Woodruff Health Sciences Center | Sep. 4, 2013 Pure cardiac muscle cells, ready to transplant into a patient affected by heart disease. That’s a goal for many cardiology researchers working with stem cells. Having a pure population of cardiac muscle cells is essential for avoiding tumor formation after transplantation, but has been technically challenging. Researchers […]
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While bone marrow (BM)-derived cells have been comprehensively studied for their propitious pre-clinical results, clinical trials have shown controversial outcomes. Unlike previously acknowledged, more recent studies have now confirmed that humoral and paracrine effects are the key mechanisms for tissue regeneration and functional recovery, instead of transdifferentiation of BM-derived cells into cardiovascular tissues. The progression of the understanding of BM-derived cells has further led to exploring efficient methods to isolate and obtain, without mobilization, sufficient number of cell populations that would eventually have a higher therapeutic potential.
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Mammalian somatic cells can be directly reprogrammed into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) by introducing defined sets of transcription factors. Somatic cell reprogramming involves epigenomic reconfiguration, conferring iPSCs with characteristics similar to embryonic stem cells (ESCs). Human ESCs (hESCs) contain 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC), which is generated through the oxidation of 5-methylcytosine by the TET enzyme family. Here we show that 5hmC levels increase significantly during reprogramming to human iPSCs mainly owing to TET1 activation, and this hydroxymethylation change is critical for optimal epigenetic reprogramming, but does not compromise primed pluripotency.
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Diabetic neuropathy (DN) is the most common and disabling complication of diabetes that may lead to foot ulcers and limb amputations. Despite widespread awareness of DN, the only effective treatments are glucose control and pain management. A growing body of evidence suggests that DN is characterized by reduction of vascularity in peripheral nerves and deficiency in neurotrophic and angiogenic factors. Previous studies have tried to introduce neurotrophic or angiogenic factors in the form of protein or gene for therapy, but the effect was not significant. Recent studies have shown that bone marrow (BM)-derived stem or progenitor cells have favorable effects on the repair of cardiovascular diseases.
Read MoreOxidative stress-induced Notch1 signaling promotes cardiogenic gene expression in mesenchymal stem cells.
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Another Yoon lab undergraduate volunteer, Min Young Sin, received Scholarly Inquiry and Research at Emory (SIRE) grant program for summer 2013. Min Young is currently a senior at Emory University and has been working at Yoon lab since her first year of college while planning to enter medical school. In addition, Min Young’s research proposal, […]
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The 7th annual Celebration of Technology and Innovation in March honored the following awardees: Innovation of 2012: Chemically-induced pluripotent stem cells (Young-sup Yoon, cardiology) Start-up of 2012: Clearside Biomedical (Henry Edelhauser, ophthalmology). Last month, Clearside received $7.9 million in venture capital. Read more. Deal of 2012: Neurotrak’s licensing of its web-based diagnostic for Alzheimer’s (Stuart […]
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Since the successful generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) from adult somatic cells using integrating-viral methods, various methods have been tried for iPSC generation using non-viral and non-integrating technique for clinical applications. Recently, various non-viral approaches such as protein, mRNA, microRNA, and small molecule transduction were developed to avoid genomic integration and generate stem cell-like cells from mouse and human fibroblasts. Despite these successes, there has been no successful generation of iPSC from bone marrow (BM)-derived hematopoietic cells derived using
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Endothelial progenitor cell (EPC)-capturing techniques have led to revolutionary strategies that can improve the performance of cardiovascular implant devices and engineered tissues by enhancing re-endothelialization and angiogenesis. However, these strategies are limited by controversies regarding the phenotypic identities of EPCs as well as their inability to target and prevent the other afflictions associated with current therapies, namely, thrombosis and neointimal hyperplasia. Therefore, the goal of this study was to study the efficacy of a bioinspired multifunctional nanomatrix in recruiting and promoting the
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