Vitamin C Promotes ESC Self-Renewal by Modulating miRNA ExpressionDecember 16, 2014We all know “an apple a day, keeps the doctor away”, but it requires a lot of discipline to ensure that our diet contains enough vitamins. This holds especially true for the daily vitamin C uptake. Unfortunately, humans (and – for some mysterious reason – guinea pigs) lost the ability to synthesize this now essential […]
Epigenetics Mediates Immortality of Adult Stem CellsDecember 13, 2014What would you do to ensure your immortality? Drink a potion? Cast a spell? Or even set out on an expedition to find the fountain of youth? Researchers from the Adult Stem Cell Technology Centre in Boston, USA have discovered that adult stem cells in the mouse have another more intricate strategy towards living forever […]
Reprogramming to Pluripotency: Lessons from the EggDecember 8, 2014Have you ever wish you could just clone yourself? How much more work you’d be able to get done in a day! While creating an exact copy of yourself that knows everything you do is still very much in the realms of science fiction, cloning human cells is a reality. The first big leap came […]
T Cell Blockade Offers Safe Haven for Stem Cell TransplantsDecember 6, 2014As if human embryonic stem cells didn’t have enough trouble already making it through governmental legislation, they also face rejection from another source: the immune system. In their latest study, Herman Waldmann and his team of talented immunologists from the University of Oxford report a simple strategy to induce long-lasting immune tolerance to stem cell […]
Stem Cells Out of Position – A New Paradigm for Colorectal Cancer?December 5, 2014Colorectal cancer is, unfortunately, a common condition, making up 10% of global cancer cases. Therefore, a full understanding of the initiation and development of these tumor types should improve diagnosis and treatment decisions. A recent study from the University of Oxford has identified a potentially important mechanism of colorectal tumor formation that not only challenges current […]
Understanding How H3K4me1 Affects the Ageing Stem CellDecember 4, 2014Even though we don’t want to admit it, we all see changes in ourselves as the years pass by. A few more inches round the waistline here, and a little less muscle tone there, all due to a little less exercise and a little more food and drink! But what changes occur in our stem […]
Embryonic Stem Cell Model Highlights Importance of Histone Mutation in Childhood TumorigenesisNovember 26, 2014Childhood cancers are truly devastating diseases; they cause major loss of young lives due to the distinct lack of treatment options stemming from the limited access to tumor tissues. Hopefully, a promising new study published in Science will change this. Researchers from the laboratory Viviane Tabar at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, USA […]
Boosting Bone by Exercising your Stem CellsNovember 25, 2014How do you do it? Running? Boxing? Jane Fonda work out videos? Whatever the method, we all need exercise to keep our bodies and minds healthy and functional, and it now turns out that stem cells benefit from exercise too! Researchers have demonstrated that remote mechanical stimulation of transplanted mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) is a potentially […]
New Dimensions for Pluripotent Cell DifferentiationNovember 23, 2014The recent Hollywood trend of adapting much beloved movies from two-dimensional (2D) into 3-dimensional (3D) offerings hasn’t met with the expected fanfare and applause. However, strategies which have adapted pluripotent stem cell (PSC) differentiation strategies from 2D to 3D have created some masterpieces of epic proportions. Differentiating PSCs as adherent cell monolayers is a commonly […]
On the Trail of Naïve Human Pluripotent CellsNovember 23, 2014The creation of pluripotent stem-cell lines from early embryos has enabled the indefinite capture in vitro of one of nature’s most fascinating but fleeting faces. Yet, not all embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are alike. Mouse ESCs are free from differentiation bias and epigenetic restriction, whereas human ESCs have already made some fundamental developmental decisions. But […]