Category: Differentiation (37)
Why the hype about in vivo reprogramming?
Cambridge, MA-
You may have seen the widespread media coverage last week describing the "reprogramming" of pancreatic cells into insulin producing "islet-like cells". Essentially, all the buzz was about a paper (Zhou et al. In vivo reprogramming of adult pancreatic exocrine cells to beta-cells. Nature 2008 Aug 27) in which differentiated pancreatic exocrine...
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c-myb needed for smooth muscle differentiation
Ithaca, NY - There is some evidence that bone marrow derived stem cells may transdifferentiate into muscle. In fact, several pieces of evidence suggest that bone marrow stem cells may help to heal injured heart muscle. If stem cells are to be used for generation of muscle...
PPAR gamma agonists: inhibition of fibrosis
Rochester, NY -
The understanding how to modulate the balance between generation of new functional tissue and creation of a fibrotic scar would allow for the treatment of numerous conditions associated with scar tissue deposition.
It is known that stem cells can help to heal scarred tissue ranging from myocardium, to 4 Comments
Immune suppressant stimulating mesenchymal to bone differentiation
Shanghai, China -
Mesenchymal stem cells are very useful since they can be administered across allogeneic barriers without need for immune suppression and can be differentiated into various tissues such as liver.
In a current paper (Dai et al. Stimulation of osteogenic activity in mesenchymal stem cells by
Generating lung epithelium from cord blood stem cells
Burlington, VT - Generation of lung epithelium de novo would be very useful in the treatment of chronic lung diseases. Unfortunately previous attempts to do this have not been extremely successful. In a recent study (Sueblinvong et al. Derivation of Lung Epithelium From Human Cord Blood-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2007 Dec 6) human cord blood stem cells...
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Mesenchymal Stem Cell Therapy Kidney Failure: IGF-1
Bergamo, Italy - Although numerous studies, both preclinical and clinical have demonstrated the potency of adult stem cells for treatment of heart and liver degenerative conditions, relatively little work has been performed using stem cells for renal failure. In a recent paper (Imberti et al. Insulin-Like Growth Factor-1 Sustains Stem Cell Mediated Renal Repair. J Am Soc Nephrol. 2007 Oct...
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Protective Astrocytes
Galveston, Texas - As various media are being developed for coaxing stem cells to enter various pathways of differentiation, limitations to media alone are becoming apparent. In a recent study (Jordan et al. Astrocytes enhance long-term survival of cholinergic neurons differentiated from human fetal neural stem cells. J Neurosci Res. 2007 Aug 29) it was demonstrated that fetally derived...
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Bone Marrow Becoming Islets
[Watch the Video] This is a summary of the paper which supports US patent 7,169,608. The paper demonstrates ability to generate functional insulin producing cells from the bone marrow of BALB/c mice. These cells are capable of regulating glucose in a streptocoizin-induced model of diabetes.
Kinetics of pancreatic regeneration
Wuhan, China - Currently there exist several pieces of evidence supporting endogenous pancreatic regenerative ability after injury. In a recent study (Liu et al. PDX-1 expression and proliferation of duct epithelial cells after partial pancreatectomy in rats. Hepatobiliary Pancreat Dis Int. 2007 Aug;6(4):424-9.) partial pancreatectomy was performed in rats...
G-CSF Stimulates Liver Repair
Rome, Italy -
G-CSF is clinically used to stimulate neutrophil production in patients who are neutropenic as a result of cancer therapy. Experimentally G-CSF is under investigation for mobilization of stem cells to help patients after cardiac infarct or stroke.
In a recent study (Piscaglia et al. Granulocyte-colony stimulating factor promotes liver repair and induces oval cell...