Latest Stem Cell Research from the World Stem Cell Summit 2012

Here are the abstracts from the World Stem Cell Summit 2012

3 A safe and efficient method to produce neuronal cells from human bone marrow derived adult mesenchymal stem cells by modulators of chromatin modifying enzymes and SMAD signaling proteins

They increasd the efficiency of turning bone marrow stem cells into neurons by
adding to a previous neural induction recipe two specific inhibitors of SMAD signaling pathway.

5. Adipose Derived Mesenchymal Stem cells and their efficacy in Skin Injury

20 patients were injected with SVF (synovial vascular fractions) and/ or AD-MSC (adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cell) for the following indications: 4 patients for scar reduction, 6 for wound healings, 8 for stretch mark and 2 for hair growth. After 40 days of follow up, all the patients were satisfied with the results and consented to be followed for 12 months. 10 patients out of 12 had their stretch marks and scars significantly improved in size, color, and texture. The average recovery volume of wounds and scars was 75% at 12 weeks. The patients with skin scleroderma had hair growth on their eyebrows as early as 3 weeks. No immediate or delayed adverse effects were seen in any of the patients.

Conclusions: The use of AD-MSCs can be a safe and effective treatment for soft tissue injury and hold a promising future in regenerative medicine.

9. Application of insulin producing cells differentiated from PDX1-transduced human adipose tissue derived stem cells for diabetes treatment in rats

The researchers achieved some improvement in treating diabetes in rats using stem cells. Diabetes mellitus (DM), which causes about 5% of all deaths globally each year, afflicts 246 million people worldwide presently and will affect 380 million by 2025.

21. Economical method for the production of cGMP grade Mesenchymal Stem Cells from Umbilical Cord Tissue, Bone Marrow and Cord Blood

We confirm the use of peripheral blood and cord blood derived serum for the production of cGMP grade cells in economically favorable way.

26. Endometrial stem cell differentiation into muscular bladder cell: New possibilities to create muscle tissue for bladder augmentation in women

About 400 million people worldwide are suffering from urinary bladder diseases, such as bladder cancer, neurogenic bladder, exstrophy and interstitial cystitis. The ideal application for tissue regeneration is to construct a functional urinary bladder for congenital or acquired bladder defects. In many diseases such as carcinomas the autologous biopsies cannot be used to construct a tissue engineered bladder. Recently discovery of endometrial stem cells (EnSCs) from the lining of women’s wombs, opens up the possibility of using these cells for tissue engineering applications such as building up natural tissue to repair prolapsed pelvic floors as well as building bladder wall. The latter require large amount of smooth muscle cells (SMCs) to seed the 3D scaffold in fully development of bladder.

Human EnSCs were successfully differentiated into bladder SMCs, using hydrogels as scaffold. The EnSCs may be used for autologous bladder wall regeneration without any immunologic complications in women. Currently work in progress using bioabsorbable nanocomposite materials as scaffold with EnSCs in development of bladder wall.

31. Generating Human Retinal Ganglion Cells From Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

32. Generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) opens a new avenue in regenerative medicine. One of the major hurdles for therapeutic applications is to improve the efficiency of generating iPSCs and also to avoid the tumorigenicity, which requires searching for new reprogramming recipes

We present here a computational method that can facilitate discovery of effective recipes to generate iPSCs with high efficiency and better quality. In addition, our approach provides a new way to estimate the landscape in the cell-state space and monitor the trajectory of cellular reprogramming from a differentiated cell to an iPS cell.

38. Human Stem Cell Recombineering

We are building a nanotool set to catalyze human homologous recombination using host-specific viral SynExo recombinases in human cells. To test the hypothesis, we built a sensitive and quantitative assay for human gene targeting using oligonucleotides to change YFP-expressing cells to GFP-expressing cells. Human cells expressing YFP were transiently transfected with a plasmid expressing a human viral SynExo recombinase subunit and with a DNA oligonucleotide recombination substrate. Recombination was quantified by flow cytometry

49. Isolation of MIAMI cells from cadaveric hands five days post-mortem

D’Ippolito’s team kept the finger bones of two cadavers for five days. The group then extracted mesenchymal stromal cells from the bone marrow of each bone and let them grow in a dish. After five weeks D’Ippolito was able to transform the stem cells into cartilage, cells that form bone, and fat cells

We hypothesize that marrow-isolated adult multilineage isolated (MIAMI) cells, a subpopulation of human mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs), are localized in the endosteal bone niche and can survive in this location for long period of time in post mortem donors.

Phalanges and metacarpals were removed surgically respectively from a 12-years-old female, and from 53-years-old male donors, twelve-hour post-mortem. Phalanges and metacarpals were left at 4°C for five days in the presence of RPMI medium. At the fifth day, soft tissue was removed from the fingers/metacarpals and with an electric saw machine bone was cut into small pieces, approximately 1.5 cm. Bones were placed into dishes in the presence of medium, and cells growing out from the bones were analyzed by flow cytometry as well as for bone differentiation potential.

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