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NEW ORLEANS, May 1 (UPI) -- A U.S. study has partly resolved the mystery of how small amounts of adult stem/progenitor cells can repair damaged brain, pancreas, and kidney cells. The researchers in the laboratory of Darwin Prockop, director of Tulane University's Center for Gene Therapy, found the cells not only differentiate to replace injured cells, but also stimulate the proliferation and differentiation of stem cells already present in the injured tissue. Prockop said a better understanding of the different mechanisms of the stem/progenitor cells suggests multiple strategies for developing new therapies for a broad range of diseases, as well...

University of Minnesota stem cell researchers, together with collaborators at Stanford University, have successfully used adult stem cells to replace the immune system and bone marrow of mice, offering the promise of new therapies for people in the future. With this advance and other recent discoveries, the researchers are winning over previous skeptics.   For decades, researchers have tried in the lab to expand hematopoietic stem cells (cells that give rise to the blood system). Success in this venture would mean increasing the supply of cells available for bone marrow transplant patients. The researchers used multipotent adult progenitor cells (MAPCs), which...

Xabier López Aranguren, a biologist and biochemist at the University of Navarra, has studied in his doctoral dissertation the use of adult stem cells in order to palliate damage to the tissues affected by cardiovascular diseases, which are one of the leading causes of death in the Western world. The results of his research have recently been published in the journal Blood. In these ailments, there is tissue death. The tissues cease to function because they do not receive sufficient oxygen or nutrients via the arteries. In his study he has identified “how adult stem cells can correct this damage,...