Tag: cells

Amniotic fluid can be routinely obtained without harming the mother or the fetus. Researchers have previously demonstrated that amniotic fluid contains mesenchymal stem cells with great differentiation and regenerative potential. Importantly, amniotic fluid stem cells are immune privileged, non-carcinogenic and their potential clinical applications such as cell-replacement therapies to treat bone defects, ischemic stroke, bladder

If dead cells accumulate in the body, they can contribute to inflammation and pre-dispose individuals to multiple chronic inflammatory conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular diseases, Crohn’s disease or lupus by uncharacterized pathways. “Billions of cells die daily as a consequence of regular wear and tear, tissue turnover and during an inflammatory response. The body

A team from the University of Oxford and Cardiff University have used mathematical models to re-enact the complex process of brain development that occurs as initialising cells, otherwise known as progenitor cells, start to grow and begin to differentiate into more specialist cells at various points in time. By applying this experimentally realistic model to

University of Illinois at Chicago researchers have discovered a way turn pluripotent stem cells into atrial cells, which make up the upper chambers, or atria, of the heart. The discovery will enable them to better study atrial fibrillation, the most common heart rhythm disorder also known as AFib, which originates in the heart’s atria. As

A long-term study of patients who received stem cells to treat angiitis-induced critical limb ischemia (AICLI) shows the cells to be both safe and effective. The study, published in Stem Cells Translational Medicine (SCTM), could lead to an option for those who suffer from this serious form of peripheral arterial disease (PAD). AICLI is caused

New research published in Cancer Immunology Research by Drs. Esteban Celis and Hussein Sultan of the Georgia Cancer Center at Augusta University could serve as the stepping-stone in constructing vaccines with a greater likelihood of finding and attacking tumors in the human body. According to Celis and Sultan, the key in this vaccine strategy is

Last year the rather religious sounding film The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was released in the US. It documents the tragic real life story of a young woman who died in the early 1950s due to rapidly growing ovarian cancer. The ‘immortal’ part refers to her cancer cells, which scientists at the John Hopkins

Difficult to treat and aggressive “triple-negative” breast cancer is chemoresistant even before chemotherapy begins, a new study by researchers from Karolinska Institutet and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reports. The findings, which are published in the journal Cell, may lead to better and more personalised treatments for breast cancer. Breast cancer is

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are a class of stem cells located in bone marrow. HSCs give rise to every type of blood cell—from the red blood cells that carry oxygen to the white blood cells of the immune system. Bone marrow provides a niche that both houses and regulates HSCs to ensure proper formation of

New research from Lund University in Sweden shows that inflammatory, unstable atherosclerotic plaque has a metabolism that differs from that of stable plaque – and is similar to that of cancer cells. Future research will therefore investigate whether cancer drugs could potentially be used to treat cardiovascular disease. Atherosclerotic plaque builds up gradually in the

We have developed “smart egg carton” packages for transporting live human pancreas cells for transplantation to diabetic patients. The egg cartons provide oxygen and allow physical separation to prevent damage and death to the cells – known as islet cells – during transport. Besides a whole pancreas transplant (which has a high mortality rate), currently

In autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes, some of the immune system’s T cells mistakenly attack the body’s own cells, while protective T regulatory cells try to defend against that attack. Scientists at Joslin Diabetes Center have shown in a mouse model of type 1 diabetes that animals with fewer of a poorly studied

Liver stem cells that express high levels of telomerase, a protein often associated with resistance to aging, act in mice to regenerate the organ during normal cellular turnover or tissue damage, according to a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The cells are distributed throughout the liver’s lobes, enabling it to

An advance by UCLA neuroscientists could lead to a better understanding of astrocytes, a star-shaped brain cell believed to play a key role in neurological disorders like Lou Gehrig’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s disease. Reported in Neuron, the new method enables researchers to peer deep inside a mouse’s brain and watch astrocytes’ influence over nerve-cell communication