Focus: Stem Cells

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The body is a battle zone. Cells constantly compete with one another for space and dominance. Though the manner in which some cells win this competition is well known to be the survival of the fittest, how stem cells duke it out for space and survival is not as clear. A study on fruit flies published in the October 2 issue of Science by Johns Hopkins researchers describes how stem cells win this battle by literally sticking around.

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Adult stem cells may help repair heart tissue damaged by heart attack according to the findings of a new study to be published in the December 8 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Results from the Phase I study show stem cells from donor bone marrow appear to help heart attack patients recover better by growing new blood vessels to bring more oxygen to the heart.

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For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that stem cells found in amniotic fluid meet an important test of potential to become specialized cell types, which suggests they may be useful for treating a wider array of diseases and conditions than scientists originally thought.

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The recent creation of live mice from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) not only represents a remarkable scientific achievement, but also raises important issues, according to bioethicists at The Johns Hopkins University's Berman Institute of Bioethics.

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The Salk Institute has been awarded a $15.6 million grant by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) for translational research focusing on developing a novel stem-cell based therapy for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) – or Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

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NIH's National Institute of General Medical Sciences is using $5.4 million of Recovery Act funds to accelerate basic studies of induced pluripotent stem cells.

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Stem cell research holds great promise for the treatment of millions of Americans with debilitating and possibly fatal diseases. Current legislation and guidelines, however, continue to limit researchers’ endeavors in unlocking the potential breakthroughs that stem cell research can provide. To address this concern, today The Endocrine Society issued a Position Statement calling for an increase in NIH funding for stem cell research as well as expanding the scope of funding to include promising yet neglected areas of stem cell research.

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Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University hosted a roundtable discussion on stem cell research with New York Governor David A. Paterson today. Allen M. Spiegel, M.D., the Marilyn and Stanley M. Katz Dean of Einstein, and eight stem cell researchers discussed advances in medical therapies and treatments that Einstein scientists have been investigating since receiving more than $14 million in State funding for stem cell research.

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1) Metformin is more effective than chemotherapy alone; 2) Study supports cancer stem cells hypothesis; 3) Laboratory study focused on breast cancer cells.

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A new type of stem cell discovered in the prostate of adult mice can be a source of prostate cancer, according to a new study by researchers at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.

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A team of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health has successfully grown multiple types of retina cells from two types of stem cells — suggesting a future in which damaged retinas could be repaired by cells grown from the patient’s own skin.

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A multi-institutional team has discovered a chemical that works in mice to kill the rare, aggressive cells within breast cancers that can seed new tumors. These cells, known as cancer stem cells, are thought to enable cancers to spread "” and to reemerge after seemingly successful treatment.

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A novel technique allows researchers to efficiently modify or introduce genes into the genomes of human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, according to Whitehead scientists. For years, scientists have easily swapped genes in and out of mouse ESC or iPS cell genomes, but have had a notoriously difficult time disrupting or inserting genes into their human equivalents.

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In an advance that could help transform embryonic stem cells into a multipurpose medical tool, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have transformed these versatile cells into progenitors of white blood cells and into six types of mature white blood and immune cells.

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Tufts researchers find that the STAT3 gene regulates the growth of cancer stem cells in the brain cancer Glioblastoma multiforme. This evidence is consistent with the controversial theory that a minority of cells within a tumor "” cancer stem cells "” are essential for tumor growth.

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Investigators at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research and The Scripps Research Institute have made the first comparative, large-scale phosphoproteomic analysis of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and their differentiated derivatives.

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The promise of stem cell therapy may lie in uncovering how adult cells revert back into a primordial, stem cell state, whose fate is yet to be determined. Now, cell scientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have identified key molecular players responsible for this reversion in fruit fly sperm cells. Reporting online this week in Cell Stem Cell, researchers show that two proteins are responsible redirecting cells on the way to becoming sperm back to stem cells.

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In a new study that could transform embryonic stem cell (ES cell) research, scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center have discovered why mouse ES cells can be easily grown in a laboratory while other mammalian ES cells are difficult, if not impossible, to maintain.

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More than 40 scientists, bioethicists, lawyers and science journal editors are calling on their colleagues, policy makers and the public to begin developing guidelines for the research and reproductive use of stem cell-derived eggs and sperm, even though such use may be a decade or more away.

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UCLA researchers have found that embryonic stem cells and skin cells reprogrammed into embryonic-like cells have inherent molecular differences, demonstrating for the first time that the two cell types are clearly distinguishable from one another.

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A gene well known to stop or suppress cancer plays a role in cancer stem cells, according to a new study from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. The researchers found that several pathways linked to the gene, called PTEN, also affected the growth of breast cancer stem cells.

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Biologists have long wondered why the embryonic heart begins beating so early, before the tissues actually need to be infused with blood. Two papers next week in Cell and Nature show that the mechanical stresses of a beating heart and blood flow are required for the blood system to develop, and offer clues that may help in developing cell-based therapies for blood diseases such as leukemia, immune deficiency and sickle cell anemia.

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Using cancer cells from an ovarian cancer patient, human embryonic stem cells and mice, Israeli researchers have created a pre-clinical experimental model that mimics the way a tumor would develop in the patient's body. The researchers say their findings could facilitate the development of personalized cancer therapies.

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Dalhousie Medical School researchers have discovered that embryonic stem cells may play a critical role in helping people with nerve damage and motor neuron diseases, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), regain muscular strength.

