Stem Cells - Articles and news items

Whitepaper: Utilizing Colony-Forming Cell Assays In Toxicity Testing

Whitepapers / 25 October 2011 / STEMCELL Technologies

To decrease the cost and time invested in drug development, efforts must be made to improve the chances of a compound successfully completing clinical trials. Validated CFU-GM assays have successfully predicted MTDs in humans and have the bridged the gap between in vitro screening technologies and in vivo studies. Using (more…)

Drug screens on human stem cells: From understanding cell biology to predicting drug toxicity

Issue 5 2011 / 19 October 2011 / Ivana Barbaric and Peter W. Andrews, Centre for Stem Cell Biology, University of Sheffield

The Canadian physician William Osler said: “The person who takes medicine must recover twice, once from the disease and once from the medicine.” Indeed, all medicines have side effects – some of which may complicate a patient’s treatment, or in extreme cases may even be fatal. Of concern is the fact that side effects of drugs are often difficult or impossible to predict from preclinical studies, and infamous cases of drugs causing permanent injury or even death of patients in clinical trials illustrate the severity of this problem.

Late stage attrition of drugs is costly for pharmaceutical companies, contributing to the rise of drug prices and delays of drug delivery to market. Better prediction of compound efficacy and safety at early stages of drug development relies on improvement of the models used for pre-clinical testing. The availability of human embryonic stem (hES) cells and, more recently, induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells may transform the landscape of drug discovery. Here we provide an overview of human pluripotent stem cell features that make them amenable to predictive toxicology and discuss how chemical screens that aim to find drugs that modulate stem cell fates may provide a paradigm for using stem cells in drug discovery. (more…)

In search of the Holy Grail: Engineering the stem cell niche

Issue 2 2011 / 19 April 2011 / Janet L. Paluh, Associate Professor Nanobioscience, College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, University at Albany SUNY and Guohao Dai and Douglas B. Chrisey, Biomedical Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

There is no other biomedical frontier that offers the stunning potential of human pluripotent stem cells and their progenitors in therapeutic applications to ease human suffering or in their ability to provide insights into development and diseases. Cell plasticity for reprogramming has revealed new opportunities in cell-based therapies and informed on lineage specification. What precisely defines each stem cell type or its transit amplifying progenitors that will lead to differentiated adult tissues is still being determined. Challenges remain in cell expansion, directed differentiation and environmental regulation of pluri- and multi-potent cells that avoid unwanted outcomes in transplantation therapies. Traditional culturing methods are giving way to a revolution in tissue engineering and biofabrication. The key to success is a multidisciplinary partnership of biologists, engineers, material scientists and clinicians. This strategy brings together cutting edge technologies and diverse expertise to bridge nano- to micro- to macroscale communication networks. Here, we discuss prominent technologies being applied to engineer the stem cell and tissue niche in vitro for the construction of 3D tissue architectures with integrated vascular networks. (more…)

Clinical trial success for Crohn’s Disease cell therapy

Industry news, News / 30 March 2011 / UK National Stem Cell Network (UKNSCN)

Speaking at the UK National Stem Cell Network annual science meeting later today (30 March), Professor Miguel Forte will describe research into a new cell therapy for chronic inflammatory conditions such as Crohn’s disease. Patient’s own blood cells are used to produce a type of cell – Type 1 T regulatory lymphocyte – that can reduce the extent of the disease.

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Turn back the clock and be healed Induced pluripotent stem cells and their future impact on drug discovery and regenerative medicine

Issue 2 2010 / 9 May 2010 / Paul D. Andrews, Drug Discovery Unit, College of Life Sciences, University of Dundee

They are only four years old and are getting everyone very excited; they were Science Magazine’s ‘Breakthrough of the Year 2008’ and Nature’s ‘Method of the Year 2009.’ Their discoverer, Shinya Yamanaka, shared the Lasker Award last year and is no doubt touted for a future Nobel Prize. ‘They’ are induced pluripotent stem cells (or iPS for short). The discovery was that somatic cells from the adult body, whether from a hair, skin biopsy, cord-blood or even adipose tissue, can quite readily be changed back into pluripotent stem cells – ostensibly the state they were in shortly after conception – in the process, erasing the epigenetic modifications that make a brain cell different from, say, a liver cell. (more…)

2009: A landmark year for stem cells

Industry Focus 2010, Past issues / 22 February 2010 /

It would be fair to say that these past 12 months have been a watershed year for stem cell science. In years to come we may look back on 2009 and recognise it as the year in which nascent areas of science, medicine and technology came together to slowly nudge stem cell biology into the mainstream. Scientific and academic progress aside, it also may mark the year in which the field first matured to a stage at which commercial viability came to the cusp of realisation. (more…)

Combining perspectives: Multiscale integration of Stem Cell research

Issue 6 2009, Past issues / 12 December 2009 /

The promise of stem cell-based therapy is predicated on harnessing the plasticity of stem cell phenotypes to repair or replace damaged tissues. As technologies for detecting, isolating, modifying, and tracking stem cells improve, the very definition of what constitutes a stem cell is now an open question. Addressing this fundamental problem has triggered an explosion of activity that spans the entire breadth of biological fields, from molecular biology to population biology. While this has clearly increased the gross amount of information concerning stem cells, its net impact is limited by a lack of integrative multiscale models that are readily accessible to researchers from many disciplines. The field of mesenchymal stem cell biology is a good example of the strengths and limitations of this segregative approach. The goal of this brief review is to highlight some of the most promising recent advances in mesenchymal stem cell research, with an emphasis on how data gathered from one level can benefit research across multiple scales. (more…)

Stem cells and regenerative medicine world congress 2010

Issue 6 2009, Past issues / 12 December 2009 /

The 4th annual Stem Cells World Congress and exhibition will be held in South San Francisco, the Birthplace of Biotechnology. This year there are two parallel tracks focused specifically on: (more…)

Cellular reprogramming and its implications for therapeutic applications

Issue 3 2009, Past issues / 29 May 2009 /

Nearly fifty years ago, it was hypothesised that terminally differentiated cells such as fibroblasts could be forced to take on a pluripotent state, similar to the embryonic stem cells (ES cells). The basis of the concept is the observation that all cell types, with minor exceptions, have the same genetic code. The only difference is how the code is read. This ability of differentiated cells to acquire a pluripotent state or, more generally, the process of cell fate conversion is termed cellular reprogramming. Reprogramming here means transition between cell fates or dedifferentiation. The classic and earliest change of direction of cell differentiation comes from the research of nuclear transfer. Another milestone showing that the nuclear transfer technology can reverse the cell fate of somatic cells to pluripotent stem cells was the production of the normal adult sheep Dolly. Recent and spectacular advances in this field fell in 2006 when mouse fibroblasts were reprogrammed to induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. The next big step was the in vivo reprogramming of adult pancreatic exocrine cells to beta cells. This series of excellent work turns back the clock of somatic cells to create the first (iPS) cells, or stem cells, made without the use of embryos. In this article, we will focus on cellular reprogramming; in particular on transcription factor induced reprogramming as well as its implications for therapeutic use. (more…)

Stem Cells Roundtable

Issue 2 2009, Past issues / 20 March 2009 /

Dr Paul Andrews (Senior Scientist, ITI Stem Cell Technology Programme, University of Dundee), Professor Peter Andrews (co-Director of the Centre for Stem Cell Biology, University of Sheffield), Fergus McKenzie PhD. (Programme Manager, ITI-Life Sciences), Dr Stephen Minger (Senior Lecturer in Stem Cell Biology, Kings College London) and Will Rust (Section Manager, Cell Systems R&D, Lonza Bioscience) take part in a roundtable to discuss stem cell research. (more…)

Stem cell research and therapeutic innovation: not always a long-term perspective

Industry Focus 2009, Past issues / 10 January 2009 /

When talking about stem cell research and its contribution to medical innovation, distinction should be made between embryonic stem cell research, believed to have almost infinite potential but with quite long-term perspectives, and adult stem cell research, which is already offering new therapeutic applications for otherwise incurable diseases. Today, adult stem cell-based therapies are in clinical development for a wide range of disorders1, and this field has indeed great potential to fill the gap in the market and help a large patient population with otherwise untreatable diseases. This is also generating an evolution in the regulatory framework2, as well as the issue of guidelines for responsible transition of stem cell research into appropriate clinical applications3, as witnessed by the very recent initiatives of the European Commission and of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. (more…)

Small molecule mediators of cell differentiation: Tools to generate tissue from stem cells for screening applications

Issue 6 2008, Past issues / 3 December 2008 /

The development of pharmaceuticals and screening the biological activity of test compounds is a multi-staged process spanning from small molecule design and synthesis, in vitro testing, and compound evaluation in vivo using animal and human trials. The expense of this process escalates as a compound advances further into the development programme. Within each stage there are stringent criteria that must be satisfied before the decision to invest further in the compound and move its development forward is made.

The pharmaceutical industry is continually reviewing its practices and seeking novel ways in which to bring new drugs to market in a more efficient and cost effective manner. Part of this process will be to avoid investment in a potential drug candidate that fails at a later stage in the development process. The trick of course is spotting when to stop research and development of a particular candidate but at the same time to learn from the experience. (more…)