Birmingham, AL, USA – Science has long known that recovery from experimental heart attacks is improved by injection of a mixture of heart muscle cells, endothelial cells and smooth muscle cells, yet results have been limited by poor engraftment and retention, and researchers worry about potential tumorigenesis and heart arrhythmia.
Cologne, Germany – A team of researchers from Cologne and Helsinki has discovered a mechanism that prevents hair loss: hair follicle stem cells, essential for hair to regrow, can prolong their life by switching their metabolic state in response to low oxygen concentration in the tissue. The team was led by Associate Professor Sara Wickström (University of Helsinki and Max Planck Institute for the Biology of Ageing) and the dermatologist Professor Sabine Eming (University of Cologne), and included researchers from the University of Cologne’s Cluster of Excellence in Aging Research CECAD, the Max Planck Institute for the Biology of Ageing, Collaborative Research Centre 829 ‘Molecular Mechanisms Regulating Skin Homeostasis’, the Center for Molecular Medicine Cologne (CMMC) (all in Cologne), and the University of Helsinki. The paper ‘Glutamine Metabolism Controls Stem Cell Fate Reversibility and Long-Term Maintenance in the Hair Follicle’ has been published in Cell Metabolism.
London, UK – The first stages of placental development take place days before the embryo starts to form in human pregnancies. The finding highlights the importance of healthy placental development in pregnancy, and could lead to future improvements in fertility treatments such as IVF, and a better understanding of placental-related diseases in pregnancy.
Stockholm, Sweden – New knowledge on the cellular makeup and growth of teeth can expedite developments in regenerative dentistry – a biological therapy for damaged teeth – as well as the treatment of tooth sensitivity. The study, which was conducted by researchers at Karolinska Institutet, is published in Nature Communications.
Cincinnati, OH, USA – Scientists at Cincinnati Children's used human intestinal organoids grown from stem cells to discover how our bodies control the absorption of nutrients from the food we eat. They further found that one hormone might be able to reverse a congenital disorder in babies who cannot adequately absorb nutrients and need intravenous feeding to survive.
Hiroshima, Japan – Researchers have identified a second path to defeating chronic myelogenous leukemia, which tends to affect older adults, even in the face of resistance to existing drugs. The new findings were published on September 17th in Nature Communications.
London, UK – Why do pregnancies last longer in some species than others? Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute have found the clock that sets the speed of embryonic development and discovered the mechanism is based on how proteins are made and dismantled. The study, published in Science, could also help us understand how different mammals evolved from one another and help refine methods for regenerative medicine.
Melbourne, Australia – An international collaboration involving Monash University and Duke-NUS researchers have made an unexpected world-first stem cell discovery that may lead to new treatments for placenta complications during pregnancy.
Tokyo, Japan – Heart development as it happens in vivo, or in a living organism, is a complex process that has traditionally been difficult to mimic in vitro, or in the laboratory. In a new study, researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) developed three-dimensional functional heart organoids from mouse embryonic stem cells that closely resemble the developing heart.
Lausanne, Switzerland – The EPFL researchers used a laser to sculpt this gut-shaped scaffold within a hydrogel, a soft mix of crosslinked proteins found in the gut’s extracellular matrix supporting the cells in the native tissue. Aside from being the substrate on which the stem cells could grow, the hydrogel thus also provides the form or “geometry” that would build the final intestinal tissue.
