“Latest Stem Cells News”

Taming the bad cancer stem cells, genetically modifying them to arm them against disease and cancer-from defusing the bomb. Bet on cell girls ‘GM’, transformed into cancer killer bullets, one of five projects funded by AIRC (Italian Association for Cancer Research) with 60 million in five years thanks to the funds of 5 per thousand.

Studies of molecular oncology clinic, chosen by a jury of 18 super-foreign experts, who share one big final goal: to train a new generation of physicians, researchers are able to bridge the gap between the lab bench and the bedside. In five years’ covered ‘by AIRC, each team winning scientists will have to’ get to test on humans.

The project will be cancer stem cell ‘led by Alessandro Massimo Gianni Foundation IRCCS National Cancer Institute (INT) in Milan. Will involve ’16 research groups (9 area of preclinical and clinical 7), for a total of 89′ brains’ (68 preclinical and 21 clinical) distributed Int universities’ State, IRCCS-University ‘Vita Salute San Raffaele in Milan, Istituto Superiore di Sanita ‘Rome and Istituto Giannina Gaslini in Genoa.

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Helen Blau

Scientists have now shown that skin cells can be coaxed to behave like muscle cells and muscle cells like skin cells.
The fickleness of the cells, and the relative ease with which they make the switch, provide a glimpse into the genetic reprogramming that must occur for a cell to become something it’s not.

“We’d all like to understand what happens inside the black box (cell),” said Helen Blau, professor and member of Stanford University‘s Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine Institute and co-author of a new study on the subject.
Harnessing these genetic makeovers will allow scientists to better understand how to induce specialised adult cells to revert to a stem-cell-like state in a process called induced pluripotency (iPS).

But Blau’s experiments suggest an intriguing alternative to iPS: that of enticing specialised adult cells to switch identities without requiring a dip into the stem cell pool.
Blau, who heads the Baxter Lab at Stanford University and her lab members fused mouse muscle cells with human skin cells, to create hybrids called heterokaryons.

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Mental retardation, altered facial characteristics, and heart problems are all problems suffered by children affected by Costello syndrome, a genetic disease that is being studied by researchers in Milan at the Italian Foundation for Cancer Research (FIRC) Institute of molecular oncology (IFOM) using the zebrafish as a model.

The cause of the disease – explained the scientists in the January issue of ‘Disease Models & Mechanisms’ monthly magazine – is a mutation of the Ras gene, the same alteration observed in 20pct of tumors. One out of every five cases of cancer and the rare genetic disease have a common thread.

The credit for the discovery also goes to the zebrafish, an important animal among the most popular in laboratories worldwide, since it is versatile, transparent, and mainly, genetically similar to humans. The mutation of the Ras gene responsible for the Costello syndrome – according to a study supported by the Italian Association for Cancer Research (AIRC) – is manifested in the patient’s germ cells.

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“The role of BMI1 in adult intestinal and pancreatic exocrine stem cells” is the name of the opening lecture of the 2008-2009 Biology Lectures promoted by the Institute of General Pathology at Università Cattolica in Rome, headed by Professor Tommaso Galeotti. The seminar will take place on Wednesday, March 18 at 3:00pm, in the Aula Moscati at the University in Rome (Biology Institute, Largo F. Vito 1), and will be led by Eugenio Sangiorgi, a researcher at the Institute of Medical Genetics for the university, and by the post-doctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Mario Capecchi, 2007 Nobel prize for Medicine winner, from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

The young geneticist from Cattolica University, a student of Professor Giovanni Neri, will present the results of his work, which demonstrate the presence of multipotent stem cells in the intestine and pancreas in adult animals, the premise for a better understanding of neoplastic transformation processes, and for interesting innovative treatments that could be potentially important for intestinal tumors and for diabetes mellitus.

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