Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have successfully converted human skin cells into fully-functional pancreatic cells. The new cells produced insulin in response to changes in glucose levels, and, when transplanted into mice, the cells protected the animals from developing diabetes in a mouse model of the disease.
The possibility of the world’s first human head transplant is very real. In December 2017, Italian neuroscientist Dr. Sergio Canavero plans to perform the procedure alongside a team of Chinese surgeons, led by Dr. Xiaoping Ren – who to date, has performed around 1,000 head transplants on mice.
Electronic mesh has potential to unravel workings of mammalian brain.
Stem cell therapies are often limited by low survival of transplanted stem cells and the lack of precise control over their differentiation into the terminal cell types needed to repair or replace injured tissues. Now, a team led by Wyss Institute Core Faculty member David Mooney, Ph.D., has developed a new strategy – embedding stem cells into porous, transplantable hydrogels – that has experimentally improved bone repair by boosting the survival rate of transplanted stem cells and influencing their cell differentiation.
In a world-first surgery, a Spanish cancer patient has received a 3D printed titanium sternum and rib implant that was designed and manufactured in Melbourne.
UC San Francisco researchers have for the first time developed a method to precisely control embryonic stem cell differentiation with beams of light, enabling them to be transformed into neurons in response to a precise external cue.
An almost fully-formed human brain has been grown in a lab for the first time, claim scientists from Ohio State University. The team behind the feat hope the brain could transform our understanding of neurological disease.
A new study has revealed a previously unidentified group of cells that can regenerate liver tissue without forming tumors. Previously, researchers believed that a group of adult stem cells known as oval cells were responsible for the liver’s renowned regenerative properties, but it has since been proven that these stem cells develop into bile duct cells.
Researchers at the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine announced that they had regrown damaged livers in mice. It’s just one example of scientists growing tiny versions of organs in animals and in the lab to study development and disease, and test potential treatments.
An 8-year-old has become the first child in the world to receive a bilateral hand transplant. The procedure was carried out by surgeons based at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, assisted by colleagues from Penn Medicine.