#pluripotent

[wtf-fun-factss]

Researchers have made the first chimeric monkey. Click to read the full fact.

[healthinnovations]

Brain waves detected in lab-grown mini brains.

Brain waves detected in lab-grown mini brains. Thoughts health innovators?

As human brain tissue is difficult to obtain, stem cells are used to develop mini brains or ‘organoids’, a pea-sized model of the human brain, in a lab dish. By growing them in culture medium which mimics the environment of brain development, the stem cells self-organize into a 3D structure that resembles the developing human brain. However, only a handful of studies have successfully used 3D…

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[bpod-bpod]

Heart Cell Editing

This is a human heart cell, but it doesn’t come from a heart. It was created in a laboratory from an induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell. Because heart cells are difficult to obtain, researchers create iPS cells from other adult cell types – such as skin, blood or other easy-to-access tissues – and then direct the iPS cells to become whichever cell type they – in this case heart. By creating such cells from patients with cardiovascular diseases, scientists can examine disease mechanisms without needing actual heart material. Now researchers are taking the method a step further and combining iPS techniques with gene-editing technology – an approach that enables specific genes of interest to be mutated. By using gene editing within iPS cells (to disrupt genes related to heart function), then directing the cells to become heart cells, researchers can observe how specific mutations can send normal heart cell development awry.

Written by Ruth Williams

Image courtesy of Joseph C. Wu, Stanford Cardiovascular Institute

Stanford Cardiovascular Institute, Stanford, CA, USA

Image copyright held by the American Heart Association

Research published in Circulation Research, May 2017

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[bpod-bpod]

Substitute Cells

This elegant geometric structure is a human heart muscle cell – well, sort of. It actually started life as a skin cell, and then briefly became an induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) – a cell with a wide range of possible fates – before adopting its final heart muscle identity. Why would researchers go to all the bother of converting a person’s skin cells into heart cells? Because human heart cells themselves are rather difficult to acquire, especially in large numbers. Skin on the other hand is easy to collect and, once converted into iPSCs, can be grown and expanded practically indefinitely. Having such a ready supply of human heart cells comes in handy for, among other things, testing new cancer drugs. Many anticancer agents have severe cardiotoxic side effects that animal testing may not necessarily reveal. Testing candidate drugs directly on these substitute heart cells could thus identify potentially hazardous ones.

Written by Ruth Williams

Image by Dr. Arun Sharma of Dr. Joseph Wu’s laboratory at Stanford University

Stanford Cardiovascular Institute, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA

Image copyright held by original authors

Research published in Science Translational Medicine, February 2017

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[dr-afsaeed]

Pluripotent stem-cell-based screening uncovers sildenafil as a mitochondrial disease therapy - Research

Leigh syndrome is a severe and untreatable mitochondrial disease. Using patient-derived models in 2D and 3D, Zink and colleagues identify the PDE5 inhibitor sildenafil as a repurposable drug candidate, leading to lifespan extension in mammalian models and clinical improvement in six individuals with Leigh syndrome. Read more about this post… Credits: Source Disclaimer

Pluripotent stem-cell-based screening uncovers sildenafil as a mitochondrial disease therapy - Research

[johniac]

SciTech Chronicles. . . . . . . . .May 27th, 2025

SciTech Chronicles. . . . . . . . .May 27th, 2025

  I know more about the private lives of celeberites than I do about governmental policy that wil actually affect me. Vol II No 47 198 links

[charliefooks]

Getting my head around stem cells totipotent, pluripotent, multipotent

[girianiayusabilla]

learning about cells through watercolors. illustration i did last week on the topic of stem cell research. pretty rushed, but i can tell i’m getting better at watercolor.