A specialized type of brain cell that tamps down stem cell activity ironically, perhaps, encourages the survival of the stem cells’ progeny, Johns Hopkins researchers report. Understanding how these new brain cells “decide” whether to live or die and how to behave is of special interest because changes in their activity are linked to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, mental illness and aging.
A study led by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine shines a new light on molecular tools our cells use to govern regulated gene expression.
Two groups of scientists at the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) have made complementary discoveries that break new ground on efforts to turn back the body’s clock on cellular activity, paving the way for a better understanding of stem cells, tissue growth, and regeneration.
University of Adelaide research using special adult stem cells is promising new hope for better treatments for the devastating genetic disease Hurler’s syndrome.
For decades, scientists have searched for treatments for myopathies — genetic muscular diseases such as muscular dystrophy and ALS, also called Lou Gehrig’s disease. Now, an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Arizona State and Stanford Universities, and the University of Arizona, has discovered a new avenue to search for treatment possibilities.
A stem cell therapy previously shown to reduce inflammation in the critical time window after traumatic brain injury also promotes lasting cognitive improvement, according to preclinical research at UTHealth in Houston.
It was once thought that each cell in a person's body possesses the same DNA code and that the particular way the genome is read imparts cell function and defines the individual. For many cell types in our bodies, however, that is an oversimplification. Studies of neuronal genomes published in the past decade have turned up extra or missing chromosomes, or pieces of DNA that can copy and paste themselves throughout the genomes.
One challenge in using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) – which are reprogrammed regular cells – is that they retain traces of their former identities. Dr. Jacob Hanna has now created iPSCs that are completely reset to the earliest possible state, and is able to keep them there. Potential applications include custom-grown transplant organs.
Early stem cell transplants for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma do not improve overall survival in high-risk patients. But early transplantation does appear to benefit very high-risk patients, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Research from Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey demonstrates that using zebrafish to identify self-renewing tumor stem cells in prostate cancers may be more beneficial than using traditional experimental models when aiming to predict response to therapy.
A study, led by researchers at the Cedars-Sinai Regenerative Medicine Institute and published in Science Translational Medicine, is believed to be one of the first in which a specific form of Lou Gehrig’s disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, was replicated in a dish, analyzed and “treated,” suggesting a potential future therapy all in a single study.
Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have, for the first time, taken chimpanzee and bonobo skin cells and turned them into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), a type of cell that has the ability to form any other cell or tissue in the body.
A UCLA study is the first to identify a biological clock able to gauge the age of most human tissues. Some parts of the anatomy, like a woman’s breasts, age faster than the rest of the body.
Scientists report in Nature they have found a novel and unexpected molecular switch that could become a key to slowing some of the ravages of getting older as it prompts blood stem cells to age.
Johns Hopkins scientists have developed new drugs that — at least in a laboratory dish — appear to halt the brain-destroying impact of a genetic mutation at work in some forms of two incurable diseases, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and dementia.
Applications of stem cells in developing thyroid function. This is an important area to treat anyone with thyroid deficiency, whether congenital or acquired. Chinnaiyan, explores how genes and mutations can cause cancer, and how genome sequencing can be used to diagnose and treat cancer.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have identified a protein expressed by human bone marrow stem cells that guides and stimulates the formation of blood vessels. Their findings, which could help improve the vascularization of engineered tissues, were reported online on October 12 in the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology.
For the first time, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have isolated and characterized the progenitor cells that eventually give rise to malignant hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tumors – the most common form of liver cancer. The researchers found ways to identify and isolate the HCC progenitor cells (HcPC) long before actual tumors were apparent.
New research has shown that the stomach naturally produces more stem cells than previously realized, likely for repair of injuries from infections, digestive fluids and the foods we eat.
Johns Hopkins researchers, working with elderly mice, have determined that combining gene therapy with an extra boost of the same stem cells the body already uses to repair itself leads to faster healing of burns and greater blood flow to the site of the wound.
Two patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) have received stem cell injections to their spinal cords at the Univ. of Michigan Health System – the first two to receive the experimental injections in Michigan as part of a national clinical trial.
Stem cell scientists have moved one step closer to producing blood-forming stem cells in a Petri dish by identifying a key regulator controlling their formation in the early embryo, shows research published online today in Cell.
University at Buffalo translational researchers are developing a richer understanding of atherosclerosis in humans, revealing a key role for stem cells that promote inflammation.
Reprogramming adult stem cells so that they are like embryonic stem cells has the potential to change medicine; however, the reprogramming process is inefficient and impractical. Now, Dr. Yaqub Hanna has found that removing one protein changes everything, raising the efficiency of this reprogramming from one percent or less to 100 percent.
We often think of human cells as tiny computers that perform assigned tasks, where disease is a result of a malfunction. But in the current issue of Science, researchers at The Mount Sinai Medical Center offer a radical view of health — seeing it more as a cooperative state among cells, while they see disease as result of cells at war that fight with each other for domination.
A new study from researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center found that a subset of immune cells provide a niche where cancer stem cells survive.
Mayo Clinic researchers have found a way to resynchronize cardiac motion following a heart attack using stem cells. Scientists implanted engineered stem cells, also known as induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, into damaged regions of mouse hearts following a heart attack.
