The International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) announced today that it has launched “A Closer Look at Stem Cell Treatments“ (www.closerlookatstemcells.org), a Web site to arm patients, their families and doctors with information they need to make decisions about stem cell treatments.
A gene shown to play a role in the aging process appears to play a role in the regulation of the differentiation of embryonic stem cells, according to researchers from the Center for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and the Department of Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University.
A new synthetic Petri dish coating could overcome a major challenge to the advancement of human embryonic stem cell research, say University of Michigan researchers.
A previously unknown pattern in DNA methylation - an event that affects cell function by altering gene expression – has been uncovered for the first time by stem cell researchers at UCLA, a finding that could have implications in preventing some cancers and correcting defects in human stem cell lines.
For two decades, the laboratory mouse has been the workhorse of biomedical studies and the only mammal whose genes scientists could effectively and reliably manipulate to study human diseases and conditions.
Rensselear Polytechnic Institute to expand stem cell research capabilities with $2.45 million New York State Stem Cell Science program grant to outfit laboratories in the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies.
Leading stem cell and vascular biology researcher Paul S. Frenette, M.D., has been named the first director of the Ruth L. and David S. Gottesman Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. Dr. Frenette will spearhead Einstein’s efforts to build upon existing resources to create a premier stem cell research institute.
A technique pioneered in the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory of Dr. Jeremy Mao, the Edward V. Zegarelli Professor of Dental Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, can orchestrate stem cells to migrate to a three-dimensional scaffold infused with growth factor, holding the translational potential to yield an anatomically correct tooth in as soon as nine weeks once implanted.
Human stem cells administered intravenously can restore alveolar epithelial tissue to a normal function in a novel ex vivo perfused human lung after E. coli endotoxin-induced acute lung injury (ALI), according to research from the University of California San Francisco.
According to Whitehead Institute researchers, oxygen levels in the lab can permanently alter human embryonic stem (ES) cells, inducing X chromosome inactivation in female cells. This indicates that the current methods of isolation and maintenance are suboptimal.
Scientists at The Wistar Institute offer a new explanation for the persistent ability of melanoma cells to self-renew, one of the reasons why melanoma remains the deadliest form of skin cancer. The concept of the “dynamic stemness” of melanoma can explain why melanoma cells behave like both conventional tumor cells and cancer stem cells.
Human adult stem cells injected around the damage caused by a heart attack survived in the heart and improved its pumping efficiency for a year in a mouse model, researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center report online ahead of publication in Circulation Research. Injection of a patient’s own adult stem cells into the heart has shown some efficacy in assisting recovery after a heart attack in early human clinical trials, said study senior author Edward T. H. Yeh, M.D. “But nobody knows how they work, or how long the stem cells last and function in the heart,” Yeh said. “This study shows how one type of adult stem cell works.”
Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) possess remarkable properties of self-renewal and pluripotency, the ability to become almost any kind of cell within the body. And yet they share the same genome or set of genes with lineage-committed cells, cells fated to be or do one thing.
Chemical Engineering professor Shashi Murthy awarded $1.9 million grant to develop innovative ways to isolate stem cells for regenerative medicine applications
For the first time, Whitehead Institute researchers converted established human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells and human embryonic stem (ES) cells to state that corresponds to that of mouse embryonic stem cells, which are more immature and have greater pluripotency, and are much easier to propagate and to manipulate than traditional human ES.
In findings that could one day lead to new therapies, researchers from The Scripps Research Institute have described some striking differences between the biochemistry of stem cells versus mature cells.
Whitehead Institute researchers identified the mechanism that the protein c-Myc uses to regulate gene transcription. c-Myc is frequently linked to cell proliferation in human cancers. This mechanism suggests potential approaches to limiting its activity and controlling tumor growth in c-Myc-mediated cancers.
The International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) will hold its 10th annual meeting June 13-16, 2012, in Yokohama, Japan, at the PACIFICO Yokohama. The meeting is co-sponsored by Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA), Kyoto University. It will mark the 10th anniversary of the Society’s annual meeting, and its first in Asia.
An examination of the world-wide use of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), which involves transplantation of blood stem cells derived from the bone marrow or blood, finds that there are significant differences in transplant rates between countries and continental regions by indication and donor type.
The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) are establishing a collaborative program to advance the development and use of stem cells in therapies for a wide range of diseases, the organizations announced today. The program will train researchers to use stem cells and foster joint research projects.
Researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center have created stem cells from the eggs of aging mice that could be used for reproductive purposes and regenerative medicine. The study, published in April issue of Aging Cell, found that even though the eggs from older females were slightly less efficient at making stem cells than those from younger females, the capacity to create stem cells was sustained.
Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University has been awarded $10 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to expand its stem cell research capabilities.
Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have solved the decade-old mystery of why human embryonic stem cells are so difficult to culture in the laboratory, providing scientists with useful new techniques and moving the field closer to the day when stem cells can be used for therapeutic purposes.
Researchers at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute have found in animals that infusing cardiac-derived stem cells with micro-size particles of iron and then using a magnet to guide those stem cells to the area of the heart damaged in a heart attack boosts the heart’s retention of those cells and could increase the therapeutic benefit of stem cell therapy for heart disease.
A new field of cancer research could explain why some cancers that appear to have been cured can rear their ugly head or spread to other organs. The answer, believe researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center, lies with a small number of cells within a tumor, called cancer stem cells.
