“Latest Stem Cells News”

The master regulator of muscle differentiation, MyoD, functions early in myogenesis to help stem cells proliferate in response to muscle injury, according to researchers at Case Western Reserve University.
The study appears online Jan. 4 in the Journal of Cell Biology.

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Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem discovered a method to potentially eliminate the tumor-risk factor in utilizing human embryonic stem cells, said the university on Wednesday.
The researchers’ work paves the way for further progress in the promising field of stem cell therapy, said the press release of the university sent to Xinhua.

According to the release, human embryonic stem cells are theoretically capable of differentiation to all cells of the mature human body (and are hence defined as “pluripotent“).
This ability, along with the ability to remain undifferentiated indefinitely in culture, make regenerative medicine using human embryonic stem cells a potentially unprecedented tool for the treatment of various diseases, including diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and heart failure.

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Researchers said on Sunday they had found a safer way to transform ordinary skin cells into powerful stem cells in a move that could eventually remove the need to use human embryos.
It is the first time that scientists have turned skin cells into induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells — which look and act like embryonic stem cells — without having to use viruses in the process.
The new method also allows for genes that are inserted to trigger cell reprogramming to be removed afterwards.
Stem cells are the body’s master cells, producing all the body’s tissues and organs.

Embryonic stem cells are the most powerful kind, as they have the potential to give rise to any tissue type. However, many people object to their use, making iPS cells an attractive alternative, provided they can be made safely.
Researchers have known for some time that ordinary skin cells can be transformed into iPS cells using a handful of genes.
But to get these genes into the cells they have had to use viruses, which integrate their own genetic material into the cells they infect. This can cause cancer.

The alternative approach, described in the online edition of the journal Nature by two teams of researchers from Britain and Canada, appears to avoid the risk of such abnormalities.
The researchers harnessed a little piece of DNA called a transposon — sometimes known as a “jumping gene” because of its ability to move around inside the genetic code — to carry four genes.

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A gene called SOX2 acts as a stem cell gatekeeper – only cells expressing it have the potential to become neurons.

Early in embryonic development, the neural crest – a transient group of stem cells – gives rise to parts of the nervous system and several other tissues. But little is known about what determines which cells become neurons and which become other cell types. A team led by Dr. Alexey Terskikh at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) recently found that expression of a gene called SOX2 maintains the potential for neural crest stem cells to become neurons in the peripheral nervous system, where they interface with muscles and other organs. Their results, published online May 5 by the journal Cell Stem Cell, could help better inform therapies aimed at neurocristopathies, diseases caused by defects in the neural crest or neurons, which include microphthalmia and CHARGE syndrome.

The SOX2 gene encodes a transcription factor, a type of protein that switches other genes on or off. SOX2 is one of two key genes researchers use to generate induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which are capable of differentiating into all cell types for research and potential therapeutic applications.

“In this study, we looked at SOX2’s role in cells of the peripheral nervous system and discovered that it’s required to sustain multipotency – the ability to differentiate into several cell types in the peripheral nervous system, including neurons and glia,”

…explained Dr. Terskikh, assistant professor in Sanford-Burnham’s Del E. Webb Neuroscience, Aging and Stem Cell Research Center.

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Researchers from the Center for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and the Department of Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University claim that a gene shown to play a role in the aging process appears to play a role in the regulation of the differentiation of embryonic stem cells.

In the study, published online in the journal Aging Cell, the researchers identified a protein interaction that controls the silencing of Oct4, a key transcription factor that is critical to ensuring that embryonic stem cells remain pluripotent. The protein, WRNp, is the product of a gene associated with Werner syndrome, an autosomal recessive disorder hallmarked by premature aging. The gene expression in Werner syndrome closely resembles that of normal aging, and as a result, Werner syndrome is an accepted model of aging.

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