A Cedars-Sinai team of researchers led by principal investigator Dan Gazit, PhD, DMD, has been awarded a $5.18 million grant from California’s stem cell research agency to advance stem cell technologies in segmental bone defects, a complex medical problem caused by large portions of bone tissue loss.
Like volunteers handing out cups of energy drinks to marathon runners, specially engineered “helper cells” transplanted along with stem cells can dole out growth factors to increase the stem cells’ endurance, at least briefly, Johns Hopkins researchers report. Their study, published in the September issue of Experimental Neurology, is believed to be the first to test the helper-cell tactic, which they hope will someday help to overcome a major barrier to successful stem cell transplants.
Stem cell scientists at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre have discovered the gene GATA3 has a role in how blood stem cells renew themselves, a finding that advances the quest to expand these cells in the lab for clinical use in bone marrow transplantation, a procedure that saves thousands of lives every year.
By studying the planarian flatworm, a master of regenerating missing tissue and repairing wounds, the lab of Whitehead Institute Member Peter Reddien has identified an unexpected source of position instruction: the muscle cells in the planarian body wall. This is the first time that such a positional control system has been identified in adult regenerative animals.
Scientists have long believed that healthy brain cells, once damaged by radiation designed to kill brain tumors, cannot regenerate. But new Johns Hopkins research in mice suggests that neural stem cells, the body’s source of new brain cells, are resistant to radiation, and can be roused from a hibernation-like state to reproduce and generate new cells able to migrate, replace injured cells and potentially restore lost function.
The invasion of brain-tumor cells into surrounding tissue requires the same protein molecule that neurons need to migrate into position as they differentiate and mature, according to new research from the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine and published August 7 in the online journal PLOS ONE.
McMaster University researchers have revealed the location of human blood stem cells that may improve bone marrow transplants. The best stem cells are at the ends of the bone.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report a simple, easily reproducible RNA-based method of generating human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) in the August 1 edition of Cell Stem Cell. Their approach has broad applicability for the successful production of iPSCs for use in human stem cell studies and eventual cell therapies.
Could harvesting stem cells for therapy one day be as simple as asking patients for a urine sample? Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine and colleagues have identified stem cells in urine that can be directed to become multiple cell types.
Scientists reprogrammed skin cells from patients with rare blood disorders into human induced pluripotent stem cells, highlighting the great promise of iPSCs in advancing understanding of and eventually treating such diseases.
A new stem cell-based approach to studying epilepsy has yielded a surprising discovery about what causes one form of the disease, and may help in the search for better medicines to treat all kinds of seizure disorders.
The pulmonary vasculature, the blood vessels that connect the heart to the lung, develops even in the absence of the lung. Mice in which lung development is inhibited still have pulmonary blood vessels, which revealed to the researchers that cardiac progenitors, or stem cells, are essential for cardiopulmonary co-development.
Stem-cell researchers at UC San Francisco have found a key role for a protein called BMI1 that may help scientists direct the development of tissues to replace damaged organs in the human body.
Stem cells are key to the promise of regenerative medicine: the repair or replacement of injured tissues with custom grown substitutes. Essential to this process are induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which can be created from a patient's own tissues, thus eliminating the risk of immune rejection. However, Shinya Yamanaka's formula for iPSCs, for which he was awarded last year's Nobel Prize, uses a strict recipe that allows for limited variations in human cells, restricting their full potential for clinical application.
Genomic imprinting maintains a reserve pool of blood-forming stem cells in mouse bone marrow
Researchers at Johns Hopkins have coaxed stem cells into forming networks of new blood vessels in the laboratory, then successfully transplanted them into mice. The stem cells are made by reprogramming ordinary cells, so the new technique could potentially be used to make blood vessels genetically matched to individual patients and unlikely to be rejected by their immune systems, the investigators say.
Indiana University scientists have transformed mouse embryonic stem cells into key structures of the inner ear. The discovery provides new insights into the sensory organ's developmental process and sets the stage for laboratory models of disease, drug discovery and potential treatments for hearing loss and balance disorders.
By using gelatin-based microparticles to deliver growth factors, researchers are creating three-dimensional structures from stem cells and reducing the use of growth factors needed to promote differentiation.
Whitehead Institute researchers have determined that the transcription factor Nanog, which plays a critical role in maintaining the self-renewal of embryonic stem cells, is expressed in a manner similar to other pluripotency markers. This finding contradicts the field’s presumptions about this important gene and its role in the differentiation of embryonic stem cells.
Vitamin C affects whether genes are switched on or off inside mouse stem cells, and may thereby play a previously unknown and fundamental role in helping to guide normal development in mice, humans and other animals, a scientific team led by UC San Francisco researchers has discovered.
UCLA Researchers have successfully established the foundation for using hematopoietic (blood-producing) stem cells from the bone marrow of patients with sickle cell disease to treat the disease.
Research focused on the regulation of the adult stem cells that line the gastrointestinal tract of Drosophila suggests new models for the study of Barrett’s esophagus. Barrett’s esophagus is a condition in which the cells of the lower esophagus transform into stomach-like cells. In most cases this transformation has been thought to occur directly from chronic acid indigestion. A new study suggests a change in stem cell function for this transformation.
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