All stem cells—regardless of their source—share the remarkable capability to replenish themselves by undergoing self-renewal. Yet, so far, efforts to grow and expand scarce hematopoietic (or blood-forming) stem cells in culture for therapeutic applications have been met with limited success.
McMaster researchers have found one more reason to exercise: working out triggers influential stem cells to become bone instead of fat, improving overall health by boosting the body’s capacity to make blood.
Using a patient’s own bone marrow stem cells to treat acute stroke is feasible and safe, according to the results of a ground-breaking Phase I trial at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).
Research published today focuses on patients and shows that acute myeloid leukemia (AML) contains rare cells with stem cell properties, called leukemia stem cells (LSC), that are better at predicting clinical outcome than the majority of AML cells, showing for the first time that LSCs are significant not just in experimental models but also in patients.
New stem cell lines developed from the skin of adults living with bipolar disorder are providing researchers at the University of Michigan Health System an unprecedented opportunity to delve into the genetic and biological underpinnings of the devastating mood disorder.
New findings by scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Whitehead Institute point to a decentralized society in tumors, with cancer cells able to interconvert between different types. These results have potential implications for the treatment of tumors, in particular, that attacking cancer stem cells alone may not be enough to fight cancer.
Stem cell researchers at UCLA have discovered that three types of cells derived from human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells are similar to each other, but are much more developmentally immature than previously thought when compared to those same cell types taken directly from human tissue.
Stem cell researchers at UCLA have uncovered for the first time why adult human cardiac myocytes have lost their ability to proliferate, perhaps explaining why the human heart has little regenerative capacity.
Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, are developing new microscope technologies to enable biologists to see deep within living tissues and observe critical processes involved in basic biology and disease.
Researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center have found that a type of normal stem cell fuels ovarian cancer by encouraging cancer stem cells to grow.
Using two methods, Whitehead researchers have manipulated targeted genes in both human embryonic stem (ES) cells and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. In one case, scientists employed proteins known as ZFNs to change a single base pair in the genome, allowing them either to insert or remove mutations known to cause early-onset Parkinson’s disease (PD).
Researches near goal of using a patient's own cells to make stem cells that can replace lost or diseased tissue.
1) Cranial radiotherapy is known to lead to cognitive dysfunction; 2) Stem cells conformed to ethical guidelines.
Researchers at the Salk Institute have been able to genetically incorporate "unnatural" amino acids, such as those emitting green fluorescence, into neural stem cells, which then differentiate into brain neurons with the incandescent "tag" intact.
For the first time since stem cells were discovered here 50 years ago, scientists have isolated a human blood stem cell in its purest form – as a single stem cell capable of regenerating the entire blood system. This breakthrough opens the door to harnessing the power of these life-producing cells to treat cancer and other debilitating diseases more effectively.
This study showed that pluripotent cells are not all equal. The researchers discovered the fate – or destination – of human pluripotent stem cells is encoded by how their DNA is arranged, and this can be detected by specific proteins on the surface of the stem cells.
Mesenchymal stem cells were hailed as key to growing new organs, but have proven to be potent defenders and healers in the body. Researchers at Case Western Reserve University and elsewhere find the cells appear effective against a growing list of diseases and conditions.
For nearly two decades, the medical world and the American public have grappled with the lightning-rod topic of stem cells, in particular the controversy surrounding cells from human embryos. But when researchers four years ago successfully “reprogrammed” adult body cells to become stem cells, some thought the ethical debate was nearly over. Those redirected cells, known as induced pluripotent cells, or iPS cells, show potential as therapy.
A Johns Hopkins team has discovered in young adult mice that a lone brain stem cell is capable not only of replacing itself and giving rise to specialized neurons and glia – important types of brain cells – but also of taking a wholly unexpected path: generating two new brain stem cells.
Researchers at UCLA have identified a new stem cell that participates in the repair of the large airways of the lungs, which play a vital role in protecting the body from infectious agents and toxins in the environment.
Columbia engineers develop new bioengineering approach to study stem cell function and factors that could lead to birth defects and disease.
A graduate student team has invented a system to significantly boost the number of stem cells collected from a newborn’s umbilical cord and placenta, so that many more patients with leukemia, lymphoma and other blood disorders can be treated.
New research shows that systematically controlling the local and global environments during stem cell development helps to effectively direct their differentiation. These findings could help in manufacturing large quantities of stem cells for diagnostic and therapeutic applications in the future.
An agreement between UCLA and Roche will provide stem cell and cancer researchers with leading-edge technologies that will drive research capabilities and further the understanding of complex disease.
Whitehead Institute researchers have identified signals impinging on breast epithelial cells that can induce those cells to acquire and stably display migratory and self-renewing characteristics. Interrupting these and other extracellular signals strips the various types of stem cells of the migratory and self-renewal abilities used by cancer stem cells to seed new tumors.
