Researchers at Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, in collaboration with research groups in Finland, Canada, and Slovenia, have discovered a novel and unexpected function of nestin, the best known marker of neural stem cells.
Scientists identified two distinct control mechanisms in the developmental transition of undifferentiated stem cells into healthy brain cells. This fundamental research using mice may inform regenerative medicine treatments for neurodegenerative diseases and spinal cord injuries, in the future.
To help patients with muscle disorders, scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) have engineered a new stem cell line to study the conversion of stem cells into muscle. Findings appeared in Cell Reports.
A team of Rutgers scientists, including Leonard Lee and Shaohua Li, have taken an important step toward the goal of making diseased hearts heal themselves — a new model that would reduce the need for bypass surgery, heart transplants or artificial pumping devices.
Scientists have discovered the signals that determine the fate of immature cells in the pancreas. The research shows that they are very mobile and that their destiny is strongly influenced by their immediate environment. This breakthrough published in the journal Nature will facilitate the manufacturing of pancreatic islet cells from stem cells and might help combating type 1 diabetes. Prof. Dr. Henrik Semb who led the study recently joined Helmholtz Zentrum München.
A material based on a natural product of bones and citrus fruit, called citrate, provides the extra energy that stem cells need to form new bone tissue, according to a team of Penn State bioengineers. Their new understanding of the mechanism that allows citrate to aid in bone regeneration will help the researchers develop slow-release, biodegradable, citrate-releasing scaffolds to act as bone-growth templates to speed up healing in the body.
Scientists hoping to develop better treatments for kidney disease have turned their attention to growing clusters of kidney cells in the lab. One day, so-called organoids — grown from human stem cells — may help repair damaged kidneys in people or be used to test drugs developed to fight kidney disease.
Researchers have developed a way to grow human heart tissue that can serve as a model for the upper chambers of the heart, known as the atria. The tissue, derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPCSs), beats, expresses genes, and responds to drugs in a manner similar to a real human atrium. The model, described November 8 in the journal Stem Cell Reports, may be useful for evaluating disease mechanisms and drugs for atrial fibrillation — the most common type of arrhythmia.
Patients with blood cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma are often treated by irradiating their bone marrow to destroy the diseased cells. After the treatment, patients are vulnerable to infection and fatigue until new blood cells grow back.
A research group led by scientists from Showa University and the RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research in Japan have, for the first time, succeeded in growing three-dimensional salivary gland tissue that, when implanted into mice, produced saliva like normal glands.