Bony fish like the tiny zebrafish have a remarkable ability that mammals can only dream of: if you lop off a chunk of their heart they swim sluggishly for a few days but within a month appear perfectly normal. How they accomplish this - or, more importantly, why we can't - is one of the significant questions in regenerative medicine today.
The Regenerative Medicine Foundation is pleased to announce a special “Young Minds” graduate student registration rate for its annual Translational Regenerative Medicine Forum, set for April 6-8 in Winston-Salem.
University of Chicago scientists have successfully used geometrically patterned surfaces to influence the development of stem cells. The new approach is a departure from that of many stem-cell biologists, who focus instead on uncovering the role of proteins in controlling the fate of stem cells.
In a breakthrough that may help fill a critical need in stem cell research and patient care, researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have demonstrated that skin cells found in human amniotic fluid can be efficiently “reprogrammed” to pluripotency, where they have characteristics similar to human embryonic stem cells that can develop into almost any type of cell in the human body.
In this one-day academy for journalists, world experts will discuss the science and business of regenerative medicine, including what treatments are on the horizon and what challenges must be overcome to make new treatments widely available.
Important new research by University of Michigan Health System scientists has discovered that bone marrow, previously thought to be resistant to the HIV virus, can contain latent forms of the infection. The finding helps explain why it’s hard to cure the disease.
In a leap toward making stem cell therapy widely available, researchers at the Ansary Stem Cell Institute at Weill Cornell Medical College have discovered that endothelial cells, the most basic building blocks of the vascular system, produce growth factors that can grow copious amounts of adult stem cells and their progeny over the course of weeks. Until now, adult stem cell cultures would die within four or five days despite best efforts to grow them.
Researchers from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center have developed a new assessment tool to measure the severity of symptoms that can complicate stem cell transplantation. The tool assesses symptoms resulting from chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD), and was presented with supporting research at the 2010 Bone and Marrow Transplant Tandem Meeting.
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have discovered a new method for predicting – with up to 99 percent accuracy – the fate of stem cells. Using advanced computer vision technology to detect subtle cell movements that are impossible to discern with the human eye, researchers can successfully forecast how a stem cell will split and what key characteristics the daughter cells will exhibit.
The first order of business for any fledgling plant embryo is to determine which end grows the shoot and which end puts down roots. Now, researchers at the Salk Institute expose the turf wars between two groups of antagonistic genetic master switches that set up a plant's polar axis with a root on one end and a shoot on the other.
Researchers successfully removed CCR5 — a cell receptor to which HIV-1 binds for infection but which the human body does not need — from human cells. Individuals who naturally lack the CCR5 receptor have been found to be essentially resistant to HIV.
Working with mice, Johns Hopkins scientists who tested drugs intended to halt growth of brain cancer stem cells – a small population of cells within tumors that perpetuate cancer growth – conclude that blocking these cells may be somewhat effective, but more than one targeted drug attack may be needed to get the job done.
The great promise of induced pluripotent stem cells is that the all-purpose cells seem capable of performing all the same tricks as embryonic stem cells, but without the controversy.
Two large federal grants recently awarded to The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia will advance the frontiers of research into therapies that manipulate human cells to benefit patients. One grant focuses on developing hESCs to improve platelet supplies. Another program concentrates on iPSCs, a potential source of healthy replacement tissues.
Investigators at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, the Karolinska Institutet, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School and Université Libre de Bruxelles have demonstrated in mouse models that transplanted stems cells, when in direct contact with diseased neurons, send signals through specialized channels that rescue the neurons from death.
The long struggle to move the most versatile stem cells from the laboratory to the clinic got another boost with an $8.8 million contract award to the Waisman Clinical Biomanufacturing Facility at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Researchers from the Sbarro Institute for Molecular Medicine and Cancer Research at Temple University in Philadelphia and the Human Health Foundation in Spoleto, Italy, have found that MECP2, a gene that modifies the chromatin in the cell, has an important role in stem cell aging.
In a significant step toward restoring healthy blood circulation to treat a variety of diseases, a team of scientists at Weill Cornell Medical College has developed a new technique and described a novel mechanism for turning human embryonic and pluripotent stem cells into plentiful, functional endothelial cells, which are critical to the formation of blood vessels. Endothelial cells form the interior "lining" of all blood vessels and are the main component of capillaries, the smallest and most abundant vessels. In the near future, the researchers believe, it will be possible to inject these cells into humans to heal damaged organs and tissues.
Cancer-initiating cells that launch glioblastoma multiforme, the most lethal type of brain tumor, also suppress an immune system attack on the disease, scientists from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center report in a paper featured on the cover of the Jan. 15 issue of Clinical Cancer Research.
While much of the promise of stem cells springs from their ability to develop into any cell type in the body, the biological workings that control that maturation process are still largely unknown.
A new study published in PNAS shows that delivering stem cells on a polymer scaffold to treat large areas of missing bone leads to improved bone formation and better mechanical properties compared to treatment with scaffold alone.
Scientists at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center have uncovered an important link between inflammation and breast cancer stem cells that suggests a new way to target cells that are resistant to current treatments.
The most widely used human embryonic stem cell lines lack genetic diversity, a finding that raises social justice questions that must be addressed to ensure that all sectors of society benefit from stem cell advances, according to a University of Michigan research team.