Archive for the ‘Skin Stem Cells’ Category

Sangeeta Bhatia, MIT professor of health sciences and technology and electrical engineering and computer science

Researchers at MIT and their colleagues said they have devised a way to produce liver-like cells from stem cells, a key step in studying why people respond differently to Hepatitis C.        
     
An infectious disease that can cause inflammation and organ failure, Hepatitis C has different effects on different people, but no one is sure why, the researchers said in a press release from MIT. Some people are very susceptible to the infection, while others are resistant.

The researchers said that by studying liver cells from different people in the lab, they may determine how genetic differences produce these varying responses. However, liver cells are hard to get and very difficult to grow in a lab dish because they tend to lose their normal structure and function when removed from the body.

The researchers, from MIT, Rockefeller University and the Medical College of Wisconsin, have come up with a way to produce liver-like cells from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which are made from body tissues rather than embryos. Those liver-like cells can then be infected with Hepatitis C and help scientists study the varying responses to the infection.

The scientists claim this is the first time an infection has been made in cells derived from iPSCs. Their new technique is described in the Jan. 30 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The development, they said, may also eventually enable personalized medicine, in which doctors could test the effect of different drugs on tissues derived from the patient being treated and then customize therapy for that patient.

The new study is a collaboration between Sangeeta Bhatia, professor of health sciences and technology and electrical engineering and computer science at MIT; Charles Rice, professor of virology at Rockefeller; and Stephen Duncan, professor of human and molecular genetics at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

The iPSCs are derived from normal body cells, often skin cells. By turning on certain genes in those cells, the scientists can revert them to an immature state that is identical to embryonic stem cells, which can turn into any cell type. Once the cells become pluripotent, they can be directed to become liver-like cells by turning on genes that control liver development.

The researchers’ goal is to take cells from patients who have unusual reactions to hepatitis C infection, transform them into liver cells and study their genetics to see why people respond as they do. “Hepatitis C virus causes an unusually robust infection in some people, while others are very good at clearing it. It’s not yet known why those differences exist,” Bhatia said in a statement.

Bhatia is a 2009 Mass High Tech Women to Watch honoree.
 

More:
Stem cells may shed light on hepatitis, MIT researchers find

Sixteen years after Dolly the sheep was cloned in Edinburgh, scientists in Scotland have made another startling medical breakthrough.

Researchers at Edinburgh's Centre for Regenerative Medicine have created brain tissue from patients suffering mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and depression.

"A patient's neurones can tell us a great deal about the psychological conditions that affect them, but you cannot stick a needle in someone's brain and take out its cells," the center's director, Professor Charles ffrench-Constant, told the Guardian.

"However, we have found a way round that. We can take a skin sample, make stem cells from it and then direct these stem cells to grow into brain cells. Essentially, we are turning a person's skin cells into brain."

The scientists hope that studying these manufactured brain cells will reveal clues to the conditions of patients with mental illnesses—a task that had been challenging in the past.

"It is very difficult to get primary tissue to study until after a patient has died," said the Royal Edinburgh Hospital's Professor Andrew McIntosh, who is collaborating with the center on the project.

"Even then, that tissue is affected by whatever killed them and by the impact of the medication they had been taking for their condition, possibly for several decades. So having access to living brain cells is a significant development for the development of drugs for these conditions," McIntosh said.

If successful, the same methods could be used for other organs, including the liver and heart.

Click here to read more. 

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Scientists use skin samples to create human brain cells

30 January 2012 Last updated at 19:13 ET By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News

Skin cells have been converted directly into cells which develop into the main components of the brain, by researchers studying mice in California.

The experiment, reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, skipped the middle "stem cell" stage in the process.

The researchers said they were "thrilled" at the potential medical uses.

Far more tests are needed before the technique could be used on human skin.

Stem cells, which can become any other specialist type of cell from brain to bone, are thought to have huge promise in a range of treatments. Many trials are taking place, such as in stroke patients or specific forms of blindness.

One of the big questions for the field is where to get the cells from. There are ethical concerns around embryonic stem cells and patients would need to take immunosuppressant drugs as any stem cell tissue would not match their own.

