Latest Oct-4 Stories

Former Vice President Al Gore Endorses Trans-Pacific Collaboration to Promote Use of Patient Cells for Drug Discovery and Development and Cell-Based Therapies SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., and KYOTO, Japan, April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- iZumi Bio, Inc., and Kyoto University's Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA), today announced a collaboration to promote the basic research, development and application of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell technology - a form of cellular...

A team of UCSF researchers has for the first time used tiny molecules called microRNAs to help turn adult mouse cells back to their embryonic state. These reprogrammed cells are pluripotent, meaning that, like embryonic stem cells, they have the capacity to become any cell type in the body.The findings suggest that scientists will soon be able to replace retroviruses and even genes currently used in laboratory experiments to induce pluripotency in adult cells. This would make potential stem...

The simple recipe scientists earlier discovered for making adult stem cells behave like embryonic-like stem cells just got even simpler. A new report in the February 6th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, shows for the first time that neural stem cells taken from adult mice can take on the characteristics of embryonic stem cells with the addition of a single transcription factor. Transcription factors are genes that control the activity of other genes.The discovery follows a...

Whitehead Institute researchers have greatly simplified the creation of so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, cutting the number of viruses used in the reprogramming process from four to one. Scientists hope that these embryonic stem-cell-like cells could eventually be used to treat such ailments as Parkinson's disease and diabetes.The earliest reprogramming efforts relied on four separate viruses to transfer genes into the cells' DNA--one virus for each reprogramming gene (Oct4,...

Researchers claim they developed a safer way to make powerful stem cells from ordinary skin cells, improving research focused on so-called regenerative medicine.They used a common cold virus to carry transformative genes into ordinary mouse cells and made them look and act like embryonic stem cells.If it can be replicated with human cells, it may offer a safe way to test cell therapy to treat diseases such as sickle cell anemia or Parkinson's, Konrad Hochedlinger of Massachusetts General...

A team of scientists at IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) have discovered that microRNAs --small molecules that are an important regulatory component in the machinery of living cells -- actually regulate the differentiation of stem cells and have roles that go way beyond what was previously thought. The work uncovers new ways by which microRNAs regulate how genes are made and could provide alternative explanations for some observations that biologists have made in...

M. D. Anderson team connects REST to regenerative medicine, pediatric brain cancerA protein known as REST blocks the expression of a microRNA that prevents embryonic stem cells from reproducing themselves and causes them to differentiate into specific cell types, scientists at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center report in the journal Nature. Researchers show RE1-silencing transcription factor (REST) plays a dual role in embryonic stem cells, said senior author Sadhan...

What exactly makes a stem cell a stem cell? The question may seem simplistic, but while we know a great deal of what stem cells can do, we don't yet understand the molecular processes that afford them such unique attributes. Now, researchers at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research working with human embryonic stem cells have uncovered the process responsible for the single-most tantalizing characteristic of these cells: their ability to become just about any type of cell in the body, a...

Copenhagen, Denmark: Early embryos with abnormal chromosomes are capable of returning to normal when grown in culture in the laboratory, according to new research presented to the 21st annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology today (Monday 20 June). While such embryos are not capable of developing into normal foetuses if implanted in a woman's womb, the discovery has important implications for stem cell production, especially in countries where the...