Feature Channels: Stem Cells

• share
• favorite_border

In a serendipitous discovery, scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have found a way to turn bone marrow stem cells directly into brain cells.

• share
• favorite_border

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.

• share
• favorite_border

For the first time, human embryonic stem cells have been transformed into nerve cells that helped mice regain the ability to learn and remember.

• share
• favorite_border

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.

• share
• favorite_border

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.

• share
• favorite_border

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.

• share
• favorite_border

When it comes to delivering genes to living human tissue, the odds of success come down the molecule. The entire therapy — including the tools used to bring new genetic material into a cell — must have predictable effects.

• share
• favorite_border

Every day, millions of people with bipolar disorder take medicines to stabilize their moods. But just how these drugs work is still a mystery. Now, a new study of brain tissue helps reveal what might actually be happening. And further research using stem cells programmed to act like brain cells is already underway.

• share
• favorite_border

Deep inside your brain, a legion of stem cells lies ready to turn into new brain and nerve cells when you need them. New research shows the vital role of a type of internal “spring cleaning” that both clears out garbage inside the cells, and keeps them in their perpetual stem-cell state.

• share
• favorite_border

A new separation process that depends on an easily-distinguished physical difference in adhesive forces among cells could help expand production of stem cells generated through cell reprogramming.

• share
• favorite_border

For the first time, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have isolated adult stem cells from human intestinal tissue. The accomplishment provides a much-needed resource for scientists eager to uncover the true mechanisms of human stem cell biology.

• share
• favorite_border

Preparations are underway for the first known human trial to use embryonic-like stem cells collected from adult cells to grow bone.

• share
• favorite_border

Using the same strategy that a common virus employs to evade the human immune system, researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine have modified adult stem cells to increase their survival – with the goal of giving the cells time to exert their natural healing abilities.

• share
• favorite_border

In laboratory studies, Johns Hopkins researchers say they have found that stem cells from a patient’s own fat may have the potential to deliver new treatments directly into the brain after the surgical removal of a glioblastoma, the most common and aggressive form of brain tumor.

• share
• favorite_border

New hope for reversing the effects of spinal cord injury may be found in a combination of stem cell therapy and physical therapy according to new findings from Robert Wood Johnson Medical School

• share
• favorite_border

Columbia Engineering’s new “plug-and-play” method to assemble complex cell microenvironments is a scalable, highly precise way to fabricate tissues with any spatial organization or interest—like those found in the heart or skeleton or vasculature. The PNAS study reveals new ways to better mimic the enormous complexity of tissue development, regeneration, and disease.

• share
• favorite_border

The removal of a genetic roadblock could improve the efficiency of converting adult cells into stem cells by 10 to 30 times, report scientists from The Methodist Hospital Research Institute and two other institutions in the latest issue of Cell.

• share
• favorite_border

In a significant advance for harnessing the immune system to treat leukemias, researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center for the first time have successfully infused large numbers of donor T-cells specific for a key anti-leukemic antigen to prolong survival in high-risk and relapsed leukemia patients after stem cell transplantation. Both the stem cells for transplant and the T-cells came from the same matched donors.

• share
• favorite_border

In research that could one day improve the success of stem cell transplants and chemotherapy, scientists have found that distinct niches exist in bone marrow to nurture different types of blood stem cells.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers have now found stem cells inside the parasite that cause schistosomiasis, one of the most common parasitic infections in the world. These stem cells can regenerate worn-down organs, which may help explain how they can live for years or even decades inside their host.

• share
• favorite_border

In a study of mice, researchers at Johns Hopkins have identified a new molecular pathway involved in the growth of tiny air sacs called alveoli that are crucial for breathing. The scientists say their experiments may lead to the first successful treatments to regrow the air sacs in people who suffer from diseases such as emphysema in which the air sacs have been destroyed by years of smoking. The work may also suggest new therapy for premature infants born before their lungs are fully developed.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers have identified a pivotal protein in a cellular transformation that makes a cancer cell more resistant to treatment and more capable of growing and spreading, making it an inviting new target for drug development.

• share
• favorite_border

Through a series of investigations in mice and humans, Johns Hopkins researchers have identified a protein that appears to be the target of both antidepressant drugs and electroconvulsive therapy. Results of their experiments explain how these therapies likely work to relieve depression by stimulating stem cells in the brain to grow and mature. In addition, the researchers say, these experiments raise the possibility of predicting individual people’s response to depression therapy, and fine-tuning treatment accordingly.

• share
• favorite_border

Research from Whitehead Institute shows that transcription at the active promoters of protein-coding genes commonly runs in opposite directions. This leads to coordinated production of both protein-coding messenger RNAs (mRNAs) and long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs).

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists at the Monell Center have identified the location and certain genetic characteristics of taste stem cells on the tongue. The findings will facilitate techniques to grow and manipulate new functional taste cells for both clinical and research purposes.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists at Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston report the first generation of human induced pluripotent stem cells from patients with an uncommon form of diabetes, maturity onset diabetes of the young (MODY). These cells offer a powerful resource for studying the role of genetic factors in the development of MODY and testing potential treatments.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Nursing have received a four-year grant to determine whether exercise can shorten recovery time for patients who undergo high-dose chemotherapy and stem cell transplantation.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, whose clinical trial results in 2012 demonstrated that stem cell therapy reduces scarring and regenerates healthy tissue after a heart attack, now have found that the stem cell technique boosts production of existing adult heart cells (cardiomyocytes) and spurs recruitment of existing stem cells that mature into heart cells. The findings, from a laboratory animal study, are published in EMBO Molecular Medicine online.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have discovered that hard-to-reach, drug-resistant leukemia stem cells (LSCs) that overexpress multiple pro-survival protein forms are sensitive – and thus vulnerable – to a novel cancer stem cell-targeting drug currently under development.

