Category Archives: Stem Cells

Dec. 18, 2013 Regenerative medicine may offer ways to banish baldness that don't involve toupees. The lab of USC scientist Krzysztof Kobielak, MD, PhD has published a trio of papers in the journals Stem Cells and The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that describe some of the factors that determine when hair grows, when it stops growing and when it falls out.

Authored by Kobielak, postdoctoral fellow Eve Kandyba, PhD, and their colleagues, the three publications focus on stem cells located in hair follicles (hfSCs), which can regenerate hair follicles as well as skin. These hfSCs are governed by the signaling pathways BMP and Wnt -- which are groups of molecules that work together to control cell functions, including the cycles of hair growth.

The most recent paper, published in the journal Stem Cells in November 2013, focuses on how the gene Wnt7b activates hair growth. Without Wnt7b, hair is much shorter.

The Kobielak lab first proposed Wnt7b's role in a January 2013 PNAS publication. The paper identified a complex network of genes -- including the Wnt and BMP signaling pathways -- controlling the cycles of hair growth. Reduced BMP signaling and increased Wnt signaling activate hair growth. The inverse -- increased BMP signaling and decreased Wnt signaling -- keeps the hfSCs in a resting state.

Both papers earned the recommendation of the Faculty of 1000, which rates top articles by leading experts in biology and medicine.

A third paper published in Stem Cells in September 2013 further clarified the workings of the BMP signaling pathway by examining the function of two key proteins, called Smad1 and Smad5. These proteins transmit the signals necessary for regulating hair stem cells during new growth.

"Collectively, these new discoveries advance basic science and, more importantly, might translate into novel therapeutics for various human diseases," said Kobielak. "Since BMP signaling has a key regulatory role in maintaining the stability of different types of adult stem cell populations, the implication for future therapies might be potentially much broader than baldness -- and could include skin regeneration for burn patients and skin cancer."

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Stem cells offer clues to reversing receding hairlines

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

18-Dec-2013

Contact: Neha Okhandiar n.okhandiar@qmul.ac.uk 020-788-27927 Queen Mary, University of London

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London have shown for the first time that the specialised role stem cells go on to perform is controlled by primary cilia tiny hair-like structures protruding from a cell.

Stem cells are capable of becoming any cell type within the body through the process of differentiation.

The discovery has the potential for application in the development of new therapies for a range of medical treatments where scientists aim to replace or regenerate tissues that have become diseased or dysfunctional.

Publishing in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers found that growing adult stem cells on micro-grooved surfaces disrupts the biochemical pathway that determines the length of the primary cilia. This change in length of the structure ultimately controls the subsequent behaviour of the stem cells.

"Primary cilia are a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair and are a ubiquitous feature of most cell types but were once thought to be irrelevant. However, our research shows that they play a key role in stem cell differentiation," explains co-author Professor Martin Knight from Queen Mary's School of Engineering and Materials Science and the Institute of Bioengineering.

"We found it's possible to control stem cell specialisation by manipulating primary cilia elongation, and that this occurs when stem cells are grown on these special grooved surfaces."

Stem cells are being considered to treat a number of degenerative conditions such as arthritis, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.

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Scientists find a groovy way to influence specialization of stem cells

Patients who undergo experimental stem cell treatments run the risk of serious injury, Australian experts have warned.

A team of leading stem cell scientists say the treatments, which involve injecting patients with stem cells from their own fat deposits, have become available to Australian consumers without the protection of regulation or evidence of benefits.

Stem Cells Australia, a consortium of medical and scientific researchers from eight leading Australian universities and research institutes, raised concerns after it became clear the treatments, which are popular overseas, had spread to Australia.

They say vulnerable people with degenerative conditions, such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and Parkinson's disease, are being misled into paying up to $9,000 on stem cell therapies with little or no evidence of the benefits.

However, the industry says there is some good evidence available and treatments are safe as long as patients are only injected with their own unaltered cells.

Practising doctors are forming an industry group to write a code of conduct to keep patients safe.

In a submission to the National Health and Medical Research Council, Stem Cells Australia says many of the practices used by overseas doctors are now being witnessed among Australian practitioners.

These include direct-to-consumer marketing, using patient testimonials instead of evidence, offering the same treatments for unrelated illnesses, lack of safety evidence, no results in peer-reviewed journals, and hefty fees.

Program leader Professor Martin Pera says stem cell treatments are falling through a regulatory loophole because patients are treated with their own cells.

"What's going on is a large scale human experiment without proper scientific procedure and without proper regulatory oversight," he said.

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Stem cell warning: experts fear experimental treatments will lead to serious injury

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Newswise Bladder cancer will kill upward of 170,000 people worldwide this year, but bladder cancer isn't fatal in the bladder. Instead, in order to be fatal the disease must metastasize to faraway sites. The question has been this: does localized, non-muscle invasive (NMI) bladder cancer eventually become the more dangerous, muscle-invasive (MI) form of the disease, or are NMI and MI bladder cancers genetically distinct from the start?

A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published today in the journal Stem Cells shows it's the latter: the progenitor cells that create MI bladder cancer are different than the progenitor cells that create NMI bladder cancer. Though these two cancers grow at the same site, they are different diseases.

"This work provides an important new perspective on how we look at bladder cancer biology," says Dan Theodorescu, MD, PhD, director of the University of Colorado Cancer Center and the study's senior author.

The group including first author Garrett Dancik, PhD, genetically profiled two cell types that could give rise to bladder cancer the basal and umbrella layers of the normal bladder lining (urothelium) to discover the gene signatures specific to each of these cell populations.

Then the group compared these gene signatures to human bladder cancer samples. The tumor samples were distinct: those with the signature of umbrella cells were likely to be lower stage and patients eventually had favorable outcomes; tumors with the signatures of basal layer cells were likely to be higher stage and patients eventually had worse outcomes.

"We saw a fairly stark difference between these tumor types: those with basal signatures were distinctly more aggressive than those with umbrella signatures," Theodorescu says. In fact, these signatures predicted tumor stage and patient survival better than many existing prognostic markers.

"Our results suggests that NMI cells arise from non-basal cells, whereas MI tumors arise from basal cells," Theodorescu says.

"This may be an important biomarker for prognosis," Theodorescu says. "With additional testing, we could use the signature to predict how aggressive a bladder cancer is likely to be. Knowing the risk can help doctors and patients make informed treatment decisions."

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Different Parents, Different Children: Muscle-Invasive and Non-Muscle Invasive Bladder Cancers Arise From Different ...

The breakthrough marks a major advance in treating kidney disease and more avenues in bioengineering human organs. Researchers published their findings in the journal Nature Cell Biology, following their success in making human skin cells form a functioning "mini-kidney" with a width of only a few millimeters.

During self-organization, different types of cells arrange themselves with respect to each other to create the complex structures that exist within an organ, in this case, the kidney, Professor Melissa Little of University of Queenslands Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), who led the study, said in a statement. The fact that such stem cell populations can undergo self-organization in the laboratory bodes well for the future of tissue bioengineering to replace damaged and diseased organs and tissues.

While it may be a while until the process can be used in human trials, Little says it could be a major development in treating chronic kidney disease.

One in three Australians is at risk of developing chronic kidney disease, and the only therapies currently available are kidney transplant and dialysis, Little said. Only one in four patients will receive a donated organ, and dialysis is an ongoing and restrictive treatment regime.

The engineered kidney is a first for science.

"This is the first time anybody has managed to direct stem cells into the functional units of a kidney," Professor Brandon Wainwright, from the University of Queensland, told The Telegraph. "It is an amazing process it is like a Lego building that puts itself together."

Scientists were able to make the kidney by identifying genes that remained active and inactive during kidney development. They were then able to alter the genes into embryonic cells that allowed them to self-organize into the human organ.

"The [researchers] spent years looking at what happens if you turn this gene off and this one on," Wainwright said. "You can eventually coax these stem cells through a journey they [the cells] go through various stages and then think about being a kidney cell and eventually pop together to form a little piece of kidney."

