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Taking the sting out of bone repair

Bone tissue engineering is theoretically now possible at a large scale. Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) researchers have developed small biodegradable and biocompatible supports that aid stem cell differentiation and multiplication as well as bone formation in living animal models.¹ Mesenchymal stem cells self-renew and differentiate into fat, muscle, bone, and cartilage cells, which makes them attractive for organ repair and regeneration. These stem cells can be isolated from different sources, such as the human placenta and fatty tissue. Human early mesenchymal stem cells (heMSCs), which are derived from fetal bone marrow, were thought to be best suited for bone healing, but were not readily accessible for therapeutic use. Existing approaches to expand stem cells for industrial applications tend to use two-dimensional materials as culture media, but their production yields are too low for clinical  demand. Furthermore, stem cells typically n...

Where does your blood actually come from?

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Blood cells. Credit score: © phonlamaiphoto / Fotolia Scientists at Lund College in Sweden have developed a brand new understanding of how the primary blood cells kind throughout  human improvement as they transition from endothelial cells to kind blood cells of various varieties. Utilizing a laboratory mannequin of human stem cell improvement and by trying on the expression of blood cell and endothelial cell genes in every particular person cell, they discovered a development from an endothelial state, to a combined endothelial/blood state, to a blood-only state. That is the primary examine displaying the molecular processes of this transition within the human developmental context. "Understanding how the primary human blood cells develop will present lacking clues for us to generate blood stem cells within the laboratory to be used within the therapy of blood issues and malignancies," says Niels-Bjarne Woods, in command of the examine. The blood working...

Stem cell consortium tackles complex genetic diseases

To address this challenge, in 2010, the US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's (NHLBI) Next Generation Genetic Association Studies Consortium sponsored a series of studies that began the hard work of analyzing induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells gathered from large groups of patients to learn more about how individual mutations contribute to polygenetic diseases. Now, a group of 11 reports resulting from the collaborative effort appear in  Cell Stem Cell ,  Stem Cell Reports , and  EBioMedicine . The papers are presented on an interactive web portal,  http://www.cell.com/consortium/NextGen . "When this started, the stem cell field had begun to get to the point where you could contemplate making iPS cells at scale for perhaps hundreds or thousands of individuals," says Chad Cowan of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Broad Institute. "The time was right and the NHLBI had the vision to know that the next step in genome...

Turning skin cells into blood vessel cells while keeping them young

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It is a mouse coronary heart part displaying human progenitor cells that fashioned purposeful human blood vessels. Purple coloration signifies human blood vessels, purple staining signifies the blood vessels of the mouse that obtained the human cell implants. Credit score: Jalees Rehman Researchers from the College of Illinois at Chicago have recognized a molecular change that converts pores and skin cells into cells that make up blood vessels, which may finally be used to restore broken vessels in sufferers with coronary heart illness or to engineer new vasculature within the lab. The method, which boosts ranges of an enzyme that retains cells younger, can also circumvent the standard getting old that cells bear through the culturing course of. Their findings are reported within the journal  Circulation . Scientists have some ways to transform one sort of cell into one other. One method entails tu...

Researchers improve technology to save sperm stem cells

Adult men can have their sperm frozen before undergoing radiation or chemotherapy , both of which can render sperm infertile. But boys who haven't been through puberty can only have sperm stem cells removed and frozen in anticipation of technology that could culture the cells and place them back in the testes, where they produce sperm after puberty. Jon Oatley, an associate professor in the WSU School of Molecular Biosciences and director of the Center for Reproductive Biology, said he and his colleagues are well on their way to developing such a technology. "I think it's going to become the standard by which everybody cultures their cells, including trying to develop conditions for human cells," said Oatley. He and his colleagues -- graduate student Aileen Helsel and lab manager Melissa Oatley -- report on the new technique in the journal  Stem Cell Reports . Stem cell can produce 5,000 sperm Fewer than 1 percent of the nation's cancer cases involve ch...

Ability of stem cells expanded to regrow any tissue type

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Human EPS cells (inexperienced) might be detected in each the embryonic half (left) and extra-embryonic components (placenta and yolk sac, proper) of a mouse embryo. Credit score: Salk Institute When scientists discuss laboratory stem cells being totipotent or pluripotent, they imply that the cells have the potential, like an embryo, to grow to be any kind of tissue within the physique. What totipotent stem cells can do this pluripotent ones cannot do, nonetheless, is grow to be tissues that help the embryo, just like the placenta. These are referred to as extra-embryonic tissues, and are very important in improvement and wholesome progress. Now, scientists on the Salk Institute, in collaboration with researchers from Peking College, in China, are reporting their discovery of a chemical cocktail that permits cultured mouse and human stem cells to just do that: generate each embryonic and extra-embryonic ...

Hardy rodent with 'extraordinary' anticancer defenses

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The bare mole rat (Heterocephalus glaber) is the longest-living rodent (longevity, 30 years) and reveals extraordinary  resistance to most cancers. Credit score: Picture courtesy of Hokkaido College Scientists are getting nearer to understanding how bare mole rats, the world's longest residing rodent species, keep away from most cancers, which might result in safer stem cell therapies for human ailments. Mole rats dwell as much as 30 years, ten instances longer than mice, and captured colonies virtually by no means present any sort of most cancers . Understanding these animals' anticancer mechanisms could assist advance human remedy sooner or later, in keeping with a collaborative analysis staff from Hokkaido and Keio universities in Japan. The staff took pores and skin tissue from grownup mole rats and reprogrammed the cells into a sort of stem cell known as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS...