Princess Margaret scientists have revealed how stem cells are able to generate new blood cells throughout our life by looking at vast, uncharted regions of our genetic material that hold important clues to subtle biological changes in these cells.
Scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute have created a drug that can lure stem cells to damaged tissue and improve treatment efficacy—a scientific first and major advance for the field of regenerative medicine. The discovery, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), could improve current stem cell therapies designed to treat such neurological disorders as spinal cord injury, stroke, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other neurodegenerative disorders; and expand their use to new conditions, such as heart disease or arthritis.
Craig Jordan, PhD, has spent more than 20 years developing better treatments for acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a rapidly progressing cancer of the blood and bone marrow that can spread to other parts of the body, including the lymph nodes, liver, spleen and central nervous system.
Research may lead to identifying novel therapies for cardiac patients
The Award Selection Committee of the American Society for Cell Biology has chosen Matthew Akamatsu, the Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley; Gwendolyn Beacham, a PhD candidate at Cornell University; and Kate Cavanaugh, a PhD candidate from University of Chicago, as the 2020 winners of the Porter Prizes for Research Excellence. Akamatsu will receive $4,000, and Cavanaugh and Beacham will each receive $2,000. Each winner will give a talk in a Minisymposium relevant to her or his research. Also recognized as Honorable Mentions are Jui-Hsia Weng, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School; and Hawa Racine, a postdoctoral research fellow in The Cell and Developmental Biology Center at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health.
UCLA researchers using a model of airway tissue created from human stem cells have pinpointed how smoking cigarettes causes more severe infection by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in the airways of the lungs.
The method currently used to produce stem cell-derived tissues has a very limited throughput. By semi-automating tissue differentiation, researchers from MIPT and Harvard have made the process nearly four times faster, without compromising on quality. The new algorithm is also useful for analyzing the factors that affect cell specialization.
A team of researchers from the Rogel Cancer Center received an $11.2 million grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to study how to use the microbiome to limit complications of stem cell transplants for blood cancers and other diseases.
UCLA researchers have identified a compound that can reproduce the effect of exercise in muscle cells in mice. The findings are published today in the journal Cell Reports Medicine.
Brain cell dysfunction in low oxygen is, surprisingly, caused by the very same responder system that is intended to be protective, according to a new published study by a team of researchers at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
Toxicological Sciences features leading research biotransformation, toxicokinetics, and pharmacokinetics; computational toxicology and databases; mixtures toxicology; and more in the October 2020 issue.
The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) continues to demonstrate its commitment to advancing the quality of musculoskeletal care in a fully transparent and scientific way. Debuting today as a new member benefit, the AAOS Biologics Dashboard is a dynamic online tool designed to help orthopaedic surgeons navigate the approval status of biologic-based interventions. The development of the AAOS Biologics Dashboard is just one of several efforts within the Academy’s Biologics Initiative that offers evidence-based guidance to the musculoskeletal health community. An additional effort is the revision of two biologics-related position statements, recently approved by the AAOS Board of Directors.
The NIH grant will enable FAU scientists to identify the gene regulation pathways activated to program immature stem-like cells of the eye lens to attain their mature form and transparent function. The research team plans to explore the genetic and cellular mechanisms controlling developmental DNA conformational changes and will identify the transcription factors needed for eye lens formation.
DALLAS – Oct. 12, 2020 – By far, the most common injuries seen in emergency rooms in the United States are those affecting extremities. Immobilization is the most common treatment, and yet, until recently, it was unknown exactly why this technique worked to advance healing.
Developed in Canada, the UM171 molecule was used in a blood transplant by a Montreal medical team on a young man suffering from severe aplastic anemia, an autoimmune disease.
Research in pigs shows that using the exosomes naturally produced from a mix of heart muscle, endothelial and smooth muscle cells — all derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells — yields regenerative benefits equivalent to the injected human induced pluripotent stem cell-cardiac cells.
Imagine this: A patient learns that they are losing their sight because an eye disease has damaged crucial cells in their retina. Then, under the care of their doctor, they simply grow some new retinal cells, restoring their vision. Although science hasn’t yet delivered this happy ending, researchers are working on it – with help from the humble zebrafish. When a zebrafish loses its retinal cells, it grows new ones. This observation has encouraged scientists to try hacking the zebrafish’s innate regenerative capacity to learn how to treat human disease. That is why among the National Eye Institute’s 1,200 active research projects, nearly 80 incorporate zebrafish.
University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers demonstrated a proof-of-concept stem cell treatment in a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease. They found that neurons derived from stem cells can integrate well into the correct regions of the brain, connect with native neurons and restore motor functions.
University of Wisconsin–Madison scientists discovered that many different genetic mutations result in surprisingly similar changes to heart muscle proteins in patients with the most severe manifestations of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
Toxicological Sciences features leading research in toxicology in the areas of biomarkers, environmental toxicology, and more in the September 2020 issue.
In the earliest hours of your embryonic status, cells were developing and multiplying, critical processes were starting up, networks were connecting and genetic codes — for better or worse — were directing the whole project. That early development is the focus of University of Delaware biologist Shuo Wei's research. Now his work has won more than $1.8 million in support from the National Institutes of Health.
Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago have developed a unique method for precisely controlling the deposition of hydrogel, which is made of water-soluble polymers commonly used to support cells in experiments or for therapeutic purposes. The researchers noticed that their technique – which allows for the encapsulation of a single cell within a minute hydrogel droplet – can be used to coax bone marrow stem cells into specialized cells.
