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As it turns out, nature has its own method for transplanting stem cells. When a pregnant mouse has a heart attack, her fetus goes to work to help repair the damage! The experiment mated female lab mice with males who had the genes to produce green fluorescent protein (GFP). Around half the embryos produced also had the ability to produce the protein. This way, scientists could track fetal cells separately from maternal cells. Then heart attacks were induced in the pregnant mice.
When the scientists examined the female mice’s heart tissue two weeks after the heart attacks, they found lots of glowing green tissue—cells that came from the fetus—in the mom’s heart. Mice who had heart attacks had eight times as many cells from the fetus in their hearts as mice who hadn’t had a heart attack did, meaning the high volume of fetal cells was a response to the heart attack.
What’s more, the embryo’s stem cells had differentiated into various types of heart tissue, including cardiomyocytes, the rhythmically contracting muscle cells that produce a heartbeat.
Doctors have observed that women who experience weakness of the heart during pregnancy or shortly after giving birth have better recovery rates than any other group of heart failure patients. This study suggests that fetal stem cells may help human mothers, as well as mice, recover from heart damage. It may also explain another curious clinical observation: The hearts of two women who suffered from severe heart weakness were later found to contain cells derived from the cells of a male fetus years after they gave birth to their sons.
In this amazing month of stem cell research advancement, we have seen a replacement trachea grown from scratch, clues that may use stem cells to cure blindness, and now mice have grown transplantable molars. For those of you that are missing teeth, like me, this means that you’ll soon be able to grow your own set of choppers, your own teeth that can be easily implanted and readily accepted by your body.
Link via PopSci Image via plosONE
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Swedish surgeons at Karolinska University Hospital have successfully grown a donor free trachea and transplanted it into a patient, who is now recovering and doing well. The organ was created using the patients own stem cells, which were harvested from his bone marrow, and was grown in just two days. Using stem cells in this manner means the body is less likely to reject the organ, and lab grown organs could be grown as needed, in a very short amount of time. Read more about the future of medicine over at PopSci.
Dr. Jeremy Mao, a research physician at Columbia University, has developed a technique for regrowing teeth in a patient’s mouth.
An animal-model study has shown that by homing stem cells to a scaffold made of natural materials and integrated in surrounding tissue, there is no need to use harvested stem cell lines, or create an environment outside of the body (e.g., a Petri dish) where the tooth is grown and then implanted once it has matured. The tooth instead can be grown “orthotopically,” or in the socket where the tooth will integrate with surrounding tissue in ways that are impossible with hard metals or other materials.
The procedure could eliminate the need for dentures and conventional dental implants.
Scientists from the the Tokyo University of Science used mouse stem cells to grow a new tooth that worked like a charm in a mouse’s mouth. The cells were grown in a lab dish until a tiny tooth “bud” formed. It was then transferred to the jaw of a mouse where a tooth had been removed. The new tooth erupted through the gum in about five weeks, and was fully grown in seven.
The researchers, who repeated the experiment many times, also showed that the new, bioengineered teeth were fully-functional.
Dr Kazuhisa Nakao said: ‘Every bio- engineered tooth erupted through the gum and had every tooth component such as dentine, enamel, pulp, blood vessels, nerve fibres, crown and root.’
Importantly, the rodent recipients had no trouble eating.
If the technique can be used in humans, dentures may eventually be obsolete. The tooth shown in the picture also had a green fluorescent gene so it could be seen easily. Link -via Digg
Humans have always been fascinated with the salamander’s ability to regenerate lost limbs. Now scientists studying salamander genes have discovered that the process isn’t quite as complicated as once thought.
By tracking individual cells in genetically modified salamanders, researchers have found an unexpected explanation for their seemingly magical ability to regrow lost limbs.
Rather than having their cellular clocks fully reset and reverting to an embryonic state, cells in the salamanders’ stumps became slightly less mature versions of the cells they’d been before. The findings could inspire research into human tissue regeneration.
“The cells don’t have to step as far back as we thought they had to, in order to regenerate a complicated thing like a limb,” said study co-author Elly Tanaka, a Max Planck Institute cell biologist. “There’s a higher chance that human or mammalian cells can be induced into doing the same thing.”
Researchers are hopeful, but also aware that early experiments in replicating this cell process can lead to uncontrolled growth, meaning cancers. Link
A new procedure to help people with damaged corneas is showing promise in three patients so far. A team from the University of New South Wales in Sydney takes stem cells from the patient’s good eye and cultures them in a contact lens. When the cells have multiplied, they place the lens over the patient’s affected eye and leave it for around three weeks. During that time, the cells begin to grow into the damaged cornea and help regenerate it. In effect, it’s a stem cell transplant from one eye to the other.
Researcher Dr Nick Di Girolamo said: ‘The procedure is totally simple and cheap.
‘Unlike other techniques, it requires no foreign human or animal products, only the patient’s own serum, and is completely non-invasive.
‘There’s no suturing, there is no major operation. You don’t need any fancy equipment.’
The contact lenses used in the operation are already widely used after eye surgery.
The researchers hope the technique can be adapted for other parts of the eye, such as the retina, and even elsewhere in the body.
