News & Commentaries

Tokyo, Japan – Targeting drugs to cancer tissues is a major challenge in cancer treatment. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are known for their ability to find and target tumor cells in the body, but using MSCs for drug delivery has been tricky, because upon loading with drugs, MSCs lose their viability and migratory ability. Now, researchers from Tokyo University of Science have successfully modified MSCs to deliver large quantities of anti-cancer drugs in a targeted manner to developing cancer cells.

Exeter, UK – A team of scientists from the University of Exeter’s flagship Living Systems Institute has shown that stem cells contain no cancer mutations when they are grown in their most primitive or naïve state.

Bonn, Germany – Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) have the potential to convert into a wide variety of cell types and tissues for drug testing and cell replacement therapies. However, the "recipes" for this conversion are often complicated and difficult to implement. Researchers at the Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD) at TU Dresden, Harvard University (USA) and the University of Bonn have found a way to systematically extract hundreds of different cells quickly and easily from iPS using transcription factors, including neurons, connective tissue and blood vessel cells. Researchers can use this transcription factor source through the non-profit organization Addgene. The results have now been published in the journal Nature Biotechnology

San Diego, CA, USA – Scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute have created a drug that can lure stem cells to damaged tissue and improve treatment efficacy- a scientific first and a major advance for the field of regenerative medicine. The discovery, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), could improve current stem cell therapies designed to treat neurological disorders such as spinal cord injury, stroke, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other neurodegenerative disorders; and expand their use to new conditions, such as heart disease or arthritis.