Category Archives: Stem Cell Research

Its tough being a kid, when No seems to be the primary component in an adults vocabulary. Dont jump on the bed, Dont touch the hot pan, and, my personal favorite as a parent, No, you may not color your sister with permanent markers. Being a young, developmentally impressionable cell is also no picnic. How to choose what developmental path to follow? Should it become a nerve cell, a skin cell, a muscle cell? Now stem cell researcher Marius Wernig, MD, along with postdoctoral scholarMoritz Mall, PhD, and former postdoctoral scholar Michael Kareta, PhD,have shown that young would-be neural cells also live in a culture of no in the form of a powerful repressor protein called Myt1l that actively blocks all other cell fates including skin, heart, lung and liver. They published their results yesterday in Nature. As I explained in our release: The study marks the first identification of a near-global repressor that works to block many cell fates but one. It also suggests the possibility of a network of as-yet-unidentified master regulators specific to each cell type in the body. Myt1l works in conjunction with another protein that channels the developing cell into the neural cell fate by … Continue reading →

April 5, 2017 Stem cell differentiation can now be seen thanks to a combination of machine learning and microfabrication techniques developed by scientists at the RIKEN Quantitative Biology Center in Japan. The results, published in PLOS One, followed the differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) which are easily obtained from adult bone marrow. MSCs have proven to be important for regenerative medicine and stem cell therapy because they can potentially repair many different types of organ damage, as they have the ability to differentiate into various cell types including bone, muscle and fat. Depending on the way the cells are grown the results can be quite different and so controlling differentiation is an important goal. Observing MSC differentiation under different conditions is an essential step in understanding how to control the process. However, this has proved challenging on two fronts. First, the physical space in which the cells are grown has a dramatic impact on the results, causing significant variation in the types of cells into which they differentiate. Studying this effect requires consistent and long lasting spatial confinement. Second, classifying the cell types which have developed through manual observation is time consuming. Previous studies have confined cell growth … Continue reading →

No two stem cells are identical, even if they are genetic clones. This stunning diversity is revealed today in an enormous publicly available online catalogue of 3D stem cell images. The visuals were produced using deep learning analyses and cell lines altered with the gene-editing tool CRISPR. And soon the portal will allow researchers to predict variations in cell layouts that may foreshadow cancer and other diseases. The Allen Cell Explorer, produced by the Allen Institute for Cell Science in Seattle, Washington, includes a growing library of more than 6,000 pictures of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) key components of which glow thanks to fluorescent markers that highlight specific genes. The Cell Explorer complements ongoing projects by several groups that chart the uniqueness of single cells at the level of DNA, RNA and proteins. Rick Horwitz, director of the Allen Institute for Cell Science, says that the institutes images may hasten progress in stem cell research, cancer research and drug development by revealing unexpected aspects of cellular structure. You cant predict the outcome of a football game if you know stats on all the players but have never watched a game. The project began about a year ago with adult … Continue reading →

The always-popular Teach-In lecture series returns to UC Santa Cruzs Alumni Weekend this year, with button-pushing presentations about the role of the humanities in a "post-truth" world and the intriguing potentials of stem cell research. The students in both classes can bring their intellectual curiosity but leave those exam booklets behind. This series will be one of the many highlights of Alumni Weekend festivities, which take place April 2830. Those who wish to attend this fun-filled weekend may register here. There is no need to cram all night beforehand for these Teach-Ins. Just show up and enjoy. But be prepared with a couple of questions to ask. This will guarantee a lively and far-ranging discussion. In the past, Teach-Ins were held simultaneously; returning Slugs wished they could have taken a class that would teach them how to clone themselves so they could attend all the talks. But this year, the lectures are being held at different times at Stevenson College, meaning that it is technically possible to attend both lecturesproviding that you register in advance to guarantee your spot. The Teach-In lectures kick off on Saturday, April 29, at 1 p.m., at Stevenson College, room 150, with Rejuvenate Now: Stem … Continue reading →

WOBURN, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Frequency Therapeutics, a company spearheading the movement to restore hearing by harnessing the regenerative potential of progenitor cells in the body, today announced that Chris Loose, Ph.D., the Companys Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer, will be presenting at the 14th Stem Cell Research and Regenerative Medicine Conference. The presentation titled, Progenitor Cell Activation - an Enabling Technology for In-Situ Tissue Regeneration, will look to explore the companys proprietary Progenitor Cell Activation (PCA) platform, founded on recent discoveries in progenitor cell biology by Bob Langer, Sc.D. at MIT and Jeff Karp, Ph.D., at Harvard. PCA is leading to a new class of drugs that regenerate healthy tissue within the body. The presentation will take place on Wednesday, April 5 at 4:50 p.m. The conference is being held from April 5 to 6 in Boston, MA. The biology, chemistry and regenerative properties behind our PCA platform is quite exciting and has the potential to yield a whole new category of disease-modifying therapeutics for a wide range of degenerative conditions, said Dr. Loose. Our lead program is focused on the over 360 million people worldwide who suffer from hearing impairment, with no effective therapeutic solutions currently available. By targeting cellular regeneration … Continue reading →

