As stem cells continue their gradual transition from the lab to the clinic, a research group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has discovered a new way to make large concentrations of skeletal muscle cells and muscle progenitors from human stem cells.

The new method, described in the journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine, could be used to generate large numbers of muscle cells and muscle progenitors directly from human pluripotent stem cells. These stem cells, such as embryonic (ES) or induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, can be made into virtually any adult cell in the body.

Dennis Aabo Sorensen is the first amputee in the world to feel sensory rich information — in real-time — with a prosthetic hand wired to nerves in his upper arm; Sorensen could grasp objects intuitively and identify what he was touching while blindfold. 

Just squeezing or bathing cells in acidic conditions can readily reprogram them into an embryonic state. In papers published this week in Nature,  Japanese team says that it has come up with a surprisingly simple method — exposure to stress, including a low pH — that can make cells that are even more malleable than iPS cells, and do it faster and more efficiently. 

Researchers have successfully coaxed stem cells to become kidney tubular cells, a significant advance toward one day using regenerative medicine, rather than dialysis and transplantation, to treat kidney failure. The findings are published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN).

France’s Carmat said it had carried out its first implant of an artificial heart that can beat for up to five years, adding that the operation had gone smoothly. The implant operation was performed at the Georges Pompidou European Hospital in Paris.

An intention to create a National Agencyof Transplantation in Ukraine is supported by the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines (EDQM), Health and Transplantation, Shalimov National Institute of Surgery and Transplantation and Ukrainian, and Council of Protecting the Rights and Safety of Patients.

Directed differentiation of stem cells is achieved by using specific differentiation factors, including growth factors.
American scientists from Yale University received type I pneumocytes (alveolar epithelial cells of the lungs) using a special system to recreate the conditions of the microenvironment in the respiratory system.