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A novel protein marker has been found that identifies rare adult liver stem cells, whose ability to regenerate injured liver tissue has the potential for cell-replacement therapy. For the first time researchers have demonstrated that cells expressing the marker can differentiate into both liver cells and cells that line the bile duct.

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Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) have identified a novel mechanism in the regulation and differentiation of neural stem cells. Researchers found that the protein receptor Ryk has a key role in the differentiation of neural stem cells, and demonstrated a signaling mechanism that regulates neuronal differentiation as stem cells begin to grow into neurons.

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Ten years ago today (Nov. 6, 1998), the publication in the journal Science of a short paper entitled "Embryonic Stem Cell Lines Derived from Human Blastocysts" rocked biology "“ and the world "“ as the all-purpose stem cell and its possibilities were ushered into the limelight.

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Researchers have shown that immune-defense cells influenced by embryonic stem cell-derived cells can help prevent the rejection of hearts transplanted into mice, all without the use of immunosuppressive drugs.

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Mayo Clinic investigators have demonstrated that stem cells can be used to regenerate heart tissue to treat dilated cardiomyopathy, a congenital defect. Publication of the discovery was expedited by the editors of Stem Cells and appeared online in the "express" section of the journal's Web site at http://stemcells.alphamedpress.org/.

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Using the molecular equivalent of a tattoo on DNA that adult stem cells (ASC) pass to their "daughter" cells in combination with gene expression profiles, University of Utah researchers have identified two early steps in adult stem cell differentiation"”the process that determines whether cells will form muscle, neurons, skin, etc., in people and animals.

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Researchers from the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and Stem Cell Program at Children's Hospital Boston have produced a robust new collection of disease-specific stem cell lines, all of which were developed using the new induced pluripotent stem cell (iPS) technique.

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Researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered that the Notch protein helps human embryonic stem cells "decide" their own fate, a finding which may eventually be useful in programming cells for the development of stem cell therapies. Their results are reported in the May 2008 issue of Cell Stem Cell.

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Kansas State University researchers are working on a method of delivering cancer drugs that promises to be more efficient and reduce the side effects patients have to deal with.

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Researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center have demonstrated for the first time that transplanted muscle stem cells can both improve muscle function in animals with a form of muscular dystrophy and replenish the stem cell population for use in the repair of future muscle injuries.

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A gene that is overexpressed in 20 percent of breast cancers increases the number of cancer stem cells, the cells that fuel a tumor's growth and spread, according to a new study from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.

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Researchers have shown that they can put mouse embryonic stem cells to work building the heart, potentially moving medical science a significant step closer to a new generation of heart disease treatments that use human stem cells.

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In recent years, stem cell researchers have become very adept at manipulating the fate of adult stem cells cultured in the lab. Now, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies achieved the same feat with adult neural stem cells still in place in the brain. They successfully coaxed mouse brain stem cells bound to join the neuronal network to differentiate into support cells instead.

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Burnham Scientists have genetically programmed embryonic stem cells to become nerve cells when transplanted into the brain. The research, an important step toward developing new treatments for stroke, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other neurological conditions showed that mice afflicted by stroke showed tangible therapeutic improvement following transplantation of these cells.

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Adult stem cells improve healing of broken bones and could eventually serve as a new treatment for the 10 to 20 percent of fractures that fail to heal, according to a new study. The results will be presented Monday, June 16, at The Endocrine Society's 90th Annual Meeting in San Francisco, by Froilan Granero-Molto, PhD, research associate of the University of North Carolina.

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In an approach that could become a new treatment for the 10 to 20 percent of people whose broken bones fail to heal, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have shown that transplantation of adult stem cells can improve healing of fractures.

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At the sixth annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, a task force of leaders in the field announced a draft set of guidelines to ensure that rigorous best practices are applied to the clinical translation of stem cell research from the laboratory to human subjects.

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A single organ may contain more than one type of adult stem cell "“ a discovery that complicates prospects for using the versatile cells to replace damaged tissue as a treatment for disease, according to a new study from the laboratory of geneticist Mario Capecchi, the University of Utah's Nobel Laureate.

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When forming attitudes about embryonic stem cell research, people are influenced by a number of things. But understanding science plays a negligible role for many people.

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Bolstered by supportive policies and public research dollars, the United Kingdom, Israel, China, Singapore and Australia are producing unusually large shares of human embryonic stem cell research. While states like California and New York are picking up more research funding in the U.S.

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Research from the University of Southern California (USC) has discovered a new mechanism to allow embryonic stem cells to divide indefinitely and remain undifferentiated. The study, which was published in today's issue of the journal Nature, also reveals how embryonic stem cell multiplication is regulated, which may be important in understanding how to control tumor cell growth.

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A study led by a researcher at the University of Southern California has found a new model to explain how signals between cells in the embryo control limb development.

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Stem cell researchers at UCLA were able to grow functioning cardiac cells using mouse skin cells that had been reprogrammed into cells with the same unlimited properties as embryonic stem cells.

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Researchers at Johns Hopkins have uncovered the molecular underpinnings of one of the earliest steps in human development using human embryonic stem cells. Their identification of a critical signal mediated by the protein BMP-4 that drives the differentiation of stem cells into what will become the placenta, will be published in the April issue of Cell Stem Cell.

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A unique partnership between industry and academia has led to human clinical trials of a new drug for a rare class of blood diseases called myeloproliferative disorders (MPD), which are all driven by the same genetic mutation and can evolve into leukemia.