Category Archives: Stem Cell Research

Wesleyan Connection (blog) StemCONN Symposium Shows Connecticut is Leader in Stem Cell Research Wesleyan Connection (blog) Stem cell research continues to be an exciting and fast-paced field with new discoveries fueling prospects for new therapies based on regenerative medicine for a range of debilitating medical conditions, and Connecticut is at the leading edge of this ... Read the original post: StemCONN Symposium Shows Connecticut is Leader in Stem Cell Research - Wesleyan Connection (blog) … Continue reading →

Recent research, led by assistant professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at the University of South Carolina Joseph T. Rodgers, has found a way to increase the bodys ability to heal after injury. The study was published in the scientific journal Cell Reports. The research was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health. Funding was also secured from the Donald E. and Delia B. Baxter Foundation, Glenn Foundation for Medical Research, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. The study was co-sponsored by the Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford. Clinical Research In previous research, Rodgers proved that adult stem cells enter an alert state when the body sustains an injury. Alert stem cells have greater ability to heal and repair damaged tissues. Rodgers theorized that blood from an injured person could produce a state of alert in another persons stem cells. Using lab mice, he and his team injected healthy mice with blood from their injured counterparts. The stem cells of the healthy mice were observed to adopt the state of alert. The team was able to expose the chemical mechanism used to signal cells to enter an alert state as the enzyme Hepatocyte … Continue reading →

Researchers have modified mouse stem cells to combat the kind of inflammation that arthritis and other conditions cause. The stem cells may one day be used in a vaccine that would fight arthritis and other chronic inflammation conditions in humans, a new paper suggests. Such stem cells, known as SMART cells (Stem cells Modified for Autonomous Regenerative Therapy), develop into cartilage cells that produce a biologic anti-inflammatory drug that, ideally, will replace arthritic cartilage and simultaneously protect joints and other tissues from damage that occurs with chronic inflammation. Researchers initially worked with skin cells from the tails of mice and converted those cells into stem cells. Then, using the gene-editing tool CRISPR in cells grown in culture, they removed a key gene in the inflammatory process and replaced it with a gene that releases a biologic drug that combats inflammation. The research is availablein the journal Stem Cell Reports. Our goal is to package the rewired stem cells as a vaccine for arthritis, which would deliver an anti-inflammatory drug to an arthritic joint but only when it is needed, says Farshid Guilak, the papers senior author and a professor of orthopedic surgery at Washington University School of Medicine. To do … Continue reading →

One of the challenges of 3D bioprinting is getting the stem cells which make up the biological ink to survive the 3D printing process not to mention keeping them viable long enough to grow into a full tissue structure. We hear a lot about the successes of 3D bioprinting, but what we dont always hear about are the many, many attempts that fail. 3D printing human tissue is no easy endeavor, so every time an advance is made, its cause for celebration. A little over a month ago, a group of Swedish researchers, including several from Sahlgrenska Academy, made big news when they not onlyimplanted 3D printed human cartilage cells into mice, but got them to survive and grow after implantation. The cells were implanted immediately after they were 3D printed, and successfully formed their own blood vessel networks inside the mice, which is a promising step towards the eventual 3D printing and implantation of actual human organs. Now Sahlgrenska Academy is back in the news for further advances in 3D bioprinting. The team of researchers, working with Chalmers University of Technology, which also collaborated on the previous research, has successfully created cartilage tissue by 3D printing stem cells taken … Continue reading →

Science Daily Stem cells edited to fight arthritis Science Daily Using new gene-editing technology, researchers have rewired mouse stem cells to fight inflammation caused by arthritis and other chronic conditions. Such stem cells, known as SMART cells (Stem cells Modified for Autonomous Regenerative Therapy), ... and more » See the article here: Stem cells edited to fight arthritis - Science Daily … Continue reading →

Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS/Newscom By Kelly ServickApr. 27, 2017 , 5:00 PM A research misconduct investigation of a prominent stem cell lab by the Harvard Universityaffiliated Brigham and Womens Hospital (BWH) in Boston has led to a massive settlement with the U.S. government over allegations of fraudulently obtained federal grants. As Retraction Watch reports, BWH and its parent health care system have agreed to pay $10 million to resolve allegations that former BWH cardiac stem cell scientist Piero Anversa and former lab members Annarosa Leri and Jan Kajstura relied on manipulated and fabricated data in grant applications submitted to the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). A statement from the U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of Massachusetts released today notes that it was BWH itself that shared the allegations against Anversas lab with the government. The hospital had been conducting its own probe into the Anversa lab since at least 2014, when a retraction published in the journal Circulation revealed the ongoing investigation. The hospital has not yet released any findings. In 2014, Anversa and Leri sued Harvard and BWHalong with BWH President Elizabeth Nabel and Gretchen Brodnicki, Harvards dean for faculty and research integrityfor … Continue reading →

Ten years ago, the bones currently in your body did not actually exist. Like skin, bone is constantly renewing itself, shedding old tissue and growing it anew from stem cells in the bone marrow. Now, a new technique developed at Caltech can render intact bones transparent, allowing researchers to observe these stem cells within their environment. The method is a breakthrough for testing new drugs to combat diseases like osteoporosis. The research was done in the laboratory of Viviana Gradinaru (BS '05), assistant professor of biology and biological engineering and a Heritage Medical Research Institute Investigator. It appears in a paper in the April 26 issue of Science Translational Medicine. In healthy bone, a delicate balance exists between the cells that build bone mass and the cells that break down old bone in a continual remodeling cycle. This process is partially controlled by stem cells in bone marrow, called osteoprogenitors, that develop into osteoblasts or osteocytes, which regulate and maintain the skeleton. To better understand diseases like osteoporosis, which occurs when loss of bone mass leads to a high risk of fractures, it is crucial to study the behavior of stem cells in bone marrow. However, this population is rare … Continue reading →

Boston Business Journal Partners, Brigham pay $10M to settle research fraud probe Boston Business Journal According to the government, Anversa and two other researchers, Annarosa Leri and Jan Kajstura, used manipulated and falsified information to obtain funding to study whether stem cells can repair cardiovascular damage. The data was published in a ... Partner's HealthCare and Brigham and Women's Hospital to pay $10M to settle fraud allegationMassLive.com Harvard teaching hospital to pay $10 million to settle research misconduct allegationsRetraction Watch (blog) Partners, Brigham and Women's to pay $10m in research fraud caseThe Boston Globe Patch.com all 11 news articles » Original post: Partners, Brigham pay $10M to settle research fraud probe - Boston Business Journal … Continue reading →

A New Type of Stem Cell While much has been gleaned about the power of stem cells over the last few decades, researchers from the Salk Institute and Peking Universityin China recently found out theres plenty left to discover and invent. Nature, it seems, will always keep you guessing. In a study published in the journal Cell, the team of researchers revealed they had succeeded in creating a new kind of stem cell thats capable of becoming any type of cell in the human body. Extended pluripotent stem cells or EPS cells are similar to induced pluripotent stem cells(iPS cells), which were invented in 2006. The key difference between the two is that iPS cells are made from skin cells (called fibroblasts) and EPS cells are made from a combination of skin cells and embryonic stem cells. iPS cells are the hallmark of stem cell research and can be programmed to become any cell in the human body hence the pluripotent part of their name. EPS cells, too, can give rise to any type of cell in the human body, but they can also do something very different something unprecedented, actually: they can create the tissues needed to nourish and … Continue reading →

It's based on experimental research that suggests stem cells extracted from the pulp of these teeth might someday regrow a lost adult tooth or offer other regenerative medicine benefits -- some potentially life-saving. "So I'll try not to get emotional here, but my husband was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in 2011," said Bassetto, of Naperville, Illinois, head of a sales team at a software company. In 2012, her husband, James, had a stem cell transplant to restore his bone marrow and renew his blood. "He was very fortunate. He was one of six kids, and his brother was a perfect match," she said. She noted that her two children, Madeline, 23, and Alex, 19, may not be so lucky if they develop health problems, since they have only each other; the chance of two siblings being a perfect stem cell match is only 25%. Unfortunately, her husband's stem cell transplant was not successful. He developed graft-versus-host disease, where his brother's donated stem cells attacked his own cells, and he died shortly afterward. However, she says, the transplant had given him a chance at a longer life. Last year, when her son saw a dentist for wisdom tooth pain, a … Continue reading →