Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have for the first time used drug-treated blood stem cells to repair heart damage in an animal model, results that might point to methods for healing injuries from heart attacks or disease.

In the study, researchers screened about 147,000 molecules to find one that could transform human blood stem cells into a form resembling immature heart cells. When they implanted blood stem cells activated by this compound into injured rodent hearts, the human cells took root and improved the animals’ heart function.

“The clinical potential is enormous,” said Dr. Jay Schneider, assistant professor of internal medicine and senior author of the study, which appears online this week and in a future issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. … Continue Reading »

Research being presented today (11 April) at the UK National Stem Cell Network Annual Science Meeting in Edinburgh could offer hope that bone stem cells may be harnessed to repair the damaged cartilage that is one of the main symptoms of osteoarthritis.

Scientists at Cardiff University have successfully identified stem cells within articular cartilage of adults, which although it cannot become any cell in the body like full stem cells, has the ability to derive into chondrocytes - the cells that make up the body’s cartilage – in high enough numbers to make treatment a realistic possibility. The team have even been able to identify the cells in people over 75 years of age. … Continue Reading »

Inserting tiny scaffolding into the brain could dramatically reduce damage caused by strokes the UK National Stem Cell Network Annual Science Meeting will hear today. With funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) neurobiologists from the Institute of Psychiatry and tissue engineers from The University of Nottingham have joined forces to tackle the challenge of tissue loss as a result of stroke.

Speaking at the conference in Edinburgh, Dr Mike Modo from the Institute of Psychiatry will explain how combining scaffold microparticles with neural stem cells (NSCs) could regenerate lost brain tissue. … Continue Reading »

Research being presented today (10 April) at the UK National Stem Cell Network Annual Science Meeting in Edinburgh represents a step towards the use of Adult Stem Cells (ASCs) to repair damaged tissue. Speaking at the conference in Edinburgh, Professor Cay Kielty of the University of Manchester describes how she and her team have uncovered a messaging system that instructs ASCs to contribute to tissue repair in response to chemical signals in the body. This work, funded by the Medical Research Council, holds great hope for the development of techniques by which ASCs could be instructed to repair damaged tissues.

ASCs have potential for therapeutic use and avoid many of the ethical issues associated with embryonic stem cells. However, at present it is necessary to gain a better understanding of how, from first principles, ASCs can be controlled based on signalling systems that normally give instructions within the body. There is the potential in the future to apply such understanding to the generation of cells for transplant. … Continue Reading »

Scientists have discovered a new technique for turning embryonic stem cells into insulin-producing pancreatic tissue in what could prove a significant breakthrough in the quest to find new treatments for diabetes.

The University of Manchester team, working with colleagues at the University of Sheffield, were able to genetically manipulate the stem cells so that they produced an important protein known as a ‘transcription factor’.

Stem cells have the ability to become any type of cell, so scientists believe they may hold the key to treating a number of diseases including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and diabetes. … Continue Reading »

The injection of uterine stem cells trigger growth of new brain cells in mice with Parkinson’s disease, Yale School of Medicine researchers report in an abstract presented at the 2008 Society for Gynecologic Investigation (SGI) Annual Scientific Meeting held March 26-29 in San Diego, California.

“Previously, we were able to coax these multipotent stem cells to differentiate into cartilage cells,” said lead author Hugh S. Taylor, M.D., professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at Yale School of Medicine and section chief of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at Yale School of Medicine. “Now we have found that we can turn uterine stem cells into neurons that can boost dopamine levels and partially correct the problem of Parkinson’s disease.” … Continue Reading »

Stem cell researchers from UCLA used a high resolution technique to examine the genome, or total DNA content, of a pair of human embryonic stem cell lines and found that while both lines could form neurons, the lines had differences in the numbers of certain genes that could control such things as individual traits and disease susceptibility.

The technique used to study the genome, which contains all the genes on 46 chromosomes, is called array CGH. The use of higher resolution techniques, such as array CGH and, soon, whole genome sequencing, will enhance the ability of researchers to examine stem cell lines to determine which are best – least likely to result in diseases and other problems – to use in creating therapies for use in humans. … Continue Reading »

Research led by investigators at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) has shown that therapeutic cloning, also known as somatic-cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), can be used to treat Parkinson’s disease in mice. The study’s results are published in the March 23 online edition of the journal Nature Medicine.For the first time, researchers showed that therapeutic cloning or SCNT has been successfully used to treat disease in the same subjects from whom the initial cells were derived. While this current work is in animals, it could have future implications as this method may be an effective way to reduce transplant rejection and enhance recovery in other diseases and in other organ systems. … Continue Reading »