Researchers in the Department of Pathology at Stony Brook University School of Medicine have discovered a laboratory method to expand adult hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) using the SALL4 gene.
Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have shown in an animal study that transplantation of adult stem cells enriched with a bone-regenerating hormone can help mend bone fractures that are not healing properly.
Stem cell therapy enriched with a bone-regenerating hormone, insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I), can help mend broken bones in fractures that are not healing normally, a new animal study finds. The Endocrine Society’s 93rd Annual Meeting will host presentation of the results on Sunday in Boston.
Join a panel of Canadian and international experts and patients who have experienced stem cell trials first hand. They'll guide you through the basics of stem cell research into the world of clinical reality by looking specifically at three different disease areas: multiple sclerosis, blood disorders and spinal cord injury.
The National Center for Regenerative Medicine (NCRM) at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine is teaming up with Edheads, a provider of online education tools, to launch web-based education modules about stem cells.
Adipose-Derived Stem Cells Prove Useful in Reconstructing Gaps after Skull Surgery
A group led by University of Wisconsin-Madison stem cell researcher Su-Chun Zhang reports it has been able to direct embryonic and induced human stem cells to become astrocytes in the lab dish.
In principle, genetic engineering is simple, but in practice, replacing a faulty gene with a healthy copy is anything but. Using mutated versions of the lamin A gene as an example to demonstrate the versatility of their virus-based approach, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies successfully edited a diseased gene in patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cells as well as adult stem cells.
In basic research with far-reaching impact, cell biologists Wei-Lih Lee and Steven Markus report in Developmental Cell that they have solved one of the fundamental questions in stem cell division: How dynein, the cell’s nano-scale “mitotic motor,” positions itself to direct the dividing process.
What does it take to regenerate a limb? Biologists have long thought that organ regeneration in animals like zebrafish and salamanders involved stem cells that can generate any tissue in the body. But new research suggests that cells capable of regenerating a zebrafish fin do not revert to stem cells that can form any tissue. Instead, the individual cells retain their original identities and only give rise to more of their own kind.
Philip McCarthy, Jr., MD, of Roswell Park Cancer Institute presented data from a CALGB trial at the International Myeloma Workshop. Patients receiving maintenance lenalidomide therapy had higher survival rate and lower risk of disease progression.
Whitehead Institute researchers have found that the planarian flatworm regenerates missing tissues using pluripotent adult stem cells. Until now, scientists could not determine if the dividing cells in planarians are a mix of specialized stem cells that regenerates specific tissues, or if individual neoblasts are pluripotent and able to regenerate all tissues.
Johns Hopkins researchers have demonstrated that human liver cells derived from adult cells coaxed into an embryonic state can engraft and begin regenerating liver tissue in mice with chronic liver damage.
A 59-year-old Houston man became the first individual in the United States to enroll in a study using stem cell transplantation during cardiac bypass to treat severe heart failure.
Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, after isolating normal stem cells that form the developing placenta, have given them the same properties of stem cells associated with an aggressive type of breast cancer.
Researchers at the UCSD School of Medicine, the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco and colleagues report a game-changing advance in stem cell science: the creation of long-term, self-renewing, primitive neural precursor cells from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) that can be directed to become many types of neuron without increased risk of tumor formation.
Squamous cell cancers, which can occur in multiple organs in the body, can originate from hair follicle stem cells, a finding that could result in new strategies to treat and potentially prevent the disease, according to a study by researchers with UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA.
An innovative experimental treatment for boosting the effectiveness of stem-cell transplants with umbilical cord blood has a favorable safety profile in long-term animal studies, report Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Children’s Hospital Boston scientists.
Certain differentiated cells in breast tissue can spontaneously convert to a stem-cell-like state, according to Whitehead Institute researchers. Until now, scientific dogma has stated that differentiation is a one-way path; once cells specialize, they cannot return to the flexible stem-cell state on their own.
Scientists from the Morgridge Institute for Research, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of California and the WiCell Research Institute moved gene therapy one step closer to clinical reality by determining that the process of correcting a genetic defect does not substantially increase the number of potentially cancer-causing mutations in induced pluripotent stem cells.
Patient’s own stem cells may supercharge cardiac bypass surgery.
A new technique using "quantum dots" produced through nanotechnology is a promising approach to monitoring the effects of stem cell therapies for stroke and other types of brain damage, reports the April issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.
Like bad neighbors who decide to go wreck another community, prostate and breast cancer usually recur in the bone, according to a new University of Michigan study.
A long term study reports about the effectiveness of replacing bone marrow, purposely destroyed by chemotherapy, with autologous (self) stem cell rescue for people with aggressive forms of multiple sclerosis (MS). The study is published in the March 22, 2011, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
The International Society for Stem Cell Research will launch a series of topical conferences focused on bringing leading stem cell research to scientists in more areas of the world.
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