Little predicts the stem cell kidneys could one day be used to make human kidney transplants, or a cluster of mini kidneys used to boost renal function in patients.

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Kidney Grown From Stem Cells For The First Time, Australian Scientists Call Breakthrough ‘An Amazing Process’

Scientists are hoping to increase the size of future kidneys and believe the resulting organs will boost research and allow cheaper, faster testing of drugs. Within the next three to five years, the artificial organs could be used to allow doctors to repair damaged kidneys within the body, rather than letting diseases develop before proceeding with a transplant.

The engineered kidney was developed by a team of Australian scientists led by the University of Queensland's Institute for Molecular Bioscience.

Professor Wainwright said the process for developing the kidney was "like a scientific approach to cooking". The scientists methodically examined which genes were switched on and off during kidney development and then manipulated the skin cells into embryonic stem cells which could "self-organise" and form complex human structures.

"The [researchers] spent years looking at what happens if you turn this gene off and this one on," he said. "You can eventually coax these stem cells through a journey they [the cells] go through various stages and then think about being a kidney cell and eventually pop together to form a little piece of kidney."

The research could eventually help address the demand for transplant organs and improve medical testing of new drugs for patients with kidney disease.

Human kidneys are particularly susceptible to damage during trials, which makes finding effective medicines costly and time-consuming.

Professor Melissa Little, from the University of Queensland, said scientists could try to grow full-grown kidneys for transplants or even "clusters of mini kidneys" that could be transplanted to boost patients' renal functions. But she told The Australian she believed such developments were still more than a decade away.

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Kidney grown from stem cells by Australian scientists

Real Testimonial for Autism Spectrum Disorder Treatment using Stem Cells in Thailand --Stem Cell
Does Stem Cell Treatment for Autism Work? http://stemcellthailand.org/stem-cell-therapy-for-autism-safe-asd-treatments-in-thailand/ How well does it respond ...

By: Stem Cell Regeneration Center of Thailand

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Real Testimonial for Autism Spectrum Disorder Treatment using Stem Cells in Thailand --Stem Cell - Video

University of Queensland researchers have made a major leap forward in treating renal disease, today announcing they have grown a kidney using stem cells.

The breakthrough paves the way for improved treatments for patients with kidney disease and bodes well for the future of the wider field of bioengineering organs.

Professor Melissa Little from UQs Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), who led the study, said new treatments for kidney disease were urgently needed.

One in three Australians is at risk of developing chronic kidney disease and the only therapies currently available are kidney transplant and dialysis, Professor Little said.

Only one in four patients will receive a donated organ, and dialysis is an ongoing and restrictive treatment regime.

We need to improve outcomes for patients with this debilitating condition, which costs Australia $1.8 billion a year.

The team designed a protocol that prompts stem cells to form all the required cell types to self-organise into a mini-kidney in a dish.

During self-organisation, different types of cells arrange themselves with respect to each other to create the complex structures that exist within an organ, in this case, the kidney, Professor Little said.

The fact that such stem cell populations can undergo self-organisation in the laboratory bodes well for the future of tissue bioengineering to replace damaged and diseased organs and tissues.

It may also act as a powerful tool to identify drug candidates that may be harmful to the kidney before these reach clinical trial.

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UQ researchers grow kidney from stem cells

Researchers in Sweden have successfully grown functioning neural tissues in lab, which has opened up significant new possibilities in medical science including new ways of treating cases of brain damage.

Scientists have already developed sophisticated techniques to grow tissues of other visceral organs such as kidney, liver, trachea, lymph nodes, and veins, and have even performed tissue transplantations in body for organ regeneration.

However, growing neural tissues in the lab is itself tricky as neurons are the most complex cells in our body, and imitating the functional biology of brain has been the most challenging task for scientists trying to unlock the mysteries of human body.

Neural tissues have been grown before in labs, but there is still a long way to go before researchers can achieve in vivo nerve regeneration and differentiation.

