Dramatic advances in the fields of biochemistry, cell and molecular biology, genetics, biomedical engineering and materials science have given rise to the remarkable new cross-disciplinary field of tissue engineering. Tissue engineering uses synthetic or naturally derived, engineered biomaterials to replace damaged or defective tissues, such as bone, skin, and even organs.
A class of water-loving, jelly-like materials with uses ranges ranging from the mundane, such as superabsorbent diaper liners, to the sophisticated, such as soft contact lenses, could be tapped for a new line of serious work: testing the biological effects of nanoparticles now being eyed for a large variety of uses.
In new research published online May 13, 2013 in Advanced Materials, researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital are the first to report that synthetic silicate nanoplatelets (also known as layered clay) can induce stem cells to become bone cells without the need of additional bone-inducing factors.
Stem cells drawn from amniotic fluid show promise for tissue engineering, but it's important to know what they can and cannot do. A new study by researchers at Rice University and Texas Children's Hospital has shown that these stem cells can communicate with mature heart cells and form electrical couplings with each other similar to those found in heart tissue.
Researchers at Micro Orthopaedics, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, led by Dr. Ai-xi Yu, have suggested that articular cartilage defects can be repaired by a novel thermo-sensitive injectable hydrogel engineered with gene modified bone marrow mesenchymal stromal cells.
One of the major obstacles to growing new organs—replacement hearts, lungs and kidneys—is the difficulty researchers face in building blood vessels that keep the tissues alive, but new findings from the University of Michigan could help overcome this roadblock.
For the first time, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have isolated adult stem cells from human intestinal tissue.
Explosive growth in the field of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine has led to innovative and promising applications and techniques, many of which are now being tested in human clinical trials.
The Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute has signed a licensing agreement with the Spanish biotech company Histocell to make use of a patent for the treatment of acute pulmonary diseases with mesenchymal stem cells.
A team of researchers in Seoul, Korea have reported finding evidence that deer antlers - unique in that they regenerate annually - contain multipotent stem cells that could be useful for tissue regeneration in veterinary medicine.
Severe chronic pain associated with conditions such as bladder pain syndrome/interstitial cystitis often require the use of opioid medication, with the risk of dependency and serious adverse reactions.
Scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) have identified several genes linked to human neurological disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and spinal cord injury, in the sea lamprey, a vertebrate fish whose whole-genome sequence is reported this week in the journal Nature Genetics.
A new approach to bladder regeneration is capitalizing on the potential of two distinct cell populations harvested from a patient's healthy bone marrow, a new study reports.
Scientists at the University of Southampton have created a new method to generate bone cells which could lead to revolutionary bone repair therapies for people with bone fractures or those who need hip replacement surgery due to osteoporosis and osteoarthritis.
Powerful antisense drugs that target disease-associated genes to block their expression can be used to treat a broad range of diseases. Though antisense therapy has been proven effective, challenges remain in ensuring that the drugs reach their intended targets.
Arteriocyte, a leading biotechnology company with offices in Cleveland, Ohio and Hopkinton, Massachusetts announced today approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to initiate a Phase I clinical trial using its Magellan System technology in the treatment of thermal burn wounds.
Despite recent advances in understanding the mechanisms of nerve injury, tissue-engineering solutions for repairing damage in the central nervous system (CNS) remain elusive, owing to the crucial and complex role played by the neural stem cell (NSC) niche. This zone, in which stem cells are retained after embryonic development for the production of new cells, exerts a tight control over many crucial tasks such as growth promotion and the recreation of essential biochemical and physical cues for neural cell differentiation.
In a development that could lead to faster and more effective toxicity tests for airborne chemicals, scientists from Rice University and the Rice spinoff company Nano3D Biosciences have used magnetic levitation to grow some of the most realistic lung tissue ever produced in a laboratory.
In a small study, researchers reported increased healthy tissue growth after surgical repair of damaged cartilage if they put a “hydrogel” scaffolding into the wound to support and nourish the healing process. The squishy hydrogel material was implanted in 15 patients during standard microfracture surgery, in which tiny holes are punched in a bone near the injured cartilage. The holes stimulate patients’ own specialized stem cells to emerge from bone marrow and grow new cartilage atop the bone.
Bionic devices are implants which replace biological functions which have been lost due to nerve damage. They use electrical signals to stimulate the remaining nerve cells following disease or injury. Although the term bionic was only coined in the late 1950s, the earliest bionic devices were cardiac pacemakers, developed in the early 1900s. However the first commercial implantable units were not available until the 1950s.
More than half of traumatic spinal cord injuries (SCI) in humans are cervical lesions, resulting in chronic loss of limb function. A better understanding of the link between the neurologic damage caused by SCI, spontaneous motor function recovery, and long-term motor deficits would lead to better therapeutic approaches, as discussed in an article in Journal of Neurotrauma, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The
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