An alternative method has been to take skin cells and reprogram them into "induced" stem cells. These could be made from a patient's own cells and then turned into the cell type required, however, the process results in cancer-causing genes being activated.

Continue reading the main story “Start Quote

We are thrilled about the prospects for potential medical use of these cells”

End Quote Prof Marius Wernig Stanford University School of Medicine Direct approach

The research group, at the Stanford University School of Medicine in California, is looking at another option - converting a person's own skin cells into specialist cells, without creating "induced" stem cells. It has already transformed skin cells directly into neurons.

This study created "neural precursor" cells, which can develop into three types of brain cell: neurons, astrocytes and oligodendrocytes.

These precursor cells have the advantage that, once created, they can be grown in a laboratory into very large numbers. This could be critical if the cells were to be used in any therapy.

Brain cells and skin cells contain the same genetic information, however, the genetic code is interpreted differently in each. This is controlled by "transcription factors".

The scientists used a virus to infect skin cells with three transcription factors known to be at high levels in neural precursor cells.

After three weeks about one in 10 of the cells became neural precursor cells.

Lead researcher Prof Marius Wernig said: "We are thrilled about the prospects for potential medical use of these cells.

"We've shown the cells can integrate into a mouse brain and produce a missing protein important for the conduction of electrical signal by the neurons.

"More work needs to be done to generate similar cells from human skin cells and assess their safety and efficacy."

Dr Deepak Srivastava, who has researched converting cells into heart muscle, said the study: "Opens the door to consider new ways to regenerate damaged neurons using cells surrounding the area of injury."

Go here to see the original:
Skin transformed into brain cells

Melbourne, Jan 30 (ANI): In a startling medical breakthrough,
scientists in Scotland have created brain tissue from skin samples of
patients who are suffering from mental illnesses such as
schizophrenia and depression.

The latest achievement was made by researchers at
Edinburgh's Centre for Regenerative
Medicine.

"A patient's neurones can tell us a great deal about the
psychological conditions that affect them, but you cannot
stick a needle in someone's brain and take out its cells,"
the Daily Telegraph quoted Professor Charles ffrench-Constant, the
center's director, as telling the Guardian.

"However, we have found a way round that. We can take a skin
sample, make stem cells from it and then direct
these stem cells to grow into brain cells. Essentially, we are
turning a person's skin cells into brain," he stated.

The scientists hope that studying these manufactured brain
cells will reveal clues to the conditions of patients with
mental illnesses - a task that had been challenging in the
past.

"It is very difficult to get primary tissue to study until
after a patient has died," said the Royal Edinburgh Hospital's
Professor Andrew McIntosh, who is collaborating with the
center on the project.

"Even then, that tissue is affected by whatever killed them
and by the impact of the medication they had been taking for
their condition, possibly for several decades. So having
access to living brain cells is a significant development for
the development of drugs for these conditions," McIntosh
added.

If successful, the same methods could be used for other
organs, including the liver and heart. (ANI)

See the rest here:
Human brain cells created from skin samples

Sixteen years after Dolly the sheep was cloned in Edinburgh,
scientists in Scotland have made another startling medical
breakthrough.

Researchers at Edinburgh's Centre for Regenerative Medicine
have created brain tissue from patients suffering mental
illnesses such as schizophrenia and depression.

"A patient's neurones can tell us a great deal about the
psychological conditions that affect them, but you cannot stick
a needle in someone's brain and take out its cells," the
center's director, Professor Charles ffrench-Constant, told the
Guardian.

"However, we have found a way round that. We can take a skin
sample, make stem cells from it and then direct these stem
cells to grow into brain cells. Essentially, we are turning a
person's skin cells into brain."

The scientists hope that studying these manufactured brain
cells will reveal clues to the conditions of patients with
mental illnesses—a task that had been challenging in the past.

"It is very difficult to get primary tissue to study until
after a patient has died," said the Royal Edinburgh Hospital's
Professor Andrew McIntosh, who is collaborating with the center
on the project.

"Even then, that tissue is affected by whatever killed them and
by the impact of the medication they had been taking for their
condition, possibly for several decades. So having access to
living brain cells is a significant development for the
development of drugs for these conditions," McIntosh said.

