Sometimes there is so much craziness and outright bad stuff going on out there around the world related to stem cells that we can lose sight of all the good news and encouraging developments as well.
I think the new paper (Chen, et al.) from a team led by Drs. Lane and Loring is good news.
I haven’t had time to fully read it yet, but it reports some encouraging results whereby human neural progenitors injected into the spine of mice with an experimental MS-like condition stimulated great clinical improvement.
The cells seemed to reduce inflammation although they did not appear to engraft.
What do you see as the most promising positive developments on stem cells lately?
Let us know in the comments.
Hi Paul,
There has been a lot of papers on stem cell field this year but I want you all to have look at one of a very basic paper (of course mine) on cancer stem cells (CSC), published in May 2014 in Nature’s Oncogene, in a relatively rare type of paediatric T-cell lymphoma which once relapses, gives a really hard time to kids. We, at Cambridge, identified for the first time this small population of stem cells in this rare but aggressive kind of lymphoma. the most interesting point here to note is, Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma (ALCL) is considered a mature malignancy and a cancer stem cell in a mature malignancy gives us indication that generation of CSC is a multi-step process identified in this study using GSEA. Please have a look at it and comments would be appreciated.
http://www.nature.com/onc/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/onc2014112a.html
Thank you
http://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(14)00229-3
My favorite paper so far this year from some folks across the river; reprogramming GBM pt-derived cells into GSCs. Some cool work!
Hi Paul:
Thank you for highlighting our paper. One of the coolest stories about it was in the Salt Lake City Tribune…the University of Utah had a..well, very cute cartoon about the work. http://www.sltrib.com/csp/cms/sites/sltrib/pages/slidegallery.csp?cid=57947169&pid=6190984
I’m definitely stealing it for my seminars.
Jeanne
Here is a good news, in vivo bone regeneration from iPSCs in an autologous primate model, but with the risk for teratoma formation.
http://www.cell.com/cell-reports/abstract/S2211-1247%2814%2900306-4
Here are two great news in stem cells:
1) How the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund Helped a Young Lupus and Sickle Cell Patient – http://www.mscrf.org/content/awardees/SuccessStory1.cfm
2) How the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund Helped Save the Life of Lilly Boyer – http://www.mscrf.org/content/awardees/LillyBoyer.cfm