Cloning And Stem Cell News, Research and Resources - January 2010 Archives
Using cells from mice, scientists discovered a new strategy for making embryonic stem cell transplants less likely to be rejected by a recipient's immune system. This strategy, described in a research report appearing the FASEB Journal, involves fusing bone marrow cells to embryonic stem cells. Once fused, hybrid cells have DNA from both donor and recipient, raising hopes that immune rejection of embryonic stem cell therapies can be avoided without drugs.
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The long struggle to move the most versatile stem cells from the laboratory to the clinic got another boost with an $8.8 million contract award to the Waisman Clinical Biomanufacturing Facility at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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Bone marrow is a leading source of adult stem cells, which are increasingly used for research and therapeutic interventions, but extracting the cells is an arduous and often painful process. Now, researchers have found evidence that fat tissue, known as adipose tissue, may be a promising new source of valuable and easy-to-obtain regenerative cells called hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells, according to a study prepublished online in Blood, the official journal of the American Society of Hematology.
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Even Superman needed to retire to a phone booth for a quick change. But now scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine have succeeded in the ultimate switch: transforming mouse skin cells in a laboratory dish directly into functional nerve cells with the application of just three genes. The cells make the change without first becoming a pluripotent type of stem cell -- a step long thought to be required for cells to acquire new identities.
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New York Stem Cell Foundation-Druckenmiller Fellow, Daylon James, Ph.D., of Weill Cornell Medial College, is lead author on a study defining conditions for generating a plentiful supply of endothelial (vessel lining) cells that are suitable for therapeutic use. Dr. James and his colleagues created a human embryonic stem cell "reporter" line that can be used to measure endothelial cell production and activity.
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Researchers at the National Institutes of Health and other institutions have discovered the third in a sequence of genes that accounts for previously unexplained forms of osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), a genetic condition that weakens bones, results in frequent fractures and is sometimes fatal.
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In a significant step toward restoring healthy blood circulation to treat a variety of diseases, a team of scientists at Weill Cornell Medical College has developed a new technique and described a novel mechanism for turning human embryonic and pluripotent stem cells into plentiful, functional endothelial cells, which are critical to the formation of blood vessels.
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In Cell Stem Cell, Singapore scientists report surprising discovery that novel transcription factor Nr5a2 can replace classical reprogramming factor Oct 4 to significantly increase efficiency of reprogramming differentiated stem cells into iPS cells.
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Scientists at Duke University Medical Center have found some compounds that improve a cell's ability to properly "fold" proteins and could lead to promising drugs for degenerative nerve diseases, including Huntington's disease, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.
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 | Transplanted neurons grown from embryonic stem cells can fully integrate into the brains of young animals, according to new research in the Jan. 20 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. Healthy brains have stable and precise connections between cells that are necessary for normal behavior. This new finding is the first to show that stem cells can be directed not only to become specific brain cells, but to link correctly. ...> Full Article |
ESHRE invites you to attend its workshop on "Update on pluripotent stem cells (hESC and iPS)" followed by a hands on course on "Derivation and culture of pluripotent stem cells." The objective of the course on February 8 is to provide participants with an update on the state of the art of pluripotent stem cells.
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Weizmann Institute scientists discover how signals from tendons and muscles shape the developing bones, initiating the growth of the bone ridges that anchor the tendons in place.
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 | While much of the promise of stem cells springs from their ability to develop into any cell type in the body, the biological workings that control that maturation process are still largely unknown. ...> Full Article |
A new predictor of cornea transplant success has been identified by the Cornea Donor Study (CDS) Investigator Group. New analysis of data from the 2008 Specular Microscopy Ancillary Study, a subset of the CDS, found that the preoperative donor cell count of endothelial cells, previously considered to be an important predictor of a successful transplant, did not correlate with graft success.
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 | A new study published in PNAS shows that delivering stem cells on a polymer scaffold to treat large areas of missing bone leads to improved bone formation and better mechanical properties compared to treatment with scaffold alone. ...> Full Article |
 | Chinese researchers have become the world's fifth most prolific contributors to peer-reviewed scientific literature on clock-reversing regenerative medicine even as a skeptical international research community condemns the practice of Chinese clinics administering unproven stem cell therapies to domestic and foreign patients. ...> Full Article |
 | Researchers at the UNC School of Medicine have discovered a protein complex that appears to play a significant role in erasing epigenetic instructions on sperm DNA, essentially creating a blank slate for the different cell types of a new embryo to develop. ...> Full Article |
Biologists have developed an efficient way to genetically modify human embryonic stem cells. Their approach, which uses bacterial artificial chromosomes to swap in defective copies of genes, will make possible the rapid development of stem cell lines that can both serve as models for human genetic diseases and as testbeds on which to screen potential treatments, they say.
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 | The master regulator of muscle differentiation, MyoD, functions early in myogenesis to help stem cells proliferate in response to muscle injury, according to researchers at Case Western Reserve University. The study appears online Jan. 4 in the Journal of Cell Biology. ...> Full Article |
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