News Posts
Mesenchymal stem cells to liver
Hangzhou, China - The ability of bone marrow derived mesenchymal cells to differentiate into various lineages is well-known. A recent paper (Chen et al. Hepatocytes induced by conditioned culture medium of hepatocytes. J Cell Biochem. 2007 Mar 5;) describes a novel protocol for inducing differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells into hepatocytes. Essentially, mesenchymal stem cells were...Wednesday March 7th, 2007 @ 20:26:27 EST
Cord Blood Transplants Without Immune Suppression
Tempe, Arizona - The current use of cord blood as a substitute for bone marrow in individuals lacking an appropriate donor has made a tremendous impact on treatment of various hematological malignancies. Cord blood has several advantages to bone marrow, including reduced HLA matching requirements (4/6 is acceptable, wherease bone marrow has to be 6/6), widespread availability, and reduced risk...Tuesday March 6th, 2007 @ 09:54:00 EST
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 prevent...Saturday March 3rd, 2007 @ 21:57:55 EST
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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. Histone-mediated...Friday March 2nd, 2007 @ 14:03:36 EST
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...Thursday March 1st, 2007 @ 09:56:48 EST
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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 entitledNotch 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...Tuesday February 20th, 2007 @ 02:40:05 EST
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 from...Thursday February 15th, 2007 @ 09:58:27 EST
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 difficult in embryonic stem...Wednesday February 14th, 2007 @ 20:07:39 EST
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...Tuesday February 13th, 2007 @ 19:38:20 EST