• share
• favorite_border

A protein known as Sp2 is key to the proper creation of neurons from stem cells, according to researchers at North Carolina State University.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers used induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) derived from a young patient with Long QT syndrome (LQTS), a congenital heart disorder, to determine a course of treatment that helped manage the patient’s life-threatening arrhythmias.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio have for the first time demonstrated that baboon embryonic stem cells can be programmed to completely restore a severely damaged artery. These early results show promise for eventually developing stem cell therapies to restore human tissues or organs damaged by age or disease.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, collaborating with scientists from San Diego-based biotech company ViaCyte, Inc., looked at the differences and similarities between two types of hESC-derived endocrine cell populations and primary human endocrine cells, with the longer-term goal of developing new stem cell therapies for diabetes.

• share
• favorite_border

Apparent stem cell transplant success in mice may hold promise for people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease. The results of the study were released today and will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 65th Annual Meeting in San Diego, March 16 to 23, 2013.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists propose a new way to isolate early stage embryonic stem cells.

• share
• favorite_border

Unlike less versatile muscle or nerve cells, embryonic stem cells are by definition equipped to assume any cellular role. Scientists call this flexibility “pluripotency,” meaning that as an organism develops, stem cells must be ready at a moment’s notice to activate highly diverse gene expression programs used to turn them into blood, brain, or kidney cells.

• share
• favorite_border

An international team, headed by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, has identified a key enzyme in the reprogramming process that promotes malignant stem cell cloning and the growth of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), a cancer of the blood and marrow that experts say is increasing in prevalence.

• share
• favorite_border

Growing new blood vessels in the lab is a tough challenge, but a Johns Hopkins engineering team has solved a major stumbling block: how to prod stem cells to become two different types of tissue that are needed to build tiny networks of veins and arteries.

• share
• favorite_border

A joint team of scientists from The New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) Laboratory and Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) has developed a technique that may prevent the inheritance of mitochondrial diseases in children. The study is published online today in Nature.

• share
• favorite_border

Donated umbilical cord blood establishes a new blood supply in patients more quickly after transplantation when it is first expanded in the lab on a bed of cells that mimics conditions in the bone marrow, researchers report in the Dec. 13 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

• share
• favorite_border

Just like the bones that hold up your body, your cells have their own scaffolding that holds them up. This scaffolding, known as the extracellular matrix, or ECM, not only props up cells but also provides attachment sites, or “sticky spots,” to which cells can bind, just as bones hold muscles in place.

• share
• favorite_border

A new method for generating stem cells from mature cells promises to boost stem cell production in the laboratory, helping to remove a barrier to regenerative medicine therapies that would replace damaged or unhealthy body tissues.

• share
• favorite_border

Next week, more than 1,200 people from 25 countries are expected to attend the 8th Annual World Stem Cell Summit in West Palm Beach, Fla., a gathering co-sponsored by Mayo Clinic. As those close to the science explore potential stem cell applications, many patients have questions about what stem cells are and how they are being used. Timothy Nelson, M.D., Ph.D., director of Mayo Clinic’s Regenerative Medicine Consult Service, answers some of the most commonly asked questions about stem cells.

• share
• favorite_border

Johns Hopkins researchers report concrete steps in the use of human stem cells to test how diseased cells respond to drugs. Their success highlights a pathway toward faster, cheaper drug development for some genetic illnesses, as well as the ability to pre-test a therapy’s safety and effectiveness on cultured clones of a patient’s own cells.

• share
• favorite_border

Thanks to some careful detective work, scientist better understand just how iPS cells form – and why the Yamanaka process is inefficient, an important step to work out for regenerative medicine. The findings uncover cellular impediments to iPS cell development that, if overcome, could dramatically improve the efficiency and speed of iPS cell generation.

• share
• favorite_border

Canadian and Italian stem cell researchers have discovered a new “master control gene” for human blood stem cells and found that manipulating its levels could potentially create a way to expand these cells for clinical use.

• share
• favorite_border

For the first time, Wisconsin researchers have taken skin from patients and, using induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology, turned them into a laboratory model for an inherited type of macular degeneration.

• share
• favorite_border

Using polymer nanofibers thinner than human hairs as scaffolds, researchers have coaxed a type of brain cell to wrap around fibers that mimic the shape and size of nerves found in the body.

• share
• favorite_border

Claudio Anasetti, M.D., chair of the Department of Blood & Marrow Transplant at Moffitt Cancer Center, and colleagues from 47 research sites in the Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network conducted a two-year clinical trial comparing two-year survival probabilities for patients transplanted with peripheral blood stem cells or bone marrow stem cells from unrelated donors. The goal was to determine whether graft source, peripheral blood stem cells or bone marrow, affects outcomes in unrelated donor transplants for patients with leukemia or other hematologic malignancies.