Your brain has a natural defense that protects it from infection and harm, it’s called the blood-brain barrier (BBB). The BBB is a selectively permeable layer of tightly packed cells that separates the blood in your circulatory system from your brain. Only certain nutrients, hormones, and molecules can pass through the BBB into the brain, … Continue reading CREATE-ing tools that deliver genes past the blood-brain barrier
Disease Areas
Stem cell stories that caught our eye: watching tumors grow, faster creation of stem cells, reducing spinal cord damage, mini organs
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. Video shows tumors growing. A team at the University of Iowa used video to capture breast cancer cells recruiting normal cells to the dark side … Continue reading Stem cell stories that caught our eye: watching tumors grow, faster creation of stem cells, reducing spinal cord damage, mini organs
From Science Fiction to Science Fact: Gene Editing May Make Personalized Therapies for Blindness
Have you seen the movie Elysium? It’s a 2013 futuristic science fiction film starring one of my favorite actors Matt Damon. The plot centers on the economic, social and political disparities between two very different worlds: one, an overpopulated earth where people are poor, starving, and have little access to technology or medical care, the … Continue reading From Science Fiction to Science Fact: Gene Editing May Make Personalized Therapies for Blindness
New drug kicks the cancer stem cell addiction
Did you know that cancer stem cells have an addiction problem? This might sound bizarre, but the science checks out. Cancer stem cells are found in many different types of cancer tumors. They have the uncanny ability to survive even the most aggressive forms of treatment. After weathering the storm, cancer stem cells are able … Continue reading New drug kicks the cancer stem cell addiction
Protective cell therapy could mean insulin independence for diabetic patients
This has already been a productive year for diabetes research. Earlier this month, scientists from UCSF and the Gladstone Institutes successfully made functional human pancreatic beta cells from skin, providing a new and robust method for generating large quantities of cells to replace those lost in patients suffering from type 1 diabetes. Today marks another … Continue reading Protective cell therapy could mean insulin independence for diabetic patients
Stem cell stories that caught our eye: colon cancer relapse and using age, electricity and a “mattress” to grow better hearts
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. Stem cells yield markers for relapse in colon cancer. Some colon cancer patients do fine after surgery without any chemotherapy, but it has been hard … Continue reading Stem cell stories that caught our eye: colon cancer relapse and using age, electricity and a “mattress” to grow better hearts
Regenerating damaged muscle after a heart attack
Images of clusters of heart muscle cells (in red and green) derived from human embryonic stem cells 40 days after transplantation. Courtesy UCLA Every year more than 735,000 Americans have a heart attack. Many of those who survive often have lasting damage to their heart muscle and are at increased risk for future attacks and … Continue reading Regenerating damaged muscle after a heart attack
New Stem Cell Treatment for ALS May Slow Disease Progression
Exciting news was published this week that will give patients suffering from ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, something to cheer about. The journal JAMA Neurology reported that a new stem cell treatment was successful in slowing disease progression in a small group of ALS patients in a Phase 2 clinical trial. This is … Continue reading New Stem Cell Treatment for ALS May Slow Disease Progression
Timing Matters: Slowly Dividing Stem Cells Lead to Small Brains
One hundred billion nerve cells working together empowering us to see, walk, think, speak, remember: the human brain is a stunning machine. Even more stunning is its formation in the growing fetus. It starts with a set of neural, or brain, stem cells in the early embryo. Then with each cell division, more and more cells … Continue reading Timing Matters: Slowly Dividing Stem Cells Lead to Small Brains
National honor for helping “the blind see”
Those of us fortunate to have good health take so many things for granted, not the least of which is our ability to see. But, according to the World Health Organization, there are 39 million people worldwide who are blind, and another 246 million who are visually impaired. Any therapy, any device, that can help … Continue reading National honor for helping “the blind see”
The Stem Cellar 