For severe burn victims and others in need of skin transplants, current treatments using artificial skin grafts made from sheets of lab-grown skin cells aren’t ideal because they lack the complex structures needed to fully restore many of the skin’s critical functions. For example, artificial skin doesn’t contain oil-producing sebaceous glands and forces burn victims … Continue reading Stem cells provide promising skin in the game for treating burn victims
Cell Type
Stem cell stories that caught our eye: Two ways to build better scaffolds, sepsis and the business side of therapies
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. Customized homes for stem cells. Some of the most exciting team work in stem cell science today involves pulling in chemists and engineers to design … Continue reading Stem cell stories that caught our eye: Two ways to build better scaffolds, sepsis and the business side of therapies
UCSF Scientists find molecular link between brain stem cells and Zika Infection
The Zika virus scare came to a head in 2015, prompting the World Health Organization to declare the outbreak a global health emergency earlier this year. From a research standpoint, much of the effort has centered on understanding whether the Zika infection is actually a cause of birth defects like microcephaly and how the virus … Continue reading UCSF Scientists find molecular link between brain stem cells and Zika Infection
Getting On Tract: Stem Cells Regenerate Injured Spinal Cord in Rats
The spinal cord acts as a highway that transports electrical signals from your brain to the rest of your body through long bundles of nerve fibers. It allows your brain to communicate with the rest of your body to coordinate movement and reflexes and to receive sensory information. When the spinal cord is damaged, the … Continue reading Getting On Tract: Stem Cells Regenerate Injured Spinal Cord in Rats
Stem cell stories that caught our eye: the future of iPS cells, a biopen for arthritis, shistosomiasis and early embryos
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. Discoverer predicts bright clinical future for iPSCs. Shinya Yamanaka, who won the Nobel Prize in 2012 for figuring out how to reprogram adult cells into … Continue reading Stem cell stories that caught our eye: the future of iPS cells, a biopen for arthritis, shistosomiasis and early embryos
In the Race to Cure Blindness, Who Will Cross the Finish Line First Optogenetics or Stem Cells?
Before you read this blog, I wanted to share a photo that I took (yes with my iPhone 6…) last week of a beautiful sunset at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. I’m showing you this picture not to gloat that I live by the ocean, but to make a point. You’re able to enjoy this … Continue reading In the Race to Cure Blindness, Who Will Cross the Finish Line First Optogenetics or Stem Cells?
Five Cool Stem Cell Technologies to Tell Your Friends
As a former stem cell scientist turned science communicator, I love answering science questions no matter how complicated or bizarre. The other day my friend asked me about what CRISPR was and how scientists were using it on stem cells to help people. This got me thinking that it would be cool to do a … Continue reading Five Cool Stem Cell Technologies to Tell Your Friends
Taking Steps Toward Personalized Heart Transplants
Over five million Americans have heart failure (HF), a condition in which the heart muscles become too weak to pump an adequate amount of blood, oxygen and nutrients to the body’s other organs. People with heart failure suffer from shortness of breath, chronic weakness and a fifty percent chance of dying within the first five … Continue reading Taking Steps Toward Personalized Heart Transplants
Ways to genetically alter stem cells just keep getting better
For science wonks the gene editing technique CRISPR appears in your email, Twitter feed, or journal reading daily, if not hourly. The incredibly easy and inexpensive way to edit the genes in cells has exploded in the past couple years and is increasingly being used to edit stem cells in the lab to study specific … Continue reading Ways to genetically alter stem cells just keep getting better
New stem cell could offer new ways to study birth defects
You never know what you are going to find in the trash. For a group of intrepid researchers at Michigan State University their discovery could lead to new ways of studying birth defects and other reproductive problems. Because what they found in what’s normally considered cellular trash was a new kind of stem cell. The … Continue reading New stem cell could offer new ways to study birth defects
The Stem Cellar 