Category Archives: Stem Cell Research

In Brief The human body is a melding of different systems designed to function well together. In some cases, however, a mechanism that protects the body can also cause it harm, like with the specializedshield of endothelial cells called the blood-brain barrier that keeps toxins in the blood from entering the brain. Due to a genetic defect, the blood-brain barrier could prevent essential biomolecules needed for normal brain development from passing through. An example is the Allan-Herndon-Dudley syndrome (AHDS), which is a psychomotor disease resulting from a defective gene that controls the influx of thyroid hormones to the brain. This rare but severe disorder is also unique to humans, making it very difficult to develop treatments that could be lab tested on animals. So, to study this unique disorder, scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles used the cells of AHDS patients to recreate the patients blood-brain barriers via induced pluripotent steam (iPS) cellstechnology. What they learned using the model gave the researchers some leads on potential therapies for the disease. They published their study in the journal Cell Stem Cell. The researchers managed to make a laboratory model for AHDS. This is the first demonstration … Continue reading →

Cancer stem cells are bad actors. They enable cancers to metastasize, or spread, and help revive cancers after the malignancies go dormant. One of the few agents that can effectively attack them is a small molecule called salinomycin. But scientists havent understood how the compound kills the cells. Now, researchers have discovered salinomycins mechanism (Nat. Chem. 2017, DOI: 10.1038/nchem.2778). The findings reveal a key weakness of cancer stem cells that could lead to the design of other drugs to help fight the cells. To discover the mechanism, Raphal Rodriguez of Institut Curie and Frances National Center for Scientific Research, Maryam Mehrpour of Institut Necker Enfants Malades and INSERM, and coworkers first tried to create a more potent version of salinomycin by modifying it with groups of varying polarity and charge. The most potent was ironomycin, in which one of salinomycins hydroxyl groups was replaced by a short amine-alkyne chain. Ironomycin has an order of magnitude greater potency than salinomycin at killing breast cancer stem cells, both in culture and in mice. They then used in vivo click chemistry on ironomycins alkyne group to label the compound with a fluorescent dye, enabling them to track where the compound goes when in … Continue reading →

H e made the emotional plea to his colleagues: Pass this bill. It might give somebody like my wife a chance to walk, Texas Representative Drew Springer said through tears late Thursday at the state Capitol in Austin. Id trade every one of my bills Ive passed, every single one of them, to get the chance to hear HB 810. HB 810 is one of three bills being considered in the Texas Legislature that would make it easier for sick people to try unproven therapies at their own risk, and cost. Springers bill would allow clinics offering unapproved stem cell treatments to treat patientsin Texas. HB 661 would permit people with chronic illness to get therapies in early-stage clinical trials not just terminally ill patients, as the states current right-to-try law does. And HB 3236 would allow companies to charge patients for unproven therapies. advertisement The debate in Texas echoes a national discussion over how much access patients should have to experimentaldrugs. For the lawmakers supporting the measures, the issue is about the ability to make ones own decisions about health care and not let bureaucracy get in the way of that. But for stem cell researchers and many patient … Continue reading →

Baltimore Business Journal TEDCO awards $8.5 million in stem cell grants Baltimore Business Journal The money will be provided through the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund, which supports stem cell research grants and loans to public and private entities. To qualify for funding, the research must be conducted in Maryland and must involve use of human ... Here is the original post: TEDCO awards $8.5 million in stem cell grants - Baltimore Business Journal … Continue reading →

The Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission has awarded $8.5 million to 29 projects that will explore how human stem cells can regenerate heart tissue, treat muscular dystrophy and sickle cell disease, and aid diabetes management, among other medical conditions. The awards, made through the state-funded Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund, are intended to accelerate work by researchers and startup companies using human stem cells to advance medical treatments. "We want to accelerate the transformation from science and technology to commercial products and clinical treatments," said Dan Gincel, the fund's executive director. The initiative has awarded $139 million to 400 projects since it was established in 2006. The fund and commission are managed by TEDCO, the Maryland Technology Development Corp. The grants support projects at various stages, from discovery and gathering data, through clinical trials and steps toward commercialization. As more projects move closer to commercialization, TEDCO expects to accelerate the pace of the fund's awards, said Gincel, who is also TEDCO's vice president of University Partnerships. The $8.5 million awarded this month was part of the state's fiscal 2017 budget. The budget for fiscal year 2018, which starts July 1, includes $8.2 million for stem cell research, Gincel said. This … Continue reading →

