Here are some stem cell stories that caught our eye this past week. Some are groundbreaking science, others are of personal interest to us, and still others are just fun.

The zebrafish (Danio rerio) owes its name to a repeating pattern of blue stripes alternating with golden stripes. [Credit: MPI f. Developmental Biology/ P. Malhawar]

How the Zebrafish Got its Stripes. Scientists in Germany have identified the different pigment cells that emerge during embryonic development and that determine the signature-striped pattern on the skins of zebrafish—one of science’s most commonly studied model organisms. These results, published this week in the journal Science, will help researchers understand how patterns, from stripes to spots to everything in between, develop.

In the study, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology mapped how three distinct pigment cells, called black cells, reflective silvery cells, and yellow cells emerge during development and arrange themselves into the characteristic stripes. While researchers knew these three cell types were involved in stripe formation, what they discovered here was that these cells form when the zebrafish is a mere embryo.

“We were surprised to observe such cell behaviors, as these were totally unexpected from what we knew about color pattern formation”, says Prateek Mahalwar, first author of the study, in a news release.

What most surprised the research team, according to the news release, was that the three cell types each travel across the embryo to form the skin from a different direction. According to Dr. Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, the study’s senior author:

“These findings inform our way of thinking about color pattern formation in other fish, but also in animals which are not accessible to direct observation during development such as peacocks, tigers and zebras.”

Sound Waves Dispense Individual Stem Cells. It happens all the time in the lab: scientists need to isolate and study a single stem cell. The trick is, how best to do it. Many methods have been developed to achieve this goal, but now scientists at the Regenerative Medicine Institute (REMEDI) at NUI Galway and Irish start-up Poly-Pico Technologies Ltd. have pioneered the idea of using sound waves to isolate living stem cells, in this case from bone marrow, with what they call the Poly-Pico micro-drop dispensing device.

Poly-Pico Technologies Ltd., a start-up that was spun out from the University of Limerick in Ireland, has developed a device that uses sound energy to accurately dispense protein, antibodies and DNA at very low volumes. In this study, REMEDI scientists harnessed this same technology to dispense stem cells.

These results, while preliminary, could help improve our understanding of stem cell biology, as well as a number of additional applications. As Poly-Pico CEO Alan Crean commented in a news release:

“We are delighted to see this new technology opportunity emerge at the interface between biology and engineering. There are other exciting applications of Poly-Pico’s unique technology in, for example, drug screening and DNA amplification. Our objective here is to make our technology available to companies, and researchers, and add value to what they are doing. This is one example of such a success.”

The Dangers of Stem Cell Toursim. Finally, a story from ABC News Australia, in which they recount a woman’s terrifying encounter with an unproven stem cell technique.

In this story, Annie Levington, who has suffered from multiple scleoris (MS) since 2007, tells of her journey from Melbourne to Germany. She describes a frightening experience in which she paid $15,000 to have a stem cell transplant. But when she returned home to Australia, she saw no improvement in her MS—a neuroinflammatory disease that causes nerve cells to whither.

“They said I would feel the effects within the next three weeks to a year. And nothing – I had noticed nothing whatsoever. [My neurologist] sent me to a hematologist who checked my bloods and concluded there was no evidence whatsoever that I received a stem cell transplant.”

Sadly, Levington’s story is not unusual, though it is not as dreadful as other instances, in which patients have traveled thousands of miles to have treatments that not only don’t cure they condition—they actually cause deadly harm.

The reason that these unproven techniques are even being administered is based on a medical loophole that allows doctors to treat patients, both in Australia and overseas, with their own stem cells—even if that treatment is unsafe or unproven.

And while there have been some extreme cases of death or severe injury because of these treatments, experts warn that the most likely outcome of these untested treatments is similar to Levington’s—your health won’t improve, but your bank account will have dwindled.

Want to learn more about the dangers of stem cell tourism? Check out our Stem Cell Tourism Fact Sheet.