On Tuesday, a 60-year-old Japanese man became the first human being to receive "reprogrammed" stem cells. The cells were derived from induced pluripotent stem (iPS), which were donated by another person. The iPS cells are developed by removing mature cells from one individual and reprogramming them to embryonic state. The fact that the transplanted cells were accepted by the patient opens up doors for research on the subject. In the future, scientists could use a combination of stem cells from different donors to treat diseases, according to the Nature journal. Read:Bones Grown With Stem Cells Could Help Treat Injuries Easily In the procedure, skin cells from an anonymous donor were reprogrammed into a type of retinal cells and then transplanted into the retina of the patient to treat age-related macular degeneration, which makes a person go blind in advanced age. Physicians hope that the cells will stop the disease from progressing. This is not the first time such a procedure has been tried out. In 2014, a Japanese woman underwent a similar procedure, in which her iPS cells were transformed into retinal cells and transplanted for treating the same disease. The Nature report added that the procedure was successful and … Continue reading →

FINDINGS UCLA researchers have developed a stem cell gene therapy cure for babies born with adenosine deaminase-deficient severe combined immunodeficiency, a rare and life-threatening condition that can be fatal within the first year of life if left untreated. In a phase 2 clinical trial led by Dr. Donald Kohn of theEli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Researchat UCLA, all nine babies were cured. A 10th trial participant was a teenager at the time of treatment and showed no signs of immune system recovery. Kohns treatment method, a stem cell gene therapy that safely restores immune systems in babies with the immunodeficiency using the childs own cells, has cured 30 out of 30 babies during the course of several clinical trials. Adenosine deaminase-deficient severe combined immunodeficiency, also known as ADA-SCID or bubble baby disease, is caused by a genetic mutation that results in the lack of the adenosine deaminase enzyme, which is an important component of the immune system. Without the enzyme, immune cells are not able to fight infections. Children with the disease must remain isolated in clean and germ-free environments to avoid exposure to viruses and bacteria; even a minor cold could prove fatal. … Continue reading →

news Plasticell, a developer of stem cell technologies and cell-based therapies, has signed agreements with the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) to progress its therapeutic stem cell pipeline. We are delighted to have put together this collaboration which has such enormous potential for the creation of next-generation stem cell products, commented Dr Yen Choo, founder and Executive Chairman of Plasticell. Separate agreements with the two Singapore research centres encompass technology licensing, collaborative research and scientific exchange visits. Plasticell will initially collaborate with the laboratories of Professor Peter Drge (School of Biological Sciences, NTU) and Dr Farid Ghadessy (p53Lab, A*STAR) to apply proprietary genome editing technology to insert functional multi-transgene cassettes into specific loci of human stem cell lines. The engineered lines will be used by Plasticell in multiple projects focused on precisely directed stem cell differentiation, phenotypic screening for drug discovery and in next-generation immuno-oncology applications. Plasticell is a biotechnology company leading the use of high throughput technologies to develop stem cell therapies. The Companys therapeutic focus is in hematopoietic stem cell therapy, anaemia and thrombocytopenia, cancer immunotherapy and diabetes/obesity. Plasticells Combinatorial Cell Culture (CombiCult) platform technology, allows it to test very … Continue reading →

March 30, 2017 Researchers have developed a new approach for growing and studying cells they hope one day will lead to curing lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis through "personalized medicine." Researchers at the Center for Regenerative Medicine (CReM) at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and Boston Medical Center (BMC) have discovered that one particular signaling pathway, Wnt, helps direct lung development. A signaling pathway is how developing cells get instruction on what types of cell to become, such as a liver cell, a skin cell, a brain cell, etc. Using this finding, researchers implemented a new way to use stem cells made from any individual, including cells from patients with cystic fibrosis, and turn them into airway cells, which they then grew into three-dimensional spheres. These airway spheres now can be used to study cystic fibrosis disease activity using a specific test called a swelling assay. "Because airway spheres from a patient with cystic fibrosis do not swell in our assay but airway spheres from a healthy person do, we can see whether adding a certain drug or combination of drugs causes them to swell more. Finding a drug that causes them to swell might imply that patient … Continue reading →

Important Questions The Catholic Church is concerned with the protection of all innocent human life, as Pope Paul VI's landmark encyclical, Humanae vitae (1968), made clear. Scientific research is important, but it can never come at the expense of the weakest among us. Stem cells are a special type of cell that can easily divide to create new cells; pluripotent stem cells, which are the subject of most research, can create new cells of various types. Over the last several years, scientists have been optimistic about the possibility of using stem cells to treat a wide range of diseases and other health problems, because stem cells could potentially regenerate damaged tissues and organs. While news reports and political debates often use the term stem-cell research to discuss all scientific research involving stem cells, the truth is that there are a number of different types of stem cells that are being studied. For example, adult stem cells are often drawn from bone marrow, while umbilical-cord stem cells are taken from the blood that remains in the umbilical cord after birth. Most recently, stem cells have been found in the amniotic fluid that surrounds a baby in the womb. There is no … Continue reading →