News Posts
Giving Hematopoiesis a Hand
New York, NY - Despite the introduction of various types of mutation-specific kinase inhibitors into the field of hematology/oncology, the only curative approach for many of the leukemias still resides in bone marrow or hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Drawbacks of this approach are the need for myeloablation of the recipient, followed by post transplant immune suppression to...
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A new method of transfecting stem cells
Victoria, Australia - Anyone working with genetic modification of cells knows that transfection can be pretty difficult task depending on the cell population of study. Issues with transfection arise when cells are very fragile, or when the specific cell type for one reason or another does not allow efficient integration of the transgene. In a recent paper (Wagstaff et al...
Mesenchymal "Islets"
Seoul, Korea - The search for ways of generating islets for treatment of Type 1 Diabetes is very intense with groups claiming to have generating islets from a wide variety of stem cells. In a recent study (Kim et al. Generation of insulin-producing human mesenchymal stem cells using recombinant adeno-associated virus.Yonsei Med J. 2007 Feb 28;48(1):109-19.) investigators transfected...
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Obviousness in Biotechnology
[Watch the Video]
The case of KSR v Teleflex addressess the issue of obviousness, which is fundamental for the biotech industry in general, and especially for companies operating in the area of stem cells. This video clip overviews some aspects of the case. More details can be found in the StemCellPatents.com Journal Article entitled
Notch ligands in endothelial differentiation
Los Angeles, CA - Formation of new blood vessels from existing vessels, a process called "angiogenesis" is very useful for the therapy of diseases such as myocardial ischemia or critical limb ischemia. On the other side of the coin, knowing how to inhibit angiogenesis is critical for treatment of diseases such as cancer which are dependent on production of new blood vessels in order to feed...
Skin as Nuclear Transfer Donor
New York, NY - Various methods of nuclear transfer cloning are known in the art. However, what is interesting is the actual optimal donor cell to be used for the highest efficiency, since in general the process of nuclear transfer cloning is considered to be generally inefficient. In a recent paper (Li et al. Mice cloned...
ES to HSC
Madison, Wisconsin - Amongst the various ES technologies that WARF has title to, one particularly interesting one is generation of hematopoietic stem cells from embryonic stem cells. Although others have demonstrated that this is feasible using human embryonic stem cells, the process appears to be more...
Accumulation of Abnormalities
Indianapolis, IN - It is known that embryonic stem cells offer almost limitless possibilities for regenerative medicine. In fact, there are reports in the published literature that human embryonic stem cells have actually been used clinically. One of the important aspects of these cells is their high level of telomerase expression...
Mouse to Primate XenoStem Transplant
Saint-Mande, France - The ability of various stem cell types to be immune privileged is well known. For example, it is known that mesenchymal stem cells can act as veto cells under specific conditions. While mesenchymal stem cells are derived usually from the bone marrow, and it would make sense for them to suppress immune...
New BMPs for bone healing
Chicago, Illinois - One of the first areas of medicine in which regenerative technologies have been applied is the acceleration of bone healing. Although most bones heal naturally, in certain situations (both fracture and host specific) healing does not occur properly. The bone morphogenic proteins (BMPs) are a family of growth factors that play important roles in embryogenesis, as...