May 16, 2017 by David Stacey Credit: University of Western Australia Research led by The University of Western Australia has discovered a new, simple and less expensive way of growing human stem cells. Using hydrogel, a gel with a gradient that can be used to mimic the stiffness of human body tissues, the researchers were able to generate positive outcomes for the growth of stem cells. Dr Yu Suk Choi from UWA's School of Human Sciences at The University of Western Australia led the international collaboration which also included researchers from the University of California, San Diego (USA) and Max Planck Institute for Medical Research (Germany). "Stem cells work by using the 'stiffness' of surrounding tissue as a gauge to identify the way they need to behave in a particular environment in the human body," Dr Choi said. "By using hydrogel to mimic the stiffness of tissue, we found we could 'trick' the stem cells into behaving in particular ways to help them grow and encourage the cells to behave in positive, regenerative ways. "Hydrogel is simple and inexpensive to produce and could have a wide range of applications in biology labs that don't always have the infrastructure available to … Continue reading →

KXAN.com Patients call stem cell bill passage a game changer | KXAN.com KXAN.com AUSTIN (KXAN) A controversial medical treatment is one step closer to becoming law in Texas. One state lawmaker made a last-ditch effort to save the bill ... and more » See the original post here: Patients call stem cell bill passage a game changer | KXAN.com - KXAN.com … Continue reading →

A new study from Lund University in Sweden shows that the behaviour of stem cells in plants and animals is surprisingly similar. The researchers were able to produce mathematical equations that reveal very small differences in the behaviour of the proteins. The results can hopefully be used in stem cell research involving humans. The plant and animal kingdoms were separated through evolution more than 1.6 billion years ago. It is surprising that the interactions between the handful of key genes that control the fate of each stem cell are so similar in both cases, says Carsten Peterson, professor at the Faculty of Science at Lund University. Carsten Peterson is one of the researchers behind the recent study on differences and similarities between animal and plant stem cells. With a background in theoretical physics, he and his colleagues have tackled the stem cells from a different perspective, which proved successful. By formulating mathematical equations, the researchers have performed a detailed study of the proteins that are central to the stem cells in mammals and plants. The proteins are linked to the genes that control the stem cells. In particular, the researchers have studied how these proteins mutually affect one another through … Continue reading →

May 15, 2017 Near-infrared light is used to precisely engineer stem cells into tissue. Credit: University of California - Santa Barbara Nothing beats nature. The diverse and wonderful varieties of cells and tissues that comprise the human body are evidence of that. Each one of us starts out as a mass of identical, undifferentiated cells, and thanks to a combination of signals and forces, each cell responds by choosing a developmental pathway and multiplying into the tissues that become our hearts, brains, hair, bones or blood. A major promise of studying human embryonic stem cells is to understand these processes and apply the knowledge toward tissue engineering. Researchers in UC Santa Barbara's departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology have gotten a step closer to unlocking the secrets of tissue morphology with a method of three-dimensional culturing of embryonic stem cells using light. "The important development with our method is that we have good spatiotemporal control over which cellor even part of a cellis being excited to differentiate along a particular gene pathway," said lead author Xiao Huang, who conducted this study as a doctoral student at UCSB and is now a postdoctoral scholar in … Continue reading →

Induced pluripotent stem cells have revolutionized stem cell science in the decade since their invention. Theyre yielding clues into the nature of diseases such as cancer and Alzheimers, and are also being tapped for therapy. But creating these IPS cells is lengthy, complicated and tricky, and the facilities equipped to make them cant accommodate all the scientists whod like to get their hands on them. A UK-led consortium has removed that bottleneck, by producing 711 lines of ready-to-go IPS cells from healthy individuals. These lines are meant to help scientists understand the normal variations between healthy individuals and those involved in disease, as well as to understand normal human biology and development. The IPS lines are available for research purposes to academic scientists and industry by contacting the Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Initiative (HipSci), at http://www.hipsci.org and the European Bank for induced Pluripotent Stem Cells at https://www.ebisc.org. The accomplishment was announced in a study published in Nature. It can be found online at j.mp/711ips. While many other efforts have generated IPS cells to address rare diseases, this study produces them from healthy volunteers to plumb common genetic variation, Fiona Watt, a lead author on the paper and co-principal investigator … Continue reading →