Paris, France – While stem cells have the most therapeutic potential, the benefits of regenerative medicine may best be mobilised using extracellular vesicles (EVs), also known in the past as “cellular dust”. A team of researchers from CNRS, AP-HP, INSERM and Paris Descartes and Paris Diderot Universities have tested these vesicles for the first time in a porcine model for the treatment of post-operative digestive fistulas.
Boston, MA, USA – A team of Tufts University-led researchers has developed three-dimensional (3D) human tissue culture models for the central nervous system that mimic structural and functional features of the brain and demonstrate neural activity sustained over a period of many months. With the ability to populate a 3D matrix of silk protein and collagen with cells from patients with Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and other conditions, the tissue models allow for the exploration of cell interactions, disease progression and response to treatment.
Urbana, IL, USA – Somatic stem cells are microscopic workhorses, constantly regenerating cells throughout the body: skin and the lining of the intestine, for example. And to University of Illinois neuroscientists, they represent untapped potential
Atlanta, GA, USA – Using a combination of computational modeling and experimental techniques, a research team has developed new information about how intercellular communication affects the differentiation of an embryonic stem cell colony over time.
Bristol, UK – The discovery, published in Nature Materials, is the first chemically programmed approach to producing an artificial tissue. The findings, which could have major health applications in the future, could see chemically programmed synthetic tissue being used to support failing living tissues and to cure specific diseases.
Cambridge, MA, USA – Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences were able to produce healthy mice with two mothers that went on to have normal offspring of their own. Mice from two dads were also born but only survived for a couple of days.
Baltimore, MD, USA – Biologists at Johns Hopkins University grew human retinas from scratch to determine how cells that allow people to see in color are made. The work, published in the journal Science, lays the foundation to develop therapies for eye diseases such as color blindness and macular degeneration. It also establishes lab-created "organoids" as a model to study human development on a cellular level.
Denver, CO, USA – CDK1 is a “normal” protein – its presence drives cells through the cycle of replication. And MHC Class I molecules are “normal” as well – they present bits of proteins on the surfaces of cells for examination by the immune system. But a University of Colorado Cancer Center study published in the journal Cancer Research shows that a population of cancer cells marked by MHC Class I molecules and high CDK1 is anything but normal.
Atlanta, GA, USA – Cells' metabolic needs are not uniform across the brain, researchers have learned. "Knocking out" an enzyme that regulates mitochondria, cells' miniature power plants, specifically blocks the development of the mouse cerebellum more than the rest of the brain. The results are scheduled for publication in Science Advances.
Los Angeles, CA, USA – UCLA researchers have discovered a common process in the development of late-stage, small cell cancers of the prostate and lung. These shared molecular mechanisms could lead to the development of drugs to treat not just prostate and lung cancers, but small cell cancers of almost any organ.