Surgeons at Mass Eye and Ear have replaced the ocular surface of four patients who each experienced chemical burns to one eye by using their own stem cells taken from the other healthy eye, in a technique known as “cultivated autologous limbal epithelial cell transplantation” (CALEC). These four cases, all part of an ongoing clinical trial supported by the National Eye Institute of the NIH, represent the first procedures of their kind to occur in the United States.
Researchers are beginning to understand more about how to treat a rare but deadly type of blood cancer known as Philadelphia chromosome-negative myeloproliferative neoplasms.
Patients who develop cytomegalovirus infections after allogeneic stem cell transplantation may be able to develop an immunity against the virus, strengthen their immune system and reduce reliance on strong antiviral medications, a team from Roswell Park reports in the journal Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation.
Scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) have tracked down the rare stem cells that generate neutrophils in human bone marrow. This research, published August 18, 2020, in Immunity, gives researchers a potential path for intervening in diseases where neutrophil development goes awry.
The Coriell Institute for Medical Research has added a new collection of stem cells to its biobank offerings. The new collection is a result of a collaboration between Coriell and the Rett Syndrome Research Trust (RSRT) and consists of 10 lines of human induced pluripotent stem cells created from blood donated by individuals with Rett syndrome.
Researchers at UC San Diego School of Medicine report successfully implanting specialized grafts of neural stem cells directly into spinal cord injuries in mice, then documenting how the grafts grew and filled the injury sites, mimicking the animals’ existing neuronal network.
Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) have for the first time identified stem cells in the region of the optic nerve, which transmits signals from the eye to the brain. The finding presents a new theory on why the most common form of glaucoma may develop and potential for new therapies.
Researchers at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA have identified the process by which stem cells in the airways of the lungs switch between two distinct phases — creating more of themselves and producing mature airway cells — to regenerate lung tissue after an injury.
A team of developmental biologists at the Morgridge Institute for Research has discovered a means by which schistosomes, parasitic worms that infect more than 200 million people in tropical climates, are able to outfox the host’s immune system.
Researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine found that spinal cord injuries in mice cause an acquired bone marrow failure syndrome that may contribute to chronic immune dysfunction.
A new study suggests that communication between skeletal muscle cells and muscle fibers promotes muscle growth. Adult muscle stem cells, called satellite cells, release extracellular vesicles that are delivered to muscle fibers responsible for contraction, to promote this muscle growth. The first-of-its-kind study is published ahead of print in the journal Function.
Researchers at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and UCLA School of Dentistry have identified a potential new combination therapy to treat advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, the most common type of head and neck cancer.
Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute has received an award from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to advance promising drug candidates for COVID-19. The research team will test two existing drugs against “mini lungs in a dish” that have been infected with SARS-CoV-2.
Scientists have unraveled key mechanisms behind the mysteries of aging. They isolated two paths that cells travel during aging and engineered a new way to genetically program these processes to extend life. The researchers also identified a master circuit that guides these aging processes.
Infusing umbilical cord blood – a readily available source of stem cells – safely and effectively treated 44 children born with various non-cancerous genetic disorders, including sickle cell, thalassemia, Hunter syndrome, Krabbe disease, MLD, and an array of immune deficiencies.
By inhibiting the molecule AKT, UC San Diego researchers favor the culture of human spermatogonial stem cells in the lab, a first step toward lab-produced sperm as a treatment for male infertility.
A research team is the first in Texas to investigate whether plasma from COVID-19 survivors can be used in outpatient settings to prevent the onset and progression of the virus in two new clinical trials at UTHealth.
In one of the first studies addressing the role of sex hormones’ impact on stem cells in the gut, scientists outline new insights showing how a steroidal sex hormone that is structurally and functionally similar to human steroid hormones drastically alters the way intestinal stem cells behave, ultimately affecting the overarching structure and function of this critical organ. The authors found that ecdysone, a steroid hormone produced by fruit flies, stimulates intestinal stem cell growth and causes the gut of the female fruit fly to grow in size, as well as other critical changes.
New UCLA research conducted in mice could explain why some people suffer more extensive scarring than others after a heart attack. The study, published in the journal Cell, reveals that a protein known as type 5 collagen plays a critical role in regulating the size of scar tissue in the heart.
USC Stem Cell scientists have pioneered a simpler way to generate the sensory cells of the inner ear. The study was published in the journal eLife.
A new study shows that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 (coronavirus), can infect heart cells in a lab dish, indicating it may be possible for heart cells in COVID-19 patients to be directly infected by the virus. The discovery, published today in the journal Cell Reports Medicine, was made using heart muscle cells that were produced by stem cell technology.
UC San Diego and Deerfield Management created Poseidon Innovation to support researchers working to advance disease-curing therapeutics by funding early stage projects and expediting the drug-development cycle. Poseidon announces it is funding three researchers.
Satya Dandekar, professor of microbiology and chairperson of the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at UC Davis, honored by Prestigious NIH MERIT award for her illustrious journey in HIV research.
UCLA researchers and colleagues have received a $13.65 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to investigate and further develop an immunotherapy known as CAR T, which uses genetically modified stem cells to target and destroy HIV.
Using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and deleting a key gene, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have created natural killer cells — a type of immune cell — with measurably stronger activity against a form of leukemia, both in vivo and in vitro.
As part of the Memorial Sloan Kettering – Hackensack Meridian Health Partnership, the two organizations have formed an Immunology Research Collaboration. Through this joint initiative, researchers can apply for funding to support innovative investigations to explore the power of the immune system and ways it may be harnessed to fight cancer.
Xiaojun “Lance” Lian, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Penn State, has received a $500,000, five-year Early Career Development Program (CAREER) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
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