But Paolo Macchiarini and Silvia Baiguera at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm may have identified a way forward.

Organic tissue is grown in a scaffold which replicates the protein-rich environment of tissues in the body, known as extracellular matrix (ECM). The in vitro scaffold thus provides nutrients and biochemical cues to the embedded stem cells to help them grow into differentiated cells.

The researchers contrived a gelatin scaffold with extracellular plasma from rat brain cells to replicate in vivo environment, and then lodged mesenchymal stem cells from another rat's bone marrow into the scaffold. The experiment was successful as the stem cells grew into differentiated neural cells in vitro.

The team believes that the bioengineering technique could be used for surgically treating neurodegenerative disorders and injuries.

Macchiarini hopes of using transplants of bioengineered tissue to replace parts of the brain tissues damaged by gunshots, concussions etc. and in conditions such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's caused by death of brain cells.

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Scientists Grow Functioning Neural Cells in Lab Raising Hopes of Bio-engineered Brain

Durham, NC (PRWEB) December 10, 2013

Jacco van Rheenen, Ph.D., of the Hubrecht Institute in The Netherlands has been named the winner of the 8th Annual STEM CELLS Young Investigator Award for his investigation on how healthy and tumorigenic tissues are derived from and maintained by cancer stem cells, how tumor cells disseminate from primary tumors and how these disseminated tumor cells grow out in distant organs.

The STEM CELLS Young Investigator Award honors a young scientist who is a principal author of a significant research paper published in STEM CELLS. Dr. van Rheenen was selected as this years winner for his paper, Brief Report: Intravital Imaging of Cancer Stem Cell Plasticity in Mammary Tumors.

This prize does not only inspire me to keep doing this type of research, but it inspires and acknowledges all the people in my lab who worked very hard on this project, said Dr. van Rheenen.

Dr. van Rheenen and his team developed and utilized the latest imaging techniques to visualize the adaptive properties of the few cells within the large population of non-metastasizing and differentiated cells that might maintain the heterogeneous tumor and metastasize.

There are still many questions about how breast cancers evolve over time and how cancer stem cells may be involved. The outstanding study by Dr. van Rheenens laboratory demonstrates unequivocally, for the first time, that a small fraction of breast cancer stem cells are responsible for clonal expansion to not only generate the differentiated tumor but also to replicate themselves. The use of the confetti colors to perform the lineage tracing in this study is truly elegant, and I congratulate our Young Investigator Award winner on this important accomplishment, said Jan A. Nolta, Ph.D., Editor of STEM CELLS.

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Full Citation: Zomer, A., Ellenbroek, S. I. J., Ritsma, L., Beerling, E., Vrisekoop, N. and Van Rheenen, J. (2013), Brief Report: Intravital Imaging of Cancer Stem Cell Plasticity in Mammary Tumors. STEM CELLS, 31: 602606. doi: 10.1002/stem.1296

Paper URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/stem.1296/abstract#fn3

About the Author: Jacco van Rheenen was originally trained in a variety of imaging techniques during his PhD with Dr. Kees Jalink at the Netherlands Cancer Institute. He was among the first to optimize imaging and develop software to quantitatively measure FRET on confocal microscopes. During his PhD in the lab of Dr. Jalink and as postdoc in the lab of Dr. Sonnenberg (Netherlands Cancer Institute) he used several microscopy techniques to study lipid signaling in tumor cells. In order to broader his scales, he obtained a KWF fellowship to do a postdoc in the United States in the lab of Dr. John Condeelis. There he extended his imaging experience by imaging mammary tumors intravitally including two-photon microscopy and became an expert in the field of intravital FRET imaging. In 2008 he was appointed as group leader at the Hubrecht Institute, where he utilizes his imaging techniques to visualize processes that are required for the metastasis of mammary tumor cells in living animals. In 2009, he was awared a VIDI grant and a research grant from the Dutch Cancer Society.

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Jacco van Rheenen Wins STEM CELLS Young Investigator Award