Tissue engineering Medical treatments for a variety of diseases have advanced dramatically in recent decades, but sometimes they come with a cost; namely damage to surrounding tissues and organs. That’s where stem cell research and regenerative medicine come in. Those fields seek to develop new ways of repairing the damage. But how do you see … Continue reading Tracking and mapping the health of damaged organs
Tissue engineering
Advancing stem cell research in many ways
Speakers at the Alpha Stem Cell Clinics Network Symposium: Photo by Marco Sanchez From Day One CIRM’s goal has been to advance stem cell research in California. We don’t do that just by funding the most promising research -though the 51 clinical trials we have funded to date clearly shows we do that rather well … Continue reading Advancing stem cell research in many ways
Attractive new regenerative medicine tool uses magnets to shape and stimulate stem cells
The ultimate goal of tissue engineers who work in the regenerative medicine field is to replace damaged or diseased organs with new ones built from stem cells. To accomplish the feat, these researchers are developing new tools and techniques to manipulate and specialize stem cells into three dimensional structures. Some popular methods – which we’ve … Continue reading Attractive new regenerative medicine tool uses magnets to shape and stimulate stem cells
Stem cell stories that caught our eye: spinal cord injury trial update, blood stem cells in lungs, and using parsley for stem cell therapies
More good news on a CIRM-funded trial for spinal cord injury. The results are now in for Asterias Biotherapeutics’ Phase 1/2a clinical trial testing a stem cell-based therapy for patients with spinal cord injury. They reported earlier this week that six out of six patients treated with 10 million AST-OPC1 cells, which are a type … Continue reading Stem cell stories that caught our eye: spinal cord injury trial update, blood stem cells in lungs, and using parsley for stem cell therapies
Easier, Cheaper Stem Cell-Based Heart Muscle Sets Stage for Large-Scale Drug Development
The great inventions – like the automobile, the Internet or aviation – are marked as important turning points in human history. But it’s usually the additional tinkering that goes on in the ensuing years after the initial invention that makes the technology feasible in terms of cost, reproducibility and mass production. The same holds true … Continue reading Easier, Cheaper Stem Cell-Based Heart Muscle Sets Stage for Large-Scale Drug Development
Meet ITOP: A One Stop Shop for 3D Printing Body Parts
"They have managed to create what appears to be the goose that really does lay golden eggs!" That was how UK surgeon Martin Birchall described it to BBC News. The goose in this case is a 3D bioprinter, and the golden eggs are the human sized tissues that the bioprinter successfully constructed. This breakthrough for … Continue reading Meet ITOP: A One Stop Shop for 3D Printing Body Parts
3D Printing Cells with DNA Velcro
One of the Holy Grails of stem cell research is growing body parts to replace those damaged by disease or injury. Enormous strides have been made in a key first step: mastering recipes for maturing stem cells into various specialized cell types. But a lawn of, say, liver cells in a petri dish is not … Continue reading 3D Printing Cells with DNA Velcro
CIRM-Funded Scientists Make New Progress Toward Engineering a Human Esophagus
Creating tissues and organs from stem cells—often referred to as ‘tissue engineering’—is hard. But new research has discovered that the process may in fact be a little easier than we once thought, at least in some situations. Last week, scientists at The Saban Research Institute of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles announced that the esophagus—the tube … Continue reading CIRM-Funded Scientists Make New Progress Toward Engineering a Human Esophagus
ISSCR 2014: Tony Atala, Jason Burdick and the Power of Tissue Engineering
The progress in tissue engineering in just the past two decades has been like the construction industry moving from simple lean-to structures to homes with plumbing, heating and cooling systems. We are not yet ready to build a high-rise—think of a beating functioning heart—but we are making major strides toward that goal. One of the … Continue reading ISSCR 2014: Tony Atala, Jason Burdick and the Power of Tissue Engineering
The Stem Cellar 