Removing barriers to healing

Fat has a higher ratio of stem cells than other tissues such as bone marrow.

by Natalie Grover Severe inflammation caused by a patient’s immune system can be deadly, but stem cells found in human fat could provide new ways to protect against this toxic reaction. The work is part of a subset of regenerative medicine that aims to tackle disease and disability by removing the natural barriers that prevent the body from healing itself. … Read more

Want to cure disease? Repurpose the body’s cells

Implanting stem cells from elsewhere in the body can help reverse organ damage.

If one part of the body breaks, can you just replace it with cells from another organ? That’s the hope of stem cell scientists who are reprogramming cells to treat major conditions such as incontinence and heart failure. Millions of Europeans are affected by stress urinary incontinence (SUI) which can have a devastating effect on … Read more

Lab-grown tissues to improve reliability of safety tests for drugs, chemicals

This human liver organoid gives researchers hope that animal-based studies about drug safety will be a method of the past one day.

by Natalie Grover Testing the safety of medicines and chemicals on organ-like structures developed from various types of stem cells could reduce the reliance on animal testing and streamline chemical and drug development, according to scientists in the Netherlands who are in the early stages of developing such technology.  Tissues such as the intestine and … Read more

The story of a new skin

Fibrin cultured epidermal sheet - © CMR Unimore_resized985

Decades of scientific research into areas including plant genetics and data science helped doctors successfully carry out an experimental therapy to create a new skin for a seven-year-old boy suffering from a rare genetic disorder. Hassan’s doctors had never seen anything like it: a seven-year-old who had lost almost all of his skin due to … Read more