By introducing a chemical cocktail to granulosa cells, researchers induced the cells to transform into functional oocytes in mice. Once fertilized, these oocytes were then successfully able to produce healthy offspring, showing no differences from naturally bred mice.
Two new studies by an international team of researchers report progress in using stem cells to develop new therapies for Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease (PMD), a rare genetic condition affecting boys that can be fatal before 10 years of age.
A study shows stem cell therapy helps hearts recover from a heart attack, although not for the biological reasons originally proposed two decades ago that today are the basis of ongoing clinical trials. The study reports that injecting living or even dead heart stem cells into the injured hearts of mice triggers an acute inflammatory process, which in turn generates a wound healing-like response to enhance the mechanical properties of the injured area.
The buildup of scar tissue makes recovery from torn rotator cuffs, jumper’s knee, and other tendon injuries a painful, challenging process, often leading to secondary tendon ruptures. New research reveals the existence of tendon stem cells that could potentially be harnessed to improve tendon healing and even to avoid surgery.
Researchers at Columbia University were able to grow fully functional lungs in mouse embryos using transplanted stem cells. The findings suggest that it may be ultimately possible to use the technique to grow human lungs in animals for patients who need transplants and to study new lung treatments.
Current biology research relies on the ability to purify cell types using antibodies or transgenic constructs. However, antibody availability is often limited, and genetic manipulation is labor intensive or sometimes impossible. To date, no universal method exists to enrich for cell types without a priori knowledge of cell type markers. Here, we propose GateID, a computational method that combines single-cell transcriptomics with FACS index sorting to purify cell types using only native cellular properties.
Liver cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. The most common primary liver cancer in adults is known as hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and accounts for approximately 780,000 deaths every year. Even with advanced surgical treatments or transplantation, the 5-year survival rate for HCC patients remains poor due to frequent recurrence.
A major challenge in regenerative medicine is producing tailor-made hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) for transplantation. For this we need a better understanding of where, when and how HSCs are produced in vivo. Scientists have now discovered a new hematopoietic wave in the bone marrow that fills the gap between embryonic blood production and adult bone marrow hematopoietic production.
How do temporal variations in protein concentrations affect biology? It’s a question that biologists have only recently begun to address, and the findings are increasingly showing that random temporal changes in the amount of certain proteins play a direct and significant role on biological processes.
They’ve been called the “special forces” of the immune system: invariant natural killer T cells. Although there are relatively few of them in the body, they are more powerful than many other immune cells.