stem cell news 110620-26

kittybruce

Voice from last issue:
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9 f  s  L* _+ v+ J- q  L"The reduction in infarct size was our main end point, and this is preserved; also, the ejection fraction benefit [with the stem cells] was the same at six months and 18 months. This is quite important, because the big thing about cell-therapy trials is whether the effect is transient or will be seen on long-term follow-up. We show if you protect the muscle in the acute phase of MI, you will indeed have sustained improvement."--Dr Henricus Duckers from Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.: I  t# ?# l2 l" S

. y& e# Y  [( t1 K. j2 M"I am appalled that the National Science Foundation would publish an ideological paper that promotes embryo-destructive research by attempting to link such research to advances in iPS cell research. While even this possible linkage is questionable based on the limits of the data presented, NSF in its headlong rush to promote ES cell research goes over the edge in confusing and prejudicing the public."--Dr. David Prentice, Family Research Council's Senior Fellow for Life Sciences.
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“Adult stem cells are highly applicable to many diseases, and their significance lies in how they can somehow find a site of injury in need of repair, create an environment that is conducive to repair or even become cells that are incorporated in the repair itself.” --Dr. Jorge Piedrahita, a leading stem cell researcher at North Carolina State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine.
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' O8 F1 I/ i/ Z: ~+ Q. ~. J“We remember emotional events much more strongly than daily experiences, and for a long time we have known that connections between the amygdala and hippocampus help to encode this emotional information. Our research shows that amygdala input actually pushes the hippocampus to make new neurons from a unique population of neural stem cells. This provides completely new cells that get activated in response to emotional input.”--Kaufer, an assistant professor of integrative biology and a member of UC Berkeley’s Wills Neuroscience Institute.
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"This whole concept that if you do have stem cells in every tissue then why can't you just recruit them to help or teach those tissues to repair themselves is really an idea that has come to the front in the last three years."--Freda Miller, a senior scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.% y# x& w' G4 F$ p/ i0 K" e3 I

7 V$ J4 S; ^& F- |0 g% C“We systematically fractionated the cancer into different pools of cells, always testing each fraction to identify the ones that gave rise to cancer when we transferred them to a normal, healthy mouse. When a single cell can give rise to a cancer, you know you have a cancer stem cell...With conventional therapies and even new therapies, drug treatments rarely kill off all the cancer cells within the body, so cancers often recur and become even more aggressive. One possible reason for that is that current drugs target the bulk of the tumor without hitting all the cancer stem cells. By understanding and identifying the tumor-initiating cells and how they differ from the rest of the body as well as from the rest of the cancer, companies can design drugs that are more effective at getting at the roots of the disease.”--Elaine Fuchs, who heads the Laboratory of Mammalian Cell Biology and Development at The Rockefeller University.
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# L7 p+ T5 J; Y( K% R! ?' \- q& u"This marker, called delta-decorin, is specifically expressed on the surface of adipose stem cells, which are responsible for the production of white adipose tissue. This is the first prospective marker to be discovered for this particular type of adult stem cell."--Mikhail Kolonin, Ph.D., the study's senior author and assistant professor of molecular medicine at the UTHealth Medical School.
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8 Q: i/ o+ ?7 f! d) Q$ {8 L"Stem cells don't make any decisions in isolation; their decisions are spatially and temporally directed by biochemical and mechanical cues in their environment. We have designed systems that allow us to tightly control these properties during stem cell differentiation, but also give us the flexibility to introduce a new growth factor or shake the cells a little faster to see how changes like these affect the outcome."--Todd McDevitt, director of the Stem Cell Engineering Center at Georgia Tech and an associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University./ C7 |" s5 f4 H) ~* \" s* E

' ]2 v0 a' [4 ~, |8 C, {7 }6 U5 G"When we generate iPS cells, correct the gene defect that is responsible for this disease, and guide these stem cells to become RPE cells, these RPE cells functioned normally. This is exciting because it demonstrates we can fix something that is out of order. It also supports our belief that in the future, one might be able to use this approach for replacement of cells lost or malfunctioning due to other more common diseases of the retina."--lead study author cell biologist Jason Meyer, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology in the School of Science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.& F7 @* L- v6 ~

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/ I5 Q& F& o/ o+ yThis issue:8 V4 P6 s4 t3 a% I0 g
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: i' O% g+ K! s0 `1 uVideo news:( ^& c% ~; n; y; G- u
FDA Approves Fibrocell's Stem-Cell Wrinkle Smoother 9 Z: ]/ S' e6 f
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/71276018// l& o* T  z8 H* D7 K6 j9 Z

9 f" k+ e) k8 s8 N( T( dHarvard Stem Cell Institute - First 5 years
5 Z' T, D: |6 D5 f8 X  }3 Shttp://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/11/hcsi-5/