If successful, the same methods could be used for other organs,
including the liver and heart.

Click here to read more. 

Read more from the original source:
Scientists use skin samples to create human brain cells

EDINBURGH - Sixteen years after Dolly the sheep was cloned
in Edinburgh, scientists in Scotland have made another
startling medical breakthrough.

Researchers at Edinburgh's Centre for Regenerative Medicine
have created brain tissue from patients suffering mental
illnesses such as schizophrenia and depression.

"A patient's neurones can tell us a great deal about the
psychological conditions that affect them, but you cannot
stick a needle in someone's brain and take out its cells,"
the center's director, Professor Charles ffrench-Constant,
told the Guardian.

"However, we have found a way round that. We can take a skin
sample, make stem cells from it and then direct these stem
cells to grow into brain cells. Essentially, we are turning a
person's skin cells into brain."

The scientists hope that studying these manufactured brain
cells will reveal clues to the conditions of patients with
mental illnesses - a task that had been challenging in the
past.

"It is very difficult to get primary tissue to study until
after a patient has died," said the Royal Edinburgh
Hospital's Professor Andrew McIntosh, who is collaborating
with the center on the project.

"Even then, that tissue is affected by whatever killed them
and by the impact of the medication they had been taking for
their condition, possibly for several decades. So having
access to living brain cells is a significant development for
the development of drugs for these conditions," McIntosh
said.

If successful, the same methods could be used for other
organs, including the liver and heart.

Continue reading here:
Skin samples to create human brain cells

Celebrated adult stem cell researcher Shinya Yamanaka will
deliver a lecture, ‘New era of medicine with iPS cells', here
on Monday as part of a three-city lecture series. Prof.
Yamanaka's scientific breakthrough was the creation of
embryonic-like stem cells from adult skin cells.

The lecture by this Japanese physician is the third edition of
The Cell Press-TNQ India Distinguished Lectureship Series. He
will also deliver it in Chennai on February 1 and New Delhi on
February 3. The lecture series is co-sponsored by Cell Press
and TNQ Books and Journals.

Quantum leap

The stated goal of Prof. Yamanaka's laboratory has been to
generate pluripotent stem cells from human somatic cells. The
ability to re-programme adult cells back into an earlier,
undifferentiated state has helped to reshape the ethical debate
over stem cell research by providing an approach to obtain
pluripotent stem cells that need not be harvested from an
embryo.

Prof. Yamanaka, who was awarded the Albert Lasker Prize in 2009
and the Wolf Prize in 2011, is the director of the Centre for
iPS Cell Research and Application and professor at the
Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences at Kyoto University. He
is also a senior investigator at the UCSF-affiliated J. David
Gladstone Institutes and a professor of Anatomy at the
University of California in San Francisco.

Previous lectures

The inaugural speaker of the lecture series was American
biologist David Baltimore, who won the 1975 Nobel. The second
speaker was Australia-born American biological researcher
Elizabeth Blackburn, awarded the 2009 Nobel.

The lecture in Bangalore will commence at 4.30 p.m. at J.N.
Tata Auditorium, National Science Seminar Complex, Indian
Institute of Science, C.V. Raman Road.

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Lecture by stem cell researcher tomorrow

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Luminesce Stem Cell Skin Care - Rediscover Your Skin | Rediscover Yourself! - Video

03-01-2012 16:06 Read More @ http://www.BuyTvOffer.com Stem Cell Therapy is a new advanced anti aging skin care cream, that prevents and treats wrinkles. This anti wrinkle cream is specially designed to treat your skin, making fine lines disappear before your very eyes. Similar to the products that are selling for hundreds of dollars or more on some internet auction sites, this smooth revitalizing cream works by using the latest advancements in Dermatology.

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Stem Cell Therapy Cream - Video

15-01-2012 12:18 http://www.SCRxPlasma.Com Welcome to the 21st Century of Modern Medicine. Recent discovery reveals that it is the umbilical cord lining that is the body's greatest source of undifferentiated stem cells. In a single cord skin, billions of ETHICAL epithelial and mesencymal stems cells can be harvested

Excerpt from:
SCRx Skin System. - Video

15-01-2012 00:02 http://www.SCRxPlasma.Com Welcome to the 21st Century of Modern Medicine. Recent discovery reveals that it is the umbilical cord lining that is the body's greatest source of undifferentiated stem cells.

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SCRx Skin Systems.m4v - Video

26-11-2011 11:13 Stem cells are the body's repair cells. They have the ability to divide and differentiate into many different types of cells based on where they are needed throughout the body. Stem cells can divide and turn into tissues such as skin, fat, muscle, bone, cartilage, and nerve to name a few.

Read the rest here:
Medivet's Stem Cell Therapy Featured on Animal Planets Dogs 101 - Video

26-09-2011 18:57 Lean back and learn in just 3 minutes all benefits of our unique biological health care measure.

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TICEBA presents - Back-up Your Life! - Video

02-12-2011 14:46 Amazing youthful results using a skin serum derived from Adult Stem Cells

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Rolling Back the Effects of Aging - Video

30-11-2011 11:56 Results after 4 months on Adult Stem Cell growth factors skin serum

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Looking Younger With Jeunesse - Video

30-11-2011 11:56 Results after 4 months on Adult Stem Cell growth factors skin serum

Originally posted here:
Looking Younger With Jeunesse - Video

26-11-2011 11:13 Stem cells are the body's repair cells. They have the ability to divide and differentiate into many different types of cells based on where they are needed throughout the body. Stem cells can divide and turn into tissues such as skin, fat, muscle, bone, cartilage, and nerve to name a few

View post:
Medivet's Stem Cell Therapy Featured on Animal Planets Dogs 101 - Video

26-09-2011 18:57 Lean back and learn in just 3 minutes all benefits of our unique biological health care measure.

See the rest here:
TICEBA presents - Back-up Your Life! - Video

02-12-2011 14:46 Amazing youthful results using a skin serum derived from Adult Stem Cells

Visit link:
Rolling Back the Effects of Aging - Video

13-08-2011 19:49 In a unique formulation including PhytoCellTec ™ Malus Domestica, Alpha-Hydroxy Acid and ATP Pure Bio-Optimised Hylauronic Acid, these vital ingredients combine to rejuvenate aging skin by activating your skin's own stem cells to promote a healthier, radiant complexion. PhytoCellTec™ Malus Domestica is a liposomal preparation based on the stem cells of the rare Swiss Uttwiler Spätlauber Apple.

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ATP Skin Firming Serum - Video

13-08-2011 19:49 In a unique formulation including PhytoCellTec ™ Malus Domestica, Alpha-Hydroxy Acid and ATP Pure Bio-Optimised Hylauronic Acid, these vital ingredients combine to rejuvenate aging skin by activating your skin's own stem cells to promote a healthier, radiant complexion. PhytoCellTec™ Malus Domestica is a liposomal preparation based on the stem cells of the rare Swiss Uttwiler Spätlauber Apple. • Protects longevity of skin stem cells and delays senescence of essential cells • Preserves the youthful look and vitality of the skin • Decreases fine lines and wrinkles • Improves the firmness and elasticity of the skin • Brightens skin tone and reduces pore size • Intense hydrating properties • Assists in the repair of photo-aging and sun damage skin • Acts as an exfoliant to the skin, leaving it softer and rejuvenated • Enhances the skin's blood circulation • Absorbs moisture and nutrients deeper into the skin • Assists the rejuvenation of collagen and hyaluronic acid production in the skin

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ATP Skin Firming Serum - Video

VOILA! Skin Care offers a premium anti-aging stem cell serum, formulated with malus domestica cells, rich in proteins, phyto-nutrients, and long-living cells to combat the signs of aging.

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Anti-Aging Apple Stem Cell Serum - Video

Wawa, QC Chemist of Imed Lab Sdn Bhd explains and demo about Glamore Halal Stem Cell Vitalization, built with EverLaSkin as active ingredients, to stimulate dormant stem cells under your skin -- stem cells that are able to regenerate and repair skin tissue, and counterbalance the aging epidermal cells with new and young cells.

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GlamoreTV: Glamore Stem Cell Vitalization - Video

What do Parkinsons disease and anti-aging skin care have in common?

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Stem Cells for Your Skin? - Video