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.

Today we bring you a trifecta of stem cell stories that were partially funded by grants from CIRM.

A womb with a view: using 3D imaging to observe embryo implantation. Scientists have a good understanding of how the beginning stages of pregnancy happen. An egg cell from a woman is fertilized by a sperm cell from a man and the result is a single cell called a zygote. Over the next week, the zygote divides into multiple cells that form the developing embryo. At the end of that period, the embryo hatches out of its protective membrane and begins implanting itself into the lining of the mother’s uterus.

It’s possible to visualize the early stages of embryo development in culture dishes, which has helped scientists understand the biological steps required for an embryo to survive and develop into a healthy fetus. However, something that is not easy to observe is the implantation stage of the embryo in the uterus. This process is complex and involves a restructuring of the uterine wall to accommodate the developing embryo. As you can imagine, replicating these events would be extremely complicated and difficult to do in a culture dish, and current imaging techniques aren’t adequate either.

That’s where new CIRM-funded research from a team at UCSF comes to the rescue. They developed a 3D imaging technology and combined it with a previously developed “tissue clearing” method, which uses chemicals to turn tissues translucent, to provide clear images of the uterine wall during embryo implantation in mice. Their work was published this week in the journal Development.

According to a UCSF news release,

“Using their new approach, the team observed that the uterine lining becomes extensively folded as it approaches its window of receptivity for an embryo to implant. The geometry of the folds in which the incoming embryos dwell is important, the team found, as genetic mutants with defects in implantation have improper patterns of folding.”

Ultimately, the team aims to use their new imaging technology to get an inside scoop on how to prevent or treat pregnancy disorders and also how to improve the outcome of pregnancies by in vitro fertilization.

Senior author on the study, UCSF professor Diana Laird concluded:

“This new view of early pregnancy lets us ask fundamentally new questions about how the embryo finds its home within the uterus and what factors are needed for it to implant successfully. Once we can understand how these processes happen normally, we can also ask why certain genetic mutations cause pregnancies to fail, to study the potential dangers of environmental toxins such as the chemicals in common household products, and even why metabolic disease and obesity appears to compromise implantation.”

If you want to see this womb with a view, check out the video below.

Watch these two videos for more information:

Salk scientists reverse signs of aging in mice. For our next scintillating stem cell story, we’re turning back the clock – the aging clock that is. Scientists from the Salk Institute in La Jolla, reported an interesting method in the journal Cell  that reverses some signs of aging in mice. They found that periodic expression of embryonic stem cell genes in skin cells and mice could reverse some signs of aging.

The Salk team made use of cellular reprogramming tools developed by the Nobel Prize winning scientist Shinya Yamanaka. He found that four genes normally expressed in embryonic stem cells could revert adult cells back to a pluripotent stem cell state – a process called cellular reprogramming. Instead of turning adult cells back into stem cells, the Salk scientists asked whether the Yamanaka factors could instead turn back the clock on older, aging cells – making them healthier without turning them back into stem cells or cancer-forming cells.

The team found that they could rejuvenate skin cells from mice without turning them back into stem cells if they turned on the Yamanaka genes on for a short period of time. These skin cells were taken from mice that had progeria – a disease that causes them to age rapidly. Not only did their skin cells look and act younger after the treatment, but when the scientists used a similar technique to turn on the Yamanaka genes in progeria mice, they saw rejuvenating effects in the mice including a more rapid healing and regeneration of muscle and pancreas tissue.

The senior author on the study, Salk Professor Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, acknowledged in a Salk news release that this is early stage work that focuses on animal models, not humans:

“Obviously, mice are not humans and we know it will be much more complex to rejuvenate a person. But this study shows that aging is a very dynamic and plastic process, and therefore will be more amenable to therapeutic interventions than what we previously thought.”

This story was very popular, which is not surprising as aging research is particularly fascinating to people who want to live longer lives. It was covered by many news outlets including STATnews, Scientific American and Science Magazine. I also recommend reading Paul Knoepfler’s journal club-style blog on the study for an objective take on the findings and implications of the study. Lastly, you can learn more about the science of this work by watching the movie below by the Salk.

Movie:

Stabilizing unstable stem cells. Our final stem cell story is brought to you by scientists from the UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center. They found that embryonic stem cells can harbor genetic instabilities that can be passed on to their offspring and cause complications, or even disease, later in life. Their work was published in two separate studies in Cell Stem Cell and Cell Reports.

The science behind the genetic instabilities is too complicated to explain in this blog, so I’ll refer you to the UCLA news release for more details. In brief, the UCLA team found a way to reverse the genetic instability in the stem cells such that the mature cells that they developed into turned out healthy.

As for the future impact of this research, “The research team, led by Kathrin Plath, found a way to correct the instability by resetting the stem cells from a later stage of development to an earlier stage of development. This fundamental discovery could have great impact on the creation of healthy tissues to cure disease.”