Search results for "pluripotent"
showing 10 items of 96 documents
Multiple Pluripotent Stem Cell Markers in Human Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer: The Putative Upstream Role of SOX2
2013
Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (ATC) is a rare and aggressive endocrine tumor with highly undifferentiated morphology. It has been suggested that cancer stem cells (CSCs) might play a central role in ATC. The objectives of this study were (i) to characterize CSCs from ex vivo ATC specimens by investigating the expression of several pluripotent stem cell markers, and (ii) to evaluate in vitro drug resistance modifications after specific CSC transcription factor switch-off.In ex vivo experiments, eight formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded ATC specimens were analyzed by reverse-transcription and real-time quantitative PCR and immunohistochemistry. In in vitro experiments using ATC SW1736 cells, the…
Reprogrammed induced pluripotent stem cells: how suitable could they be in reproductive medicine?
2008
Human embryonic stem cells have the greatest potential for regenerative and reproductive medicine; unfortunately, their full application is limited by ethical and technical problems. In order to overcome these problems and get patient specific pluripotent cells from somatic cells, the field of reprogramming has moved to the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells by overexpression of four transcription factors after viral infection of the patient's somatic cells. In the present paper we review the limitations and milestones of this technique in both regenerative and reproductive medicine.
Uptake of polymeric nanoparticles in a human induced pluripotent stem cell-based blood-brain barrier model: Impact of size, material, and protein cor…
2021
The blood–brain barrier (BBB) maintains the homeostasis of the central nervous system, which is one of the reasons for the treatments of brain disorders being challenging in nature. Nanoparticles (NPs) have been seen as potential drug delivery systems to the brain overcoming the tight barrier of endothelial cells. Using a BBB model system based on human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), the impact of polymeric nanoparticles has been studied in relation to nanoparticle size, material, and protein corona. PLGA [poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid)] and PLLA [poly(d,l-lactide)] nanoparticles stabilized with Tween® 80 were synthesized (50 and 100 nm). iPSCs were differentiated into human brain m…
Human germ cell differentiation from fetal- and adult-derived induced pluripotent stem cells
2010
Historically, our understanding of molecular genetic aspects of human germ cell development has been limited, at least in part due to inaccessibility of early stages of human development to experimentation. However, the derivation of pluripotent stem cells may provide the necessary human genetic system to study germ cell development. In this study, we compared the potential of human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), derived from adult and fetal somatic cells to form primordial and meiotic germ cells, relative to human embryonic stem cells. We found that ∼5% of human iPSCs differentiated to primordial germ cells (PGCs) following induction with bone morphogenetic proteins. Furthermore, …
Epigenetic regulation of stemness maintenance in the neurogenic niches
2015
In the adult mouse brain, the subventricular zone lining the lateral ventricles and the subgranular zone in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus are two zones that contain neural stem cells (NSCs) with the capacity to give rise to neurons and glia during the entire life of the animal. Spatial and temporal regulation of gene expression in the NSCs population is established and maintained by the coordinated interaction between transcription factors and epigenetic regulators which control stem cell fate. Epigenetic mechanisms are heritable alterations in genome function that do not involve changes in DNA sequence itself but that modulate gene expression, acting as mediators between the environ…
Primary Cilium Mediated Retinal Pigment Epithelium Maturation is Retarded in Ciliopathy Patient Cells
2018
Primary cilia are sensory organelles that protrude from the cell membrane. Cilia defects cause ciliopathy disorders with retinal degeneration as a prominent phenotype. Here, we demonstrate that the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), essential for photoreceptor development and function, requires a functional primary cilium for complete maturation, and RPE maturation defects in ciliopathies precede photoreceptor development. Pharmacologically enhanced ciliogenesis in wildtype induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs)-RPE leads to fully-mature and functional cells. Whereas, ciliopathy patient-derived iPSCs-RPE and wildtype iPSC-RPE with a knockdown of ciliary-trafficking protein remain immature, w…
Mesenchymal and Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells-Derived Extracellular Vesicles: The New Frontier for Regenerative Medicine?
2020
Regenerative medicine aims to repair damaged, tissues or organs for the treatment of various diseases, which have been poorly managed with conventional drugs and medical procedures. To date, multimodal regenerative methods include transplant of healthy organs, tissues, or cells, body stimulation to activate a self-healing response in damaged tissues, as well as the combined use of cells and bio-degradable scaffold to obtain functional tissues. Certainly, stem cells are promising tools in regenerative medicine due to their ability to induce de novo tissue formation and/or promote organ repair and regeneration. Currently, several studies have shown that the beneficial stem cell effects, espec…
Tissue engineering: how to build a heart
2015
Decellularization and recellularization of hearts from newly dead donors is the latest fashion in cardiac tissue engineering. The first paper came out in 2008 in Nature Medicine (Ott et al., 2008), and news has been recently published in Nature again in July 2013 (Maher, 2013). Brendan Maher in this paper summarizes and comments on the latest important results on decellularization of a human heart and explains the steps that are necessary to build a heart from a decellularized organ. Two sources may be used to obtain a decellularized heart: human and pig heart. Another issue to resolve is the time of decellularization, since the detergents used may also destroy the architecture of the organ…
Improving mRNA-Based Therapeutic Gene Delivery by Expression-Augmenting 3' UTRs Identified by Cellular Library Screening.
2019
Synthetic mRNA has emerged as a powerful tool for the transfer of genetic information, and it is being explored for a variety of therapeutic applications. Many of these applications require prolonged intracellular persistence of mRNA to improve bioavailability of the encoded protein. mRNA molecules are intrinsically unstable and their intracellular kinetics depend on the UTRs embracing the coding sequence, in particular the 3′ UTR elements. We describe here a novel and generally applicable cell-based selection process for the identification of 3′ UTRs that augment the expression of proteins encoded by synthetic mRNA. Moreover, we show, for two applications of mRNA therapeutics, namely, (1) …
Hype and Hopes of Stem Cell Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases
2017
Hope from the regeneration promoting effects of stem cells have provided new insights for understanding diseases that were previously thought to have a limited prognostic improvement upon medical intervention. This is especially indicated in neurodegenerative diseases, which until the discovery and research in stem cells were thought to have minimal regenerative capabilities. This review covers various treatment modalities involving different types of stem cells, such as human embryonic stem cells, induced pluripotent stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells and neural stem cells, which have been tested for various neurodegenerative disorders such as Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, Parki…