Feature Channels: Stem Cells

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Patient’s own stem cells may supercharge cardiac bypass surgery.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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Using skin cells from adult siblings with schizophrenia and a genetic mutation linked to major mental illnesses, Johns Hopkins researchers have created induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) using a new and improved “clean” technique.

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Proteins in fluids bathing the brain are essential for building the brain, discover scientists in a report published March 10 in the journal Neuron. The finding promises to advance research related to neurological disease, cancer and stem cells.

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Stem cells derived from a patient’s own bone marrow were safely used in pediatric patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI), according to results of a Phase I clinical trial at (UTHealth) published in Neurosurgery.

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Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering Deanna Thompson is utilizing more than $300,000 in New York state funding as part of the state stem cell research program, NYSTEM, to study adult neural stem cells. The NYSTEM program is New York’s $600 million publicly funded grant program to advance scientific discovery in the area of stem cells.

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Ordinary human cells reprogrammed as induced pluripotent stem cells may revolutionize personalized medicine by creating new and diverse therapies unique to individual patients. But important and unanswered questions have persisted about the safety of these cells, in particular whether their genetic material is altered during the reprogramming process. A new study finds that the genetic material of reprogrammed cells may in fact be compromised, and suggests that extensive genetic screening of hiPSCs become standard practice.

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For children with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), transplantation of stem cells derived from the patients' own bone marrow is a "logistically feasible and safe" treatment procedure, reports the March issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.

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Unique computer model calculates how long a blood stem cell will live, information that could predict the outcome of bone marrow transplants.

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Pluripotent stem cells have been generated from horses by a team of researchers. The findings will help enable new stem-cell based regenerative therapies in veterinary medicine, and because horses’ muscle and tendon systems are similar to our own, aid the development of preclinical models.

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An essential protein for normal stem cell renewal also promotes the growth of breast cancer stem cells when it's overproduced in those cells, researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reported in Cancer Cell.

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In an opinion piece published Feb. 10 in the journal Science, a team of scholars led by a Johns Hopkins bioethicist urges the scientific community to act collectively to stem the negative effects of the patenting and privatizing of stem cell lines, data and pioneering technologies. This means grappling with the ambiguity of several fundamental distinctions typically made in ethics, law and common practice, the experts insist.

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Research from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) and Athersys reveals that a novel stem cell therapy provided multiple benefits when administered in preclinical models of ischemic stroke.

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Researchers at Johns Hopkins have found a better way to create induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells—adult cells reprogrammed with the properties of embryonic stem cells—from a small blood sample. This new method, described last week in Cell Research, avoids creating DNA changes that could lead to tumor formation.

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By coaxing healthy and diseased human bone marrow to become embryonic-like stem cells, a team of Wisconsin scientists has laid the groundwork for observing the onset of the blood cancer leukemia in the laboratory dish.

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Reprogramming adult cells to recapture their youthful “can-do-it-all” attitude appears to leave an indelible mark, found researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. When the team, led by Joseph Ecker, PhD., a professor in the Genomic Analysis Laboratory, scoured the epigenomes of so-called induced pluripotent stem cells base by base, they found a consistent pattern of reprogramming errors.

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New technique removes several hurdles in generating induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, smoothing the way for disease research and drug development.

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Fifty years ago today, two young, unknown scientists at the fledgling Ontario Cancer Institute (OCI) published accidental findings that proved the existence of stem cells – cells that can self-renew repeatedly for different uses.

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Breakthrough discovery offers hope for new therapies for range of diseases.

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Among stem cell biologists there are few better-known proteins than nestin, whose very presence in an immature cell identifies it as a "stem cell," such as a neural stem cell. As helpful as this is to researchers, until now no one knew which purpose nestin serves in a cell.

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The Hinxton Group, an international consortium of stem cell scientists, bioethicists and experts in law and public policy, called urgently today for specific measures designed to counter secrecy and self interest. The recommended measures focus on the sharing of data, materials and collective management of intellectual property related to stem cells.

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Do genetic variations in DNA determine the outcome and success in patients who undergo stem-cell transplantation to treat blood cancers and predict complications? The National Heart, Blood and Lung Institute of the National Institutes of Health has awarded a $4.3 million, four-year grant to Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center to help find out.

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Cancer scientists led by Dr. John Dick at the Ontario Cancer Institute (OCI) and collaborators at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital (Memphis) have found that defective genes and the individual leukemia cells that carry them are organized in a more complex way than previously thought.

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Scientists coax stem cells (created from skin cells of a patient with an inherited heart disease) into cardiac cells. Method holds promise for personalized medicine, and for studying diseased cells that can’t be easily biopsied.

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Scientists at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center have identified a potential new way of attacking breast cancer stem cells, the small number of cells in a tumor that fuel its growth and spread.

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For years, the majority of research on reactive oxygen species (ROS) – ions or very small molecules that include free radicals – has focused on how they damage cell structure and their potential link to stroke, cardiovascular disease and other illnesses. However, researchers at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA have shown for the first time that neural stem cells, the cells that give rise to neurons, maintain high levels of ROS to help regulate normal self-renewal and differentiation.

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UTHealth and Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital have launched the first Phase I safety study approved by the FDA to investigate the use of a child’s own umbilical cord blood stem cells for pediatric traumatic brain injury.

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A close collaboration between researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the Institute for Advanced Study found that the tumor suppressor p53, long thought of as the "Guardian of the Genome," may do more than thwart cancer-causing mutations. It may also prevent established cancer cells from sliding toward a more aggressive, stem-like state by serving as a "Guardian against Genome Reprogramming."

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States, not the federal government, now fund the majority of human embryonic stem cell research conducted in the United States, according to a recent study in the journal Nature Biotechnology. In addition, much of the research performed in the states could likely have been funded by the National Institutes of Health under federal guidelines established by President Bush in 2001.

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Initial experiments suggest a possible new approach to stem cell therapy for spinal cord injuries—using biocompatible "channels" made of chitosan to guide regeneration of new spinal cord tissue, reports the December 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, a leading provider of information and business intelligence for students, professionals, and institutions in medicine, nursing, allied health, and pharmacy.

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A protein that is crucial for regulating the self-renewal of normal prostate stem cells, needed to repair injured cells or restore normal cells killed by hormone withdrawal therapy for cancer, also aids the transformation of healthy cells into prostate cancer cells, researchers at UCLA have found.

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Groundbreaking discovery moves field closer to therapeutic applications.

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Breast cancer stem cells, the aggressive cells thought to be resistant to current anti-cancer therapies and which promote metastasis, are stimulated by estrogen via a pathway that mirrors normal stem cell development. Disrupting the pathway, researchers were able to halt the expansion of breast CSCs, a finding that suggests a new drug therapy target. The study, done in mice, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Early Edition.

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Eduardo Marbán, M.D., one of the most prominent cardiac stem cell researchers, will describe the latest advances during the event that begins at 1 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 16.

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A team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison reports the development of a fully defined culture system that promises a more uniform and, for cells destined for therapy, safer product.

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The liver's unique ability among organs to regenerate itself has been little understood. Now Weill Cornell Medical College scientists have shed light on how the liver restores itself by demonstrating that endothelial cells -- the cells that form the lining of blood vessels -- play a key role.