Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cells Technologies

Researchers have developed a way to grow human platelets in the laboratory from stem cells derived from fat tissue. The achievement, reported today in the journal Blood, suggests manufactured platelets could eventually reduce the reliance on donated platelets to help patients with cancer and other disorders.

Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the stem cell institute HI-STEM in Heidelberg have succeeded for the first time in directly reprogramming human blood cells into a previously unknown type of neural stem cell.

As mammals age, their sense of smell deteriorates. In a study published in the journal Cell Reports, an interdisciplinary research team at Helmholtz Zentrum München and the University Medical Centre Mainz investigated why this is the case

Researchers used time-lapse imaging to show that mouse induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) grown during spaceflight differentiated into cardiomyocytes significantly faster than similar cells grown at Earths gravity. The robust cardiomyocyte formation at microgravity, which lasted for 10 days, is described in an article published in Stem Cells and Development.

A team of Japanese researchers will carry out an unprecedented trial using a kind of stem cell to try to treat debilitating spinal cord injuries, the specialists said on Monday.

The discovery of pluripotent stem cells, which have the ability to differentiate into the huge range of different cell lineages that make up the human body, signaled the start of a new era in biological science and medicine.

A study in mice has shown that it may be possible to detect the early signs of atherosclerosis, which leads to blocked arteries, by looking at how cells in our blood vessels change their function.

Spark Therapeutics (NASDAQ: ONCE), a fully integrated, commercial gene therapy company dedicated to challenging the inevitability of genetic disease, announced today that it has entered into a definitive merger agreement for Rocheto fully acquire Spark Therapeutics at a price of $114.50 per share in an all-cash transaction.

Thrombosis-on-a-chip, vasculature-on-a-chip and engineered models of human cardiac fibrosis are just a few of the new technologies revolutionizing research into human cardiovascular disease—a condition responsible for 17 million deaths per annum globally.

Scientists in Japan now have permission to inject ‘reprogrammed’ stem cells into people with spinal-cord injuries.