Mesenchymal stem cells (green) accumulate in skeletal muscle following exercise and release growth factors to spur regeneration. University of Illinois researchers determined that an adult stem cell present in muscle is responsive to exercise, a discovery that may provide a link between exercise and muscle health. The findings could lead to new therapeutic techniques using these cells to rehabilitate injured muscle and prevent or restore muscle loss with age.

The survival of the endangered snow leopard is looking promising thanks to Monash University scientists who have, for the first time, produced embryonic stem-like cells from the tissue of an adult leopard.

Pig stem cell research conducted by two animal scientists at the University of Georgia reveals a better way to determine the safety of future stem cell therapies than rodent-based models.

Established human embryonic cell lines, including those approved for federal research funding under former President George W. Bush, are different than newly derived human embryonic stem cell lines, according to a study by UCLA stem cell researchers.

FINDINGS: By irradiating typical polystyrene lab plates with ultraviolet (UV) waves, Whitehead Institute and MIT scientists have created a surface capable of tripling the number of human embryonic stem (ES) and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells that can be grown in culture by current methods. Moreover, use of this novel surface eliminates the need for layers of mouse "feeder cells" to support ES- and iPS-cell growth.

This research, published on Oct. 12 on the Nature review website, provides evidence of a major concept could pave the way for the future use of these stem cells to treat humans, through perspective gene therapies. For several years now, scientists have been able to produce cells with stem cell properties, by using specialized and mature cells from our body, such as skin cells. These 'iPS' stem cells are said to be "pluripotent': they can provide specialized cells, upon demand, with the same gene pool as the original cells. iPS cells represent a potential basis for the exploration of several therapeutic areas, particularly transplants or gene therapy. However, to date research conducted on these cells had not provided proof of their potential in vivo efficiency for the aforementioned types of use.

Researchers at National Jewish Health have identified cells and signaling molecules that trigger the repair of injured lungs. Stijn De Langhe, PhD, and his colleagues report October 10, 2011, online in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, that destruction of lung tissue in mice induces smooth muscle cells surrounding the airways to secrete a protein known as fibroblast growth factor 10 (FGF10), which induces surviving epithelial cells in the airways to revert to a stem-cell state, proliferate, repair and repopulate the lining of the lungs.

Researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute have today (07/10/2011) announced a new technique to reprogramme human cells, such as skin cells, into stem cells. Their process increases the efficiency of cell reprogramming by one hundred-fold and generates cells of a higher quality at a faster rate.

Adult stem cells from mice converted to antigen-specific T cells -- the immune cells that fight cancer tumor cells -- show promise in cancer immunotherapy and may lead to a simpler, more efficient way to use the body's immune system to fight cancer, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers.

Special enzymes transfer methyl groups to the cytosine building blocks of DNA. A methyl group consists of one carbon atom combined with three associated atoms of hydrogen (CH3). Jean-Baptiste Lamarck would have been delighted: geneticists no longer dismiss out of hand his belief that acquired traits can be passed on to offspring. When Darwin published his book on evolution, Lamarck's theory of transformation went onto the ash heap of history. But in the last decade, we have learned that the environment can after all leave traces in the genomes of animals and plants, in form of so-called epigenetic modifications. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Developmental Biology in Germany have now produced the first comprehensive inventory of spontaneous epigenetic changes. Using Arabidopsis, the workhorse of modern plant genetics, the researchers determined how often and where in the genome epigenetic modifications occur – and how often they disappear again. They found that epigenetic changes are many orders of magnitude more frequent than conventional DNA mutations, but also often short lived. They are therefore probably much less important for long-term evolution than previously thought.

Researchers have shown they can reverse the aging process for human adult stem cells, which are responsible for helping old or damaged tissues regenerate. The findings could lead to medical treatments that may repair a host of ailments that occur because of tissue damage as people age. A research group led by the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and the Georgia Institute of Technology conducted the study in cell culture, which appears in the September 1, 2011 edition of the journal Cell Cycle

Scientists have found a control switch that regulates stem cell "pluripotency," the capacity of stem cells to develop into any type of cell in the human body. The discovery reveals that pluripotency is regulated by a single event in a process called alternative splicing.

Ever since human induced pluripotent stem cells were first derived in 