Progenitor Cells News and Research

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Six1 gene may have more substantial role in human kidney development

The best laid plans of mice and men are a bit different -- at least when it comes to kidney development. Compared to a mouse, a human has nearly 100 times more nephrons, the functional units of the kidneys. Humans may owe these abundant nephrons to a gene called SIX1, according to a new paper published in the journal Development.

21 Mar 2016

Hematopoietic reprogramming can lead to differentiated blood products for cell-replacement therapy

Building upon previous work, researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai identified cells in the embryos of mice that are precursors to blood stem cells or hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells.

9 Mar 2016

Researchers identify how Zika virus may cause microcephaly in fetuses

Working with lab-grown human stem cells, a team of researchers suspect they have discovered how the Zika virus probably causes microcephaly in fetuses. The virus selectively infects cells that form the brain's cortex, or outer layer, making them more likely to die and less likely to divide normally and make new brain cells.

7 Mar 2016

FSU researchers make major breakthrough in Zika virus research

Florida State University researchers have made a major breakthrough in the quest to learn whether the Zika virus is linked to birth defects with the discovery that the virus is directly targeting brain development cells and stunting their growth.

7 Mar 2016

Preterm neonatal progenitor cells may be a powerful tool for regeneration of damaged kidneys

Cells collected noninvasively from the urine of preterm infants may lead to breakthroughs in regenerative kidney repair for patients with kidney disease and injury, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

4 Mar 2016

High-fat diet may make intestinal stem cells to become cancerous

Over the past decade, studies have found that obesity and eating a high-fat, high-calorie diet are significant risk factors for many types of cancer. Now, a new study from Whitehead Institute and MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research reveals how a high-fat diet makes the cells of the intestinal lining more likely to become cancerous.

3 Mar 2016

New infection-fighting bandages for serious burn victims

Serious burn victims are immunocompromised and may be missing skin on parts of their body, and this makes them highly vulnerable to bacteria. Thanks to progress in intensive care, they are decreasingly likely to die from burn trauma. Death is more commonly the result of infections that can occur several months after being hospitalized. The bandages used to treat burns actually represent a real breeding ground for microbes.

26 Feb 2016

Exocrine tissue could play a role in diabetes treatment

Diabetes describes a disease where the body is not receiving a sufficient supply of insulin. It commonly inflicts the pancreas, the organ responsible for insulin production. More specifically, it inflicts the cells that produce insulin, which are found in the endocrine tissue of the pancreas.

22 Feb 2016

Mtss1 'tumour suppressor' for CML

The metastasis suppressor 1 protein acts a tumour suppressor in chronic myeloid leukaemia stem cells, reveals research published in Leukemia.

17 Feb 2016

Duchenne muscular dystrophy: direct effect on muscle stem cells? An interview with Dr Rudnicki

For twenty years, it has been understood that dystrophin is expressed in differentiated muscle fibers where it is part of a protein complex that crosses the membrane and connects the extracellular matrix to the actin network inside the cell to provide structural integrity.

5 Feb 2016

Discovery could lead to new leukaemia therapies

Human blood cells have olfactory receptors that respond to Sandalore. This could provide a starting point for new leukaemia therapies, as researchers from Bochum report in in the journal "Cell Death Discovery".

3 Feb 2016

New mechanism of differentiation may offer novel therapeutic approaches to blood malignancies, solid tumors

In humans the differentiation of stem cells into hundreds of specialized cell types is vital. Differentiation drives development from fertilized egg to a newborn, and it underlies the continuous replacement of the 5 billion cells that die every hour in an adult. On the downside, mutations in differentiation pathways of different cell types can be drivers of cancers.

13 Jan 2016

Combining NELL-1 with BMP2 therapy may promote bone development

Bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP2) is used clinically to promote bone repair. However, the high BMP2 concentrations required to stimulate bone growth in humans may produce life-threatening adverse effects such as cervical swelling in spinal fusion procedures, a problem that prompted an FDA warning in 2008.

7 Jan 2016

Scientists successfully create fully-functional pancreatic cells from human skin cells

Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes and the University of California, San Francisco have successfully converted human skin cells into fully-functional pancreatic cells. The new cells produced insulin in response to changes in glucose levels, and, when transplanted into mice, the cells protected the animals from developing diabetes in a mouse model of the disease.

6 Jan 2016

3D maps of spatial organization may help find genes involved in hereditary diseases

It has now been 15 years since scientists celebrated the completion of the human genome. At that point, scientists had determined the entire sequence of the genetic letters making up our DNA.

26 Dec 2015

UCA researchers identify compounds that favour generation of new neuronal cells

Many neurology pathologies cause irreversible loss of neurons. They are mostly the so-called neurodegenerative diseases although there exist other causes for a focal loss of neurons, as it is the case in strokes or traumatic brain injuries. All these pathologies lack nowadays of an efficient treatment not being possible to regenerate dead neurons. In fact, although the brain has the ability to regenerate as many studies has proved, this regeneration is very low, ranging from 0.2% to a maximum of 10% depending on the type of injury and the damaged area.

17 Dec 2015

CRISPR/Cas9 turns hPSCs into cell-based lab model system for polycystic kidney disease

CRISPR/Cas9 is hot. News of the revolutionary gene editing technique that is already shaking up bioscience has finally reached the news media and the public. Now comes a first rate example of how CRISPR is changing the pace of biomedical research by linking up with another cutting edge technology -- human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs).

12 Dec 2015

Gene therapy shows promise in children with Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome

Researchers reported promising preliminary outcomes for the first four children enrolled in a U.S. gene therapy trial for Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome (WAS), a life-threatening genetic blood and immune disorder, at the 57th annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology (abstract #260).

7 Dec 2015

Study identifies new recurrent genetic mutations involved in origin of AML

Mariam Ibáñez, lecturer at Universidad Cardenal Herrera CEU (CEU Cardenal Herrera University, UCH-CEU) and biologist at "La Fe" Hospital in Valencia used massive sequencing techniques to identify new recurrent genes mutations involved in the origin of acute myelogenous leukemia (AML).

1 Dec 2015

Discovery may lead to potential new therapeutic approach to eradicate blood cancers

An international team of scientists, headed by researchers at UC San Diego School of Medicine and UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, report that decreases in a specific group of proteins trigger changes in the cancer microenvironment that accelerate growth and development of therapy-resistant cancer stem cells (CSCs).