Latest Cellular differentiation Stories
Connie K. Ho for RedOrbit.com A new study by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has discovered two adult stem cell-like subpopulations in adult human skin. The findings allow for further research to be done in the area of personalized medicine and patient-specific cellular therapies. The study, using technology from Fibrocell Science, allowed the researchers to identify and confirm two types of cells in human skin cell cultures; the possible source of...
Results suggest researchers implement careful quality control A team led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute and the University of California (UC) San Diego has discovered a new type of dynamic change in human stem cells. Last year, this team reported recurrent changes in the genomes of human pluripotent stem cells as they are expanded in culture. The current report, which appears in the May 4, 2012 issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell, shows that these cells can also change...
Berkeley Lab scientists demonstrate the promise of synchrotron infrared spectroscopy of living cells for medical applications Knowing how a living cell works means knowing how the chemistry inside the cell changes as the functions of the cell change. Protein phosphorylation, for example, controls everything from cell proliferation to differentiation to metabolism to signaling, and even programmed cell death (apoptosis), in cells from bacteria to humans. It’s a chemical process that has...
Findings offer new insights into neurologic development and regenerative therapies for neurologic disease Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) have identified a molecular pathway that controls the retention and release of the brain's stem cells. The discovery offers new insights into normal and abnormal neurologic development and could eventually lead to regenerative therapies for neurologic disease and injury. The findings, from a collaborative effort of the...
In spite of considerable research efforts around the world, we still do not know the determining factors that confer stem cells their main particular features: capacity to self-renew and to divide and proliferate. The scientist Jordi Casanova, head of the “Morphogenesis in Drosophila” lab at IRB Barcelona and CSIC research professor, proposes in an article in the journal Embo Reports that we may be working from an incorrect angle. Casanova’s notion is that stem cells emerge not because...
A vast majority of cells in the brain are glial, yet our understanding of how they are generated, a process called gliogenesis, has remained enigmatic. Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have identified a novel transcripitonal cascade that controls these formative stages of gliogenesis and answered the longstanding question of how glial cells are generated from neural stem cells. "Most people are familiar with neurons, cells that process and transmit information in the brain. Glial...
Yale researchers show in detail how three genes within human embryonic stem cells regulate development, a finding that increases understanding of how to grow these cells for therapeutic purposes. This process, described in the April 6 issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell, is different in humans than in mice, highlighting the importance of research using human embryonic stem cells. "It is difficult to deduce from the mouse how these cells work in humans," said Natalia Ivanova, assistant...
4 signaling substances control the transformation of T cells The thymus plays a key role in the body's immune response. It is here where the T lymphocytes or T cells, a major type of immune defense cells, mature. Different types of T cells, designated to perform specific tasks, arise from progenitor cells that migrate to the thymus from the bone marrow. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Immunology and Epigenetics in Freiburg have generated artificial thymus tissue in a mouse...
MADISON, Wis., March 28, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Cellular Dynamics International, Inc. (CDI) today announced an expansion of its existing distribution agreement with iPS Academia Japan, Inc. to include iCell® Neurons and iCell Endothelial Cells. The original distribution agreement, announced on June 8, 2011, covered the distribution of CDI's iCell Cardiomyocytes, the first commercially available product based on induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), in Japan. CDI is the...
Researchers at the RIKEN Omics Science Center (OSC) have successfully developed and demonstrated a new experimental technique for producing cells with specific functions through the artificial reconstruction of transcriptional regulatory networks. As an alternative to induced pluripotent stem cells, the technique promises to enable faster and more efficient production of functional cells for use in cancer therapy and a variety of other areas. Starting with the first-ever production of...
