All Things Stem Cell

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have enormous potential for being used in tissue transplants and therapies. Why is this? It’s because iPSCs can be made using virtually any cells from a person’s body — such as skin or fat samples that wouldn’t be missed. (And since they’re the patient’s own cells, the immune system should not reject them in a transplant.) iPSCs are also pluripotent, which means they can be turned into nearly any cell type. This means that if a patient needs a certain type of retinal cell to treat an eye disease, a skin sample could be taken, turned into the desired retinal cells, and then transplanted into the patient’s eye. And this is exactly what happened for the first time last week.

Even though human iPSCs were first created in late 2007, it wasn’t until last week that they were used in a tissue transplant in a human for the first time. The person was a Japanese woman in her 70s, and the iPSC-derived cells were used to treat her age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of blindness in the elderly. Safety studies in mice and monkeys had been previously done to ensure the iPSCs would not cause tumors or be rejected by the immune system.
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admin Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells © 2012. Teisha Rowland. All rights reserved.

This Wednesday, October 2, 2013, is Stem Cell Awareness Day. It’s a day to celebrate stem cells, have discussions of what stem cell research is, and learn about potential benefits and disease treatments using stem cells. If you want to be involved locally in an event for Stem Cell Awareness Day, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has a useful webpage summarizing events that are being organized in California, as well as international events that are taking place for this special day.

I am celebrating Stem Cell Awareness Day here at All Things Stem Cell by focusing on K-12 educational efforts. It is particularly important to spread awareness of stem cells and understanding of stem cell research to K-12 students to ensure that this extremely promising avenue of research continues to be supported and funded. While it is challenging to create accessible stem cell resources for K-12, there are actually several freely available online, which are explored below.

Science Buddies, which is a non-profit leader in K-12 science and engineering education (and is the company I enjoy working for as a scientist/writer), offers multiple science fair project ideas related to stem cells (some of which I authored) for the burgeoning stem cell scientist. Here are a few:

• How Much Worm is a Worm? is a hands-on science project idea aimed at Kindergartners and 1^st graders. Kids get to investigate the classic question of how a worm can regenerate after it’s been cut up. It’s a great introduction to the field of regenerative medicine, which stem cells play a vital role in.
• Attack of the Killer Cabbage Clones is a hands-on science project idea aimed at 1^st and 2^nd graders. While it can be difficult to study regeneration in animal models, this project is a great way to alternatively use readily-available plants (cabbages!) to explore some of the same basic concepts, primarily cloning of tissues.
• Animal Magnetism: Do Magnets Affect Regeneration in Planaria? is a hands-on science project aimed at 9^th and 10^th graders. Students get to use a classic model organism of regeneration, the flatworm planaria, to explore regeneration with a twist, as they try to answer the question of how magnetism affects the rate of regeneration.
• Creating a Kidney: How Stem Cells Might be Used to Bioengineer a Vital Organ is a bioinformatics (or database)-driven science project aimed at 12^th graders and college students. This science project introduces students to the field of bioinformatics, and shows them how real scientists use databases to answer real questions about stem cells, specifically how a microenvironment could be developed to promote directed differentiation of stem cells into specific, desired types of kidney cells.
• Taking Short Cuts: How Direct Reprogramming Can Transform One Type of Cell Straight into Another is a another bioinformatics-based science project aimed at 12^th graders and college students. In this project students can explore the cutting-edge technique of direct reprogramming as they try to figure out how they could use specific transcription factors to make one type of cell differentiate directly into a different, target cell type.

CIRM offers an entire stem cell curriculum at their Stem Cell Education Portal. Five units are available on their website. These units are primarily for high school students taking AP-related courses and early college students. Other resources are also available through the Portal.

Lastly, I recently published two biology books, and one of them, Biology Bytes: Digestible Essays on Stem Cells and Modern Medicine, serves as a broad introduction to the stem cell field, as well as other areas of modern medicine. The reader should have a general biology background, so it is most suitable for a college biology student, although a student taking related AP courses in high school would also likely find it of interest.

There’s a wide variety of other stem cell resources online that are helpful for exploring and explaining stem cell concepts to a K-12 audience, including this blog’s Visual Stem Cell Glossary. Although some stem cell concepts are truly complex and may be beyond the scope of a K-12 audience, it is never too soon to plant the seed of interest in, inquiry about, and positive support for stem cell research.

admin Bioengineering, Book, Reprogramming CIRM, education, K-12, regenerative medicine, Science Buddies, stem cells, students © 2012. Teisha Rowland. All rights reserved.

Dr. Teisha J. Rowland, the author of “All Things Stem Cell,” recently published a book inspired by this blog. In the book Biology Bytes: Digestible Essays on Stem Cells and Modern Medicine, author Dr. Rowland discusses the history and latest scientific advancements in these fields of science, and many more. With a specific focus on issues that we increasingly encounter in the modern world around us, Dr. Rowland explores cutting-edge science through essays that can be easily digested: complex scientific concepts are broken down into key points based on the latest discoveries, technical jargon is clearly explained, and the impacts of these discoveries on our lives is explored. This book includes comprehensible explorations of a wide range of topics, including different types of stem cells and treatments they may be used in (with updated essays from “All Things Stem Cell”), the development and impact of in vitro fertilization (a technique responsible for over 1% of U.S. births today), how and why GMOs are made, the creation of vaccines to fight cancer, and fascinating food science behind delectable drinks such as beer, wine, and tea. For $4.99, you can own the book!

Additionally, Dr. Rowland recently started a general biology blog titled “Biology Bytes” (at www.biology-bytes.com). The blog has short articles posted twice a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays) on a variety of biology topics, so far ranging from melanoma in fish, toads that hatch eggs inside their skin, and the decline of the honey bees, to less technical coverage of stem cell topics. The most recent article, “Lab-Grown Meat: Triumphs and Challenges,” is on the muscle stem cells used to create the recently taste-tested stem cell “meat” patty — it is a less technical (and shorter) version of the “All Things Stem Cell” post “Cooking with Stem Cells.” Tune in to “Biology Bytes” for bi-weekly short stories on a wide array of fascinating biology topics, including more accessible explanations of stem cell biology.

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On August 5, 2013, a “lab-grown,” 5-ounce burger patty was taste tested in London, U.K. The patty had been grown from muscle stem cells that were isolated from cows. While this piece of “meat,” which was said to have tasted “close to meat,” represents significant progress in the field of making lab-grown food, the current approach needs to be improved before widespread use is feasible; the patty cost over $330,000 to make (not to mention probably significant culturing time in the lab to generate the 20,000 muscle strands used to make the patty). Luckily, there are many avenues that can be explored to optimize this technology. To understand them, it’s important to first understand the muscle stem cells themselves and how they’re cultured.

Origins of Muscle Stem Cells:
During development, the embryo has three different tissue types that, together with the germ cells, will make up the animal’s entire body. These are called the three germ layers. One of these tissue types, specifically the mesoderm, develops into skeletal muscle cells (along with other cell types, including cardiac muscle, kidney cells, red blood cells, and smooth muscle). Some stem cells that have been isolated from muscle appear to be mesenchymal stem cells. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) got their name because they’re thought to primarily contain progenitors in the mesenchyme, which is a collection of cells mostly derived from mesoderm. (The majority of these cells later make up supportive structures throughout the body, such as bone, cartilage, connective tissue, muscle, adipose tissue, and the lymphatic and hematopoietic systems.) MSCs are typically multipotent, which means they can differentiate, or turn into, multiple different cell types. Specifically, MSCs are usually confirmed to be MSCs by showing that they can differentiate into three different, standard mesenchymal cell types: osteocytes (bone), chondrocytes (cartilage), and adipocytes (fat).

In muscle, there are two main groups of stem cells: satellite cells and muscle-derived stem cells (MDSCs) (Jankowski et al., 2002). Satellite cells were discovered decades ago (Mauro, 1961) and are commonly simply (and perhaps confusingly) referred to as muscle stem cells. It’s thought that these cells can regenerate damaged skeletal muscle and self-renew, but their ability to differentiate is rather limited; they can only make other types of muscle cells. (They’re basically unipotent.) MDSCs, on the other hand, are thought to be a type of multipotent mesenchymal stem cell and possibly a precursor of the satellite cells. But not only can the MDSCs differentiate into mesenchymal cell types, they have been found capable of becoming non-mesenchymal cell types as well. However, when picking the right stem cells to use for making lab-grown meat, the ability to differentiate into many different cell types is, for once, not an appealing trait.
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admin Mesenchymal Stem Cells clinical trials, developmental, lab-grown meat, muscle stem cells, news, vegetarians, xeno-free © 2012. Teisha Rowland. All rights reserved.

International Stem Cell Awareness Day is October 3, 2012, so on this day please help spread the word about the importance of stem cell research! Stem cell researchers across the world are investigating how stem cells can be used to improve our lives, from repairing and regenerating damaged or lost tissues, to developing cures for numerous devastating diseases and conditions, such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, macular degeneration, Parkinson’s, and paralyzing spinal cord injuries, and various other useful applications in between: They’re being used to help us learn more about the entire developmental process (giving us a better understanding of how to fix problems that can arise during development), the efficacies of different drugs are studied and characterized using stem cells, and their unique biological roles make them ideal for use in better understanding aging.

So please be sure to get out the word on stem cells this October 3! For more information on International Stem Cell Awareness Day (and free wallpapers and downloadable stem cell images!), visit StemCellsOfferHope.com, which is affiliated with the Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center at the University of California, Irvine. Read on for a summary of stem cell history and recent research breakthroughs and highlights.

With all of the breaking news stories that come out on cutting-edge stem cell findings all the time, it can be easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. Yes, the stem cell family, which includes all of the varieties of stem cells that have been discovered so far, is very large, and growing larger with new children, cousins, uncles, and aunts being discovered or created all the time. But a key feature they all share is their potential to improve our lives.

Our understanding of these cells and their incredible potential for treating diseases, fight cancers, heal wounds, and, in essence, saving lives, has grown hugely since we first unknowingly used them in World War II. However, the more we learn about them the more we realize we have yet to understand. This blog has strived to explore the different stem cell types in detail, including their biology, history, potential, clinical applications, and numerous remaining questions. However, the ways in which the different types of stem cells came to be accepted into the stem cell family is itself an interesting story, and one that can help paint a useful bigger picture, and that is why this story will be the focus for this blog post to celebrate International Stem Cell Awareness Day.

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admin Review bigger picture, Biology Bytes, cancer, clinical trials, developmental, embryonic, gene therapy, hematopoietic, history, mesenchymal, news, regenerative medicine, review © 2012. Teisha Rowland. All rights reserved.