Weekly stem cell reads: parabiosis, UC Davis trial, HeLa lawsuit, gray hair

Parabiosis refers to the joining together of two animals, typically rodents in research. They become one interconnected living system that shares blood. Research on mouse parabiosis has sparked much interest in anti-aging therapies. These might utilize “young” materials to help older people. Our first recommended read is a parabiosis paper.

Before we jump into that, it’s great to note several milestones recently here for the stem cell blog. Our The Niche educational outreach program providing info on stem cells in 34 languages crossed the 2.5 million reads milestone.

Also, our stem cell YouTube channel crossed the 30,000 views mark. With about 480 subscribers we are nearing the 500 subscribers milestone. Please subscribe and help us get over the 500 mark. You can see a fun video from the channel below.

Parabiosis paper

Heterochronic parabiosis induces stem cell revitalization and systemic rejuvenation across aged tissues, Cell Stem Cell. We’re back to the young blood anti-aging world again with this new paper. Past research has shown when the two mice are sewn together consist of one young and one old mouse, that they impact each other. The older mouse begins to exhibit signs of a younger phenotype, and vice versa. This new parabiosis paper also brought to mind the recent young CSF paper. It claimed that young CSF when infused into the cranial cavities of older mice led to more youthful brains in the old mice. In the new paper they report that parabiosis causes a more youthful profile of many tissues including blood, bone, liver, and nervous system. It’s a comprehensive paper.

Other stem cell weekly recommended reads

• The power of the patient advocate: how a quick visit led to an $11M grant to fund a clinical trial, CIRM Blog. My colleagues at UC Davis have got the funding to start an important new clinical trial funded by CIRM using muscle stem cells for dysphagia. Patients with head and neck cancers often have dysphagia and need new options. I can’t wait to see how this trial goes.
• Wednesday morning with Jennifer Doudna! The Serial Startup Student. Doudna was almost a French major? She likes gardening?
• Court to consider whether Henrietta Lacks’ family’s ‘unprecedented’ lawsuit over use of her cells can continue, Baltimore Sun. We should all recall that the cell lines we use in the lab often come from real people. Those people should be consented for the use of their cells. To this day many people don’t realize that once a physician takes some cells from a patient or from a trial participant, the legal status of those cells is unclear. We may lose autonomy in some cases.

• Signal requirement for cortical potential of transplantable human neuroepithelial stem cells, Nat. Comm.

  Yes, we can reverse gray hair. No, we don’t know why it works. Just chill, Mashable. Not a big fan of this title. Here’s the original eLife paper: Quantitative mapping of human hair greying and reversal in relation to life stress. Do you think the reversal is convincing?

  MASTL is enriched in cancerous and pluripotent stem cells and influences OCT1/OCT4 levels, iScience.

  Dual function NFI factors control fetal hemoglobin silencing in adult erythroid cells, Nat. Gen.

  Mobilization-based chemotherapy-free engraftment of gene-edited human hematopoietic stem cells, Cell.