be on the horizon — one that relies on the patients’ own stem cells to manufacture new cells that make insulin.
Researchers have safely transplanted stem cells derived from a patient’s skin to the back of the eye in an effort to restore vision. The research is being presented at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) this week in Seattle, Wash.
This research investigates the role of intraventricular transplantation using bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell in stroke patients.
Researchers at Boston Children's Hospital have reprogrammed mature blood cells from mice into blood-forming hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), using a cocktail of eight genetic switches called transcription factors. The reprogrammed cells, which the researchers have dubbed induced HSCs (iHSCs), have the functional hallmarks of HSCs, are able to self-renew like HSCs, and can give rise to all of the cellular components of the blood like HSCs.
Organization recognized for innovative research, care
A pair of molecular signals controls skin and hair color in mice and humans — and could be targeted by new drugs to treat skin pigment disorders like vitiligo, according to a report by scientists at NYU Langone Medical Center.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist has inserted a genetic switch into nerve cells so a patient can alter their activity by taking designer drugs that would not affect any other cell. The cells in question are neurons and make the neurotransmitter dopamine, whose deficiency is the culprit in the widespread movement disorder Parkinson's disease.
This ARVO Meeting showcases cutting-edge eye and vision science and an early glimpse into the latest advances in potential treatments for eye disease and blindness — often years ahead of their introduction to the clinic.
Pinellas County a Model for Mosquito-Borne Disease Surveillance, Scientists Unravel the Genetic Evolution of Zika Virus, Worm Infection Counters Inflammatory Bowel Disease and more in the Infectious Diseases News Source
Discovery provides a serious advantage in determining how to maximize blood stem cells in therapeutics and could help ease current stem cell shortages.
It has been disorienting to the scientific and medical community as to why different subtle changes in a protein-coding gene causes many different genetic disorders in different patients -- including premature aging, nerve problems, heart problems and muscle problems. no other gene works like this. According to a new study, co-authored by Binghamton University faculty Eric Hoffman, it has to do with cell “commitment.”
Drug-carrying “nanoghosts” that battle melanoma and new treatments for malignant mesothelioma will be the focus of the first joint research projects led by NYU Langone Medical Center and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology under a groundbreaking research initiative.
Dr. Kevin Francis’ research appears in Nature Medicine
A noted designer of artistic ties has turned scientific images into a striking design that can be worn by men and women - and the proceeds will aid bipolar disorder research.
An experimental antibody treatment decreased by half the number of cancer stem cells that drive the growth of tumors in nearly all patients with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow and bone tissue, according to results of a preliminary clinical trial led by Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center scientists.
While stem cells have shown promise for treating brain regions damaged by cancer radiation treatments, University of California, Irvine researchers have found that microscopic vesicles isolated from these cells provide similar benefits without some of the risks associated with stem cells.
An investigational stem cell therapy derived from patients’ own blood marrow significantly improved outcomes in patients with severe heart failure, according to a study from the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute.
End-stage heart failure patients treated with stem cells harvested from their own bone marrow experienced 37 percent fewer cardiac events - including deaths and heart failure hospital admissions - than a placebo-controlled group, according to a new study. Results from ixCELL-DCM, the largest cell therapy clinical trial for treating heart failure to date, will be presented at the 2016 American College of Cardiology annual meeting and published online in The Lancet on April 4.
Linda Carli's "Stereotypes About Gender and Science: Women ≠ Science” shows that despite significant progress made, women are still thought to lack the qualities needed to be successful scientists, and the findings suggest this may contribute to discrimination and prejudice against women in those fields.
Writing in Nature Medicine, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System, with colleagues in Japan and Wisconsin, report that they have successfully directed stem cell-derived neurons to regenerate lost tissue in damaged corticospinal tracts of rats, resulting in functional benefit.
Working with human breast cancer cells and mice, scientists say new experiments explain how certain cancer stem cells thrive in low oxygen conditions. Proliferation of such cells, which tend to resist chemotherapy and help tumors spread, are considered a major roadblock to successful cancer treatment.
