Tag: Cell Stem Cell

  • Health

    Breakthrough to halt premature aging of cells

    Potential drug treatments are being developed for telomere diseases, in which cells age prematurely.

    Lab with test tubes.
  • Health

    How Zika infects the growing brain

    Studies have suggested that the Zika virus enters neural progenitor cells by grabbing onto a specific protein called AXL on the cell surface. Now, scientists at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and Novartis have shown that this is not the only route of infection. The scientists demonstrated that Zika infected neural progenitor cells even when…

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    A cross-country collaboration

    Amy Wagers and Emmanuelle Passegué have found that cancer stem cells actively remodel the environment of bone marrow, where blood cells are formed, so that it is hospitable only to diseased cells. This finding could influence the effectiveness of bone marrow transplants.

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    Stem cell lessons

    Five years after first gaining institutional permission to attempt to produce stem cell lines via somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), two Harvard researchers and a former Harvard postdoctoral fellow have closed the loop with a flurry of new studies and a commentary in several leading journals.

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    From skin cells to motor neurons

    Harvard stem cell researchers have succeeded in reprogramming adult mouse skin cells directly into the type of motor neurons damaged in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, best known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and spinal muscular atrophy.

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    Better blood

    An innovative experimental treatment for boosting the effectiveness of blood stem-cell transplants with umbilical cord blood has a favorable safety profile in long-term animal studies, according to Harvard Stem Cell Institute scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Children’s Hospital Boston.

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    Helping the heart help itself

    Stem cells being transfused into post-heart attack patients may not be developing into new heart muscle, but they still appear to be beneficial. Some stem cells in the bone marrow, called c-kit+ cells, appear capable of stimulating adult stem cells already present in the heart to repair damaged tissue.