Category: Differentiation (37)
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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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...
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...
Adult stem cells: Fat to brain
Tokyo, Japan - [Watch the Video] The ability to adipose derived stem cells to differentiate into a variety of tissues is well known. Primarily, adipose derived stem cells are mesenchymal-like, however, they are also known to differentiate into endothelial cells. Some authors have published that not only can adipose derived...
Fat to endothelium
Aachen, Germany - The use of adipose tissue for regenerative medicine is particularly exciting since large amounts of autologous stem cells can be procured in this manner with minor discomfort to the patient. A recent publication (Wosnitza et al. Plasticity of human adipose stem cells to perform adipogenic and endothelial differentiation. Differentiation. 2007 Jan;75(1):12-23...
Education by fat
Suita-shi, Japan - It is known that adipose tissue contains several interesting stem cell types. Although clinical trials are currently ongoing using adipose derived stem cells, little work is being performed using adipose stem cells to "educate" other types of stem cells. In a recent paper(Yamada Y et al. A novel approach for myocardial regeneration with educated cord blood cells...
Clearing the genetic slate for curing diabetes
Braunschweig, Germany – It is known that a wide variety of agents that are involved epigenetic manipulation of cells are potential candidates for use in “transdifferentiation” or alteration of cellular phenotype. Histone deacetylases are critically involved in maintaining chromatin packing, and thereby transcriptionally silencing various parts of the genome. It is known that...
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Cord Blood Differentiation to Muscle
The possibility of stem cell treatment for muscular degenerative diseases has prompted numerous investigations. Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a dehabilitating disorder that afflicts approximately 1 in 35,000 boys. This disease is caused by a mutation in the dystrophin gene, whose protein product is found at high amounts in the cardiac and skeletal muscles and plays a role in sarcolemmal...
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Curing Cancer By Differentiation
Milan, Italy - It is believed that out of a 1000 cancer cells, less than 1, or maybe even less than that are actual "tumor stem cells", and that this population is responsible for dividing and maintaining the tumor mass. The question has been, how to target this very small population. A recent paper (Piccirillo et al. Bone morphogenetic proteins inhibit the tumorigenic potential of...
Liver Changing to Islets
Sao Paulo, Brazil -
It is known that oval cells of the liver, which act as stem cells, can differentiate into hepatocytes and bile duct epithelium. Oval cells expand when hepatocyte damage occurs and hepatocye mitogenesis is concurrently inhibited. Previously it was published that these oval cells, which ironically also express hematopoietic stem cell markers such as