“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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Scientists have taken the first steps toward producing the “heart patch,” a design for a medical implement used to repair damage from heart disease, a new study suggests.

Last week, researchers from Duke University presented the results of a study which, using mouse embryonic stem cells, examined the way these cells develop into heart muscle, HealthDay News reports (…)

from http://www.privatemdlabs.com/news/Heart_Health_and_Cholesterol/Mouse-stem-cell-study-examines-heart-repair$19405309.php

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When a muscle is damaged, dormant adult stem cells called satellite cells are signaled to “wake up” and contribute to repairing the muscle. University of Missouri researchers recently found how even distant satellite cells could help with the repair, and are now learning how the stem cells travel within the tissue. This knowledge could ultimately help doctors more effectively treat muscle disorders such as muscular dystrophy, in which the muscle is easily damaged and the patient’s satellite cells have lost the ability to repair.

“When your muscles are injured, they send out a ‘mayday’ for satellite cells to come and fix them, and those cells know where to go to make more muscle cells, and eventually new muscle tissue,” said D Cornelison, an associate professor of biological sciences in the College of Arts and Science and a researcher in the Bond Life Sciences Center. “There is currently no effective satellite cell-based therapy for muscular dystrophy in humans.

One problem with current treatments is that it requires 100 stem cell injections per square centimeter, and up to 4,000 injections in a single muscle for the patient, because the stem cells don’t seem to be able to spread out very far. If we can learn how normal, healthy satellite cells are able to travel around in the muscles, clinical researchers might use that information to change how injected cells act and improve the efficiency of the treatment.”

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Scientists at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI) and the University of Ottawa have discovered a powerful new way to stimulate muscle regeneration, paving the way for new treatments for debilitating conditions such as muscular dystrophy.

The research, to be published in the June 5 issue of Cell Stem Cell, shows for the first time that a protein called Wnt7a increases the number of stem cells in muscle tissue, leading to accelerated growth and repair of skeletal muscle.

“This discovery shows us that by targeting stem cells to boost their numbers, we can improve the body’s ability to repair muscle tissue,” said senior author Dr. Michael Rudnicki. Dr. Rudnicki is the Scientific Director of Canada’s Stem Cell Network and a Senior Scientist at OHRI and Director of OHRI’s Sprott Centre for Stem Cell Research, as well as a Professor of Medicine at the University of Ottawa.

Stem cells give rise to every tissue and organ in the body. Satellite stem cells are specialized muscle stem cells that live in adult skeletal muscle tissue and have the ability to both replicate and differentiate into various types of muscle cells. Dr. Rudnicki’s team found that the Wnt7a protein, when introduced into mouse muscle tissue, significantly increased the population of these satellite stem cells and fueled the regeneration process, creating bigger and stronger muscles. Muscle tissue mass was increased by nearly 20 per cent in the study.

“Our findings point the way to the development of new therapeutic treatment for muscular diseases such as muscular dystrophy, sarcopenia and muscle wasting conditions resulting from extended hospital stays and surgeries,” said Dr. Rudnicki.

from physorg

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In a genetic engineering breakthrough that could help everyone from bed-ridden patients to elite athletes, a team of American researchers—including 2007 Nobel Prize winner Mario R. Capecchi—have created a “switch” that allows mutations or light signals to be turned on in muscle stem cells to monitor muscle regeneration in a living mammal. For humans, this work could lead to a genetic switch, or drug, that allows people to grow new muscle cells to replace those that are damaged, worn out, or not working for other reasons (e.g., muscular dystrophy). In addition, this same discovery also gives researchers a new tool for the study of difficult-to-treat muscle cancers. The full report containing details of this advance is available online in The FASEB Journal.

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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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