There remains a need for models that recapitulate complex human tissues and biological processes, and are suitable for screening potentially hazardous compounds. Animal models are of limited value for...
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Microglia act as the first and main form of active immune defense in the central nervous system. They are the primary source of brain cytokines and have been implicated in chronic neuroinflammation (e...
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Endothelial cells (ECs) are vital to blood vessel formation. Generating ECs from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) has powerful potential for cardiovascular health and drug development. However, st...
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Generating cardiovascular cells from pluripotent stem cells holds profound promise for research and therapy, and the past 10 years have witnessed rapid methodological advances for creating de novo hum...
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New therapies are urgently needed to protect patients exposed to high doses of radiation due to accidental trauma, terrorist attack or for medical purposes. Existing drugs (such as potassium iodide an...
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A stem cell’s microenvironment plays a key role in regulating its behavior (e.g., adhesion, migration, proliferation and differentiation). A variety of templates have been used to study stem cell be...
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Reprogramming blood cells to induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) provides a novel tool for studying hematopoietic development in vitro.
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Reprogramming blood cells to induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) provides a novel tool for studying blood development in vitro.
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Converting one type of cell to another with no intermediate pluripotent stage is called lineage reprogramming. The method has been used to ‘reprogram’ mouse fibroblasts to cardiomyocytes (heart mu...
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To leverage the phenomenal potential of pluripotent cells, either embryonic or induced, it is critical to develop standardized culture conditions free of animal products or serum, which tend to vary f...
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The substrate on which cells are cultured is key to successful growth and tissue generation. For example, it has been shown that attachment to a substrate by human embryonic stem cells influences whet...
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While extensive research has been devoted to understanding the influence of medium conditions on cell development, researchers have only recently begun to understand the role of culture surface proper...
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For researchers, cloning human embryonic stem (ES) cells is challenging because it requires growing new colonies from a single cell. One difficulty is very low cloning efficiency – less than 0.1 pe...
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While extensive research has been devoted to understanding the influence of medium conditions on cell development, researchers have only recently begun to understand the role of culture surface proper...
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Oligodendrocytes are a type of brain cell in the central nervous system that produces myelin, a fatty substance that wraps around and insulates neurons. These myelin ‘sheaths’ help conduct nerve i...
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Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) are a useful tool for unveiling the cellular and molecular mysteries of human development. Directed differentiation of hESCs could revolutionize pharmaceutical scree...
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Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs), either embryonic or induced, provide access to the earliest stages of human development. They also offer a starting point for deriving large numbers of vasculogen...
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Endothelial cells derived from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) hold incredible potential for human health, for example, in the engineering of new blood vessels, heart regeneration and screening f...
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Embryonic stem cells form aggregates, called embryoid bodies (EBs), before differentiating into distinct types of cells. Clumps of stem cells can vary widely in size, shape and volume, resulting in no...
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With the advent of human pluripotent stem cell technologies, endothelial and blood lineage (hematopoietic) cells can be produced in vitro for functional studies and therapies. Efficient differentiatio...
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Transfection is the process of introducing nucleic acids into cells. Two main strategies are viral (utilizing viruses as vectors) and non-viral. Non-viral methods are less efficient but attractive for...
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How and why precursor cells differentiate into tissue-specific cell types involves a complex interplay of signals and remains a rich topic of investigation. Outside of the body, for example, certain s...
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Embryonic stem cells are undifferentiated cells that can differentiate into a number of progenitor cell types. A trophoblast is a differentiated cell that is a precursor of the cells which participate...
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Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are precursors to mesenchymal tissues, such as bone, dental tissue, cartilage, tendon, bone marrow stroma, hematopoietic lineages, and muscle. Bone marrow is a useful sou...
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Development of most tissue types involves a complex interplay of multiple growth factors in well defined locations, leading to controlled differentiation of precursor cells into mature, tissue-specifi...
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