“Latest Stem Cells News”

By irradiating typical polystyrene lab plates with ultraviolet (UV) waves, Whitehead Institute and MIT scientists have created a surface capable of tripling the number of human embryonic stem (ES) and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells that can be grown in culture by current methods. Use of this novel surface also eliminates the need for layers of mouse “feeder cells” to support ES- and iPS-cell growth.

“Polystyrene is the most common cell culture surface used in labs, and to be able to do a simple treatment and get something that works better than the mouse feeder layers is great and potentially has a lot of utility,” says Daniel Anderson, Associate Professor in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology.

The research is published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“I think it’s going to be a useful technique,” says Krishanu Saha, a postdoctoral researcher in Whitehead Member Rudolf Jaenisch’s lab. “There is a lot of push, at least in the field, to [eliminate animal products]. If you were one day to inject these cells into patients, you wouldn’t have to worry about as many safety risks as if you had co-cultured them with animal cells.”

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While in Lisbon, President Hockfield also participated in the launch of three new MIT Portugal research and training networks designed to advance new knowledge in sustainable energy systems and electric mobility, the greening of cities, and stem cell engineering. (These areas are central to MIT Portugal’s research efforts.) MITEI is a partner in the first two networks, and the Initiative’s Director Prof. Ernest Moniz also spoke at the forums at which they were announced.

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A biodegradable tissue to repair hearts after a heart attacks or to cure congenital malformations. A tissue that acts like a porous, accordion-like medium onto which cardiac stem cells are ‘implanted’ has been created by scientists from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston (MIT). This “bioscaffolding” integrates perfectly with cardiac tissue and creates a biological “band-aid” that is slowly reabsorbed and repairs cardiac muscle.

Compared to similar previous attempts, explained George Engelmayr in “Nature Materials” magazine, the advantage of the “bioscaffolding” is that it faithfully mirrors cardiac tissue structurally and mechanically, and therefore integrates well with it. Cardiac cells all have a certain orientation that allows them to transmit an electrical impulse that makes the heart beat.

The experts, using a laser similar to the kind used to cure short-sightedness, constructed this tissue “scaffolding” and then “implanted” neonatal cardiac cells from mice into it. They then electrically stimulated the tissue just like in the heart, and the cells oriented in the same direction, just as they do in the human body. “We have followed nature’s lessons as closely as possible and have created tissue very similar to the body’s own tissue, and therefore something truly useful for future therapeutic applications.”

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Though the world’s attention has focused on Iran‘s advancing nuclear program, Iranian scientists have moved to the forefront in embryonic stem cell research, according to a recent joint study by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Controversial in the United States, embryonic stem cell research was embraced in 2002 by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s conservative religious leader. President Obama has recently adopted a similar policy, reversing restrictions that George W. Bush’s administration imposed because of the implications for destroying potential human lives.

Stem cells have been shown to have significant capability to develop into a plethora of different cell types and work as a repair system to replenish cells with specialized functions.

“Islam is very compatible with the modern sciences,” said Hassan Ashktorab of the Howard University Cancer Center. “Policies that may be classified as liberal in the American political system seem to be common sense to Iranian politicians.”

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