Dr. Pradeep "Max" Dass, director of the NAU Center of Science Teaching and Learning at NAU, is helping guide STEM teaching methods on the other side of the globe in a small school in India. The CSTL continues its mission to lead the way in global STEM education.
Neuroscientists document some of the first steps in the process by which a stem cell transforms into different cell types.
Dr. Mansoor Husain named first executive director of Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research
The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory hosted a Young Women's Conference in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics for 575 girls. The conference is aimed at sparking young women's interest in STEM and encouraging them to consider STEM careers. Women still lag behind men in STEM careers, especially in certain fields such as computer science, physics, and engineering.
Emma and Molly White and Ru-Shyan and Ru-Huey Yen, a pair of twin sisters and close friends who met in high school 16 years ago, went on to careers in STEM
An overwhelming number of researchers still struggle within the black hole of the effectiveness and safety of stem cell therapy for neurological diseases. While the complexity of understanding how neurons grow, connect and function has long been studied, it remains a mystery, one that Forrest Goodfellow is helping to unravel.
The Independent Citizens Oversight Committee of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine approved yesterday a $6.3 million grant to a research team from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and University of California, Davis to pursue a novel human embryonic stem cell-based therapy to rescue and restore neurons devastated by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS.
Imagine telling a patient suffering from age-related (type-II) osteoporosis that a single injection of stem cells could restore their normal bone structure. This week, with a publication in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine, a group of researchers from the University of Toronto and The Ottawa Hospital suggest that this scenario may not be too far away.
If you want to harness the full power of stem cells, all you might need is an eraser – in the form of a drug that can erase the tiny labels that tell cells where to start reading their DNA. In a surprising new finding, scientists have shown that mouse stem cells treated with the drug reverted to an ‘embryonic’ state.
In one of the first studies to "read" the genetic activity inside individual brain cells, University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist Xinyu Zhao has identified the genetic machinery that causes maturation in a young nerve cell.
Stem cells may have the potential to protect the optic nerve from further damage and slow the progression of vision loss due to glaucoma. Stem cells may also have the potential to replace ocular tissues that have degenerated in eyes with glaucoma.
Scientists at Virginia Commonwealth University have developed computer models that can simulate the recovery of the immune system in patients undergoing stem cell transplants.
Scientists from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and The New York Stem Cell Foundation Research Institute (NYSCF) have succeeded in generating a new type of embryonic stem cell that carries a single copy of the human genome, instead of the two copies typically found in normal stem cells. The scientists reported their findings today in the journal Nature.
Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Shiley Eye Institute, with colleagues in China, have developed a new, regenerative medicine approach to remove congenital cataracts in infants, permitting remaining stem cells to regrow functional lenses.
Bioengineers and physicians at the University of California, San Diego have developed a potential new therapy for critical limb ischemia, a condition that causes extremely poor circulation in the limbs and leads to an estimated 230,000 amputations every year in North America and Europe alone to prevent the spread of infection and tissue death. The new therapy could prevent or limit amputations for a condition that affects more than 27 million people and is a manifestation of advanced peripheral arterial disease.
The American Pain Society (APS), www.americanpainsociety.org, will host its 35th annual scientific meeting May 11-14 at the Austin Convention Center. APS is the leading multidisciplinary professional society in the United States dedicated to advancing pain-related research, education, treatment and team-oriented professional practice.
Building upon previous work, researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have identified a precursor cell in the placenta and embryo of mice that can be matured in the lab to make hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells
Kejin Hu, Ph.D., has found a robust reprogramming factor that increases the efficiency of creating human induced pluripotent stem cells (HiPSCs) from skin fibroblasts more than 20-fold, speeds the reprogramming time by several days and enhances the quality of reprogramming.
Florida State University researchers have made a major breakthrough in the quest to learn whether the Zika virus is linked to birth defects with the discovery that the virus is directly targeting brain development cells and stunting their growth. This is the first major finding by scientists that shows that these critical cells are a target of the virus and also negatively affected by it.
Patients with heart failure often have a buildup of scar tissue that leads to a gradual loss of heart function. In a new study, UNC researchers report significant progress toward a novel approach that could shrink the amount of heart scar tissue while replenishing the supply of healthy heart muscle.