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The chief medical ambition of those who study stem cells has always been that the cells would be used to repair and regenerate damaged tissue. That's still a long way off, despite rapid progress exemplified by the presentation of the Nobel Prize next week to Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University for a key stem-cell breakthrough. But there's another, less well known application of stem cells that is already delivering results: disease modeling. Dr. Yamanaka used a retrovirus to insert four genes into a mouse cell to return it to a "pluripotent" state—capable of turning into almost any kind of cell....

The link between a mother and child is profound, and new research suggests a physical connection even deeper than anyone thought. The profound psychological and physical bonds shared by the mother and her child begin during gestation when the mother is everything for the developing fetus, supplying warmth and sustenance, while her heartbeat provides a soothing constant rhythm. The physical connection between mother and fetus is provided by the placenta, an organ, built of cells from both the mother and fetus, which serves as a conduit for the exchange of nutrients, gasses, and wastes. Cells may migrate through the placenta...

This is an image of an aged stem cell after growth factors were added. A new method of growing cardiac tissue is teaching old stem cells new tricks. The discovery, which transforms aged stem cells into cells that function like much younger ones, may one day enable scientists to grow cardiac patches for damaged or diseased hearts from a patient's own stem cells—no matter what age the patient—while avoiding the threat of rejection. Stem cell therapies involving donated bone marrow stem cells run the risk of patient rejection in a portion of the population, argues Milica Radisic, Canada Research Chair...

Clumps of alpha-synuclein move through dopamine-producing cells, mouse study finds The insidious spread of an abnormal protein may be behind Parkinson’s disease, a study in mice suggests. A harmful version of the protein crawls through the brains of healthy mice, killing brain cells and damaging the animals’ balance and coordination, researchers report in the Nov. 16 Science. If a similar process happens in humans, the results could eventually point to ways to stop Parkinson’s destruction in the brain. “I really think that this model will increase our ability to come up with Parkinson’s disease therapies,” says study coauthor Virginia Lee...

Vol. 4, Issue 160, p. 160sr4 Sci. Transl. Med. DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3002717 STATE OF THE ART REVIEW The ability to regenerate damaged tissue is one of the great challenges in biomaterials and medicine. Successful treatments will require advances in areas ranging from basic cell biology to materials synthesis, but there have been major hurdles in translating the biomedical advances, such as scaffolds that direct stem cell differentiation, into marketed products. Careful consideration of the challenges going from bench to bedside is paramount in maximizing the chances that a good idea becomes a good treatment. We look at a variety of material-based...

EASTERN SHORE, Md. (WJZ) — The miracle of stem cells changes the life of a little boy from the Eastern Shore. Adam May has the amazing story of a mother and the choice she made moments after her son was born. Xander McKinley was a beautiful baby–but challenging. The newborn didn’t eat or sleep well, and by two-years-old, he couldn’t walk or even crawl. “Something just wasn’t right,” said Xander’s mother, Jennifer McKinley. Jennifer McKinley got the news every parent fears. Xander had cerebral palsy–a brain condition that slows motor functions. Adam: “Did you ever fear he would never have...

ASSOCIATED PRESS LOS ANGELES — Researchers are reporting a key advance in using stem cells to repair hearts damaged by heart attacks. In a study, stem cells donated by strangers proved as safe and effective as patients’ own cells for helping restore heart tissue. The work involved just 30 patients in Miami and Baltimore, but it proves the concept that anyone’s cells can be used to treat such cases. Doctors are excited because this suggests that stem cells could be banked for off-the-shelf use after heart attacks, just as blood is kept on hand now. The study used a specific...

Latest data from small study suggests therapy could fight heart failure, but larger trials are needed ) -- Updated two-year results from a small trial using cardiac stem cells to repair damaged hearts suggest the treatment's healing effect persists.Patients with heart failure caused by prior heart attacks who got the treatment continue to see reductions in cardiac scar tissue, improvements in the heart's pumping ability and even a boost in their quality of life, researchers said.These improvements seem to be continuing as time goes on, suggesting that stem cell therapy's healing power hasn't diminished."Now we need to perform larger and...

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WASHINGTON -- Shinya Yamanaka, a scientist at Kyoto University, loved stem-cell research. But he didn't want to destroy embryos. So he figured out a way around the problem. In a paper published five years ago in Cell, Yamanaka and six colleagues showed how "induced pluripotent stem cells" could be derived from adult cells and potentially substituted, in research and therapy, for embryonic stem cells. This week, that discovery earned him a Nobel Prize, shared with British scientist John Gurdon. But the prize announcement and much of the media coverage missed half the story. Yamanaka's venture wasn't just an experiment. It...

Hormone-producing gland can be created from (mouse) embryonic stem cells. A series of achievements have stoked excitement about the potential of regenerative medicine, which aims to tackle diseases by replacing or regenerating damaged cells, tissues and organs. A paper in Nature today1 reports another step towards this goal: the generation of working thyroid cells from stem cells. Sabine Costagliola, a molecular embryologist at the Free University of Brussels, and her team study the development of the thyroid gland, which regulates how the body uses energy and affects sensitivity to other hormones. Their research shows that thyroid function can be re-established...

Two scientists who have fought a 3-year, losing court battle to block federal funding for human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research have now taken their case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Yesterday, attorneys for the plaintiffs in Sherley v. Sebelius filed what's known as a writ of certiorari with the land's highest court. In their 36-page petition(PDF), they ask the court to consider two questions that were raised when a federal appeals court ruled against them in August. One is whether the appeals court should have relied on its own earlier, split decision finding that federally funded hESC research doesn't...

The discovery that cellular development is not a one-way street has earned this year's Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. John B. Gurdon, a developmental biologist at the Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, and Shinya Yamanaka, a stem cell researcher at Kyoto University in Japan and the Gladstone Institute at the University of California, San Francisco, have won the prize for their discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to resemble the versatile cells of a very early embryo. These so-called pluripotent cells have the ability to become any of...

John B. Gurdon of the U.K. and Shinya Yamanaka of Japan shared this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work in so-called cellular reprogramming, which has unleashed a wave of advances in everything from cloning to the possible treatment of diseases using stem cells.... It also allows scientists to create human embryonic stem cells without having to destroy human embryos, sidestepping an approach that has long been fraught with ethical controversies. Most important, perhaps, it has significantly advanced the prospect of using a patient's own mature cells to create fresh tissue and treat disease.

THE HYPOTHESIS In Type 2 diabetes, insulin-producing cells revert to an earlier developmental state. THE INVESTIGATORS Chutima Talchai and Dr. Domenico Accili, Columbia University... The hormone insulin helps shuttle glucose, or blood sugar, from the bloodstream into individual cells to be used as energy. But the body can become resistant to insulin, and the beta cells of the pancreas, which produce the hormone, must work harder to compensate. Eventually, the thinking goes, they lose the ability to keep up. “We used to say that the beta cells poop out,” said Alan Saltiel, director of the Life Sciences Institute at the...

Enlarge Image Who's your mommy? These adult mice grew from oocytes, or immature eggs, derived in vitro from induced pluripotent stem cells. Credit: Mitinori Saitou and Katsuhiko Hayashi Want baby mice? Grab a petri dish. After producing normal mouse pups last year using sperm derived from stem cells, a Kyoto University team of researchers has now accomplished the same feat using eggs created the same way. The study may eventually lead to new ways of helping infertile couples conceive. "This is a significant achievement that I believe will have a sustained and long-lasting impact on the field of reproductive...

Dr. Tracy Grikscheit held a length of intestine in her gloved hands, examining it inch by inch as if she were checking a bicycle tube for leaks... --snip-- Dr. Grikscheit’s work is at the forefront of efforts in laboratories around the world to build replacement organs and tissues. Although the long-sought goal of creating complex organs like hearts and livers to ease transplant shortages remains a long way off, researchers are having success making simpler structures like bladders and windpipes, thanks to advances in understanding stem cells... --snip-- This kind of seeding of scaffolds with cells is a common approach...

In this image of mouse embryonic fibroblasts undergoing reprogramming, each colored dot represents messenger RNA associated with a specific gene that is active in cells being reprogrammed. Red dots represent... Several years ago, biologists discovered that regular body cells can be reprogrammed into pluripotent stem cells — cells with the ability to become any other type of cell. Such cells hold great promise for treating many human diseases. These induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are usually created by genetically modifying cells to overexpress four genes that make them revert to an immature, embryonic state. However, the procedure works in only...

Japanese researcher plans cache of induced stem cells to supply clinical trials. Progress toward stem-cell therapies has been frustratingly slow, delayed by research challenges, ethical and legal barriers and corporate jitters. Now, stem-cell pioneer Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan plans to jump-start the field by building up a bank of stem cells for therapeutic use. The bank would store dozens of lines of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, putting Japan in an unfamiliar position: at the forefront of efforts to introduce a pioneering biomedical technology. A long-held dream of Yamanaka’s, the iPS Cell Stock project received a boost...

It is not unusual for babies to be born with congenital heart defects. This is because the development of the heart in the embryo is a process which is not only extremely complex, but also error-prone. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research in Bad Nauheim have now identified a key molecule that plays a central role in regulating the function of stem cells in the heart. As a result, not only could congenital heart defects be avoided in future, but new ways of stimulating the regeneration of damaged hearts in adults may be opened up....