This blog is called The Niche so publications on the stem cell niche often catch my eye even if that’s not something my own lab directly works on much. So today’s recommended reads will start with two papers on the stem cell niche. The first one focused on the niche gone wrong.
The stem cell niche
Aged skeletal stem cells generate an inflammatory degenerative niche, Nature. Stem cells must have a healthy niche to thrive, but in a sense stem cells are also part of the niche. This paper reports on the impact of the stem cells in there on the niche. It goes both ways. This also is a reminder when you inject stem cells into patients they may have no stem cell niche and so not do so well. Also, if the stem cells that you inject are not so healthy and they do find a niche, they may actually damage the niche for the other stem cells already there.
Here’s a new review article on the neural stem cell niche from Cell Stem Cell: Know thy neighbor: Modeling spatiotemporal cell-fate patterns in a neural stem cell niche.
State of Georgia and FTC go after stem cell clinics.
Carr, FTC hold companies accountable for deceptive claims regarding stem cell therapy, Valdosta Today. A half dozen or more state attorney generals have active cases against stem cell clinic type firms. It’s good to see the FTC getting more active too. From the article:
Attorney General Chris Carr and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a joint enforcement action against Superior Healthcare, LLC, Regenerative Medicine Institute of America, LLC d/b/a Stem Cell Institute of America, LLC, Physicians Business Solutions, LLC, Steven Peyroux, and Brent Detelich for allegedly violating the Georgia Fair Business Practices Act (FBPA) and the FTC Act by making false and misleading claims about the regenerative medicine products they offered to consumers in Georgia.
Georgia AG Carr has recently taken other action as well on stem cell clinics. However, Superior Healthcare was also mentioned in that previous action so I’m not clear on the relationship or overlap if any here in the two statements by the Georgia AG. The actual people mentioned in the suit are different it seems.
More recommended reads
- Dynamic landscape of chromatin accessibility and transcriptomic changes during differentiation of human embryonic stem cells into dopaminergic neurons, Sci Reports
- Predictive factors for vaccine failure to guide vaccination in allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients, Bone Marrow Transplantation. Some patients who received HSCT have contacted me over the past year and a half or so with worries about COVID and vaccination.
- Epigenetic control of melanoma cell invasiveness by the stem cell factor SALL4, Nat Comm.
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DMRT1-mediated reprogramming drives development of cancer resembling human germ cell tumors with features of totipotency, Nat Comm. Things can get weird and interesting when tumors reactive early embryo-like programs.