Nanoparticle "Backpacks" Restore Damaged Stem Cells
Within a newborn’s umbilical cord lie potentially life-saving stem cells that can be used to fight diseases like lymphoma and leukemia. That is why many new parents elect to store (“bank”) their infant’s stem cell-rich umbilical cord blood. But in the 6 to 15 percent of pregnancies affected by gestational diabetes, parents lack this option because the condition damages the stem cells and renders them useless.
Now, in a study forthcoming in Communications Biology, bioengineers at the University of Notre Dame have shown that a new strategy can restore the damaged stem cells and enable them to grow new tissues again.
At the heart of this new approach are specially engineered nanoparticles. At just 150 nanometers in diameter — about a quarter of the size of a red blood cell — each spherical nanoparticle is able to store medicine and deliver it just to the stem cells themselves by attaching directly onto the stem cells’ surface. Due to their special formulation or “tuning,” the particles release the medicine slowly, making it highly effective even at very low doses.
Donny Hanjaya-Putra, an assistant professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering in the bioengineering graduate program at Notre Dame who directs the lab where the study was conducted, described the process using an analogy. “Each stem cell is like a soldier. It is smart and effective; it knows where to go and what to do. But the ‘soldiers’ we are working with are injured and weak. By providing them with this nanoparticle ‘backpack,’ we are giving them what they need to work effectively again.”
The main test for the new “backpack”-equipped stem cells was whether or not they could form new tissues. Hanjaya-Putra and his team tested damaged cells without “backpacks” and observed that they moved slowly and formed imperfect tissues. But when Hanjaya-Putra and his team applied “backpacks,” previously damaged stem cells began forming new blood vessels, both when inserted in synthetic polymers and when implanted under the skin of lab mice, two environments meant to simulate the conditions of the human body.
https://www.technologynetworks.com/tn/news/nanoparticle-backpacks-restore-damaged-stem-cells-363515
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