Do you want to identify the neighbours of your favourite cells but are unsure where to start?
Check out our Primer, just out in @Dev_journal , for an overview of synthetic neighbour-labelling systems and of how they can be used in developmental settings.
Huge thanks to @CellySally, Tamina Lebek and Guillaume Blin for a real fun writing experience!
I'm a synthetic developmental biologist at The University of Edinburgh.
I'm interested in understanding how cells influence their neighbours in mammalian models of #DevBio and disease.
I use #SynBio to identify neighbours of cells of interest (e.g. healthy neighbours of mutant cells), and to engineer cell behaviour in response to these interactions.
I do this in pluripotent #StemCells and their derivatives.
I look forward to keeping up with everyone's cool research!
A developer of treatments for cancer and autoimmune disorders from stem cells says FDA cleared its request to start a clinical trial of its therapy for systemic lupus erythematosus.
Researchers from university labs in the U.K. are developing models of brain cell interactions using a company's synthetic human cells derived from stem cells.
This Very Short Introduction introduces stem cells, exploring what they are, and what scientists do with them. Introducing the different types of stem cells, Jonathan Slack explains how they can be used to treat diseases such as retinal degeneration, diabetes, Parkinson's disease, heart disease, and spinal trauma.
Health authorities in Sweden authorized the start of a clinical trial testing insulin-producing cells from donors engineered to prevent immune reactions in people with type 1 diabetes.
Newbie question: After coating culture dishes, can we put Matrigel, Synthemax, etc. to new dishes for another round? It'd be a cool way increase #sustainability 💚 & save💰.
ChatGPT says no🙁, but what's the real-world lab take on this?
A company with a process to generate new thymus tissue for immune system functions is receiving a $37 million award from the government's health breakthrough agency.
Researchers use stem cells to generate human neurons resembling those in the brain that control breathing during opioid reactions, for eventual chip devices to test overdose therapies.
> A research team [..] has created complete models of human embryos from stem cells cultured in the lab—and managed to grow them outside the womb up to day 14. As reported today in Nature, these synthetic #embryo models had all the structures and compartments characteristic of this stage, including the placenta, yolk sac, chorionic sac and other external tissues that ensure the models' dynamic and adequate growth. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-human-embryo-grown-stem-cells.html#stemcells
Scientists grow whole model of human embryo, without sperm or egg
'The Weizmann Institute team say their "embryo model", made using stem cells, looks like a textbook example of a real 14-day-old embryo. It even released hormones that turned a pregnancy test positive in the lab'
Dr Ruth Crystal September 2, 2023 COVID Newsletter
"BA.2.86
Yunlong Cao reported that BA.2.86 can evade our neutralizing #antibodies, even if we had prior XBB.1.5 #infections, meaning that the new fall #vaccine may not protect well against BA. 2.86. But there is a caveat. It turns out that BA.2.86 can evade antibodies, but it is not as infectious or transmissible as other variants in circulation now.
This is reassuring. We know that antibodies from the new Fall XBB.1.5 vaccine expected out in about 2 weeks, will protect us from EG.5 and FL.1.5.1 variants which are in circulation now in the U.S. and many parts of the world.
Ben Murrell’s lab in Sweden announced that eight out of twelve blood donors with prior XBB.1.5 infection had antibodies that could neutralize BA.2.86. The updated fall booster against XBB.1.5 may provide some protection against BA.2.86. We will have to wait and see"
Dr Ruth Crystal September 2, 2023 COVID Newsletter
Poisoning our stem cells
"This week in Cell magazine, there was a review of the important article by Cheong et al. from two weeks ago showing that severe COVID infections can cause IL-6 induced epigenetic “poisoning” of hematopoietic stem cells to make more inflammatory monocytes instead of innate immune cells (B cells, T cells).
The SARS-CoV-2 virus can go to our bone marrow and can reprogram genes in the cells that make all blood cells in the body (hematopoietic stem cells and myeloid progenitor cells). The virus can turn off the genes which instruct bone marrow stem cells to make immune cells like B cells and T cells that could fight the virus, and instead, the virus reprograms our bone marrow stem cells to make highly inflammatory monocytes.
This reprogramming of bone marrow #StemCells can cause permanent changes which theoretically could lead to the development of chronic conditions such as #LongCOVID
Stem cells from one eye show promise in healing injuries in the other.
The AP reports "the experimental technique involves taking a small biopsy of stem cells from the healthy eye, then expanding and growing them on a graft in a lab."
A clinical trial has begun testing an experimental treatment for burns using off-the-shelf therapeutic particles derived from human bone marrow stem cells.
A group of academic and industry researchers exhibited in lab cells and mice a more direct delivery technique that could make gene therapies more accessible and inexpensive.
Scientists grow whole model of human embryo, without sperm or egg (www.bbc.com)
The research helps understanding of the earliest moments of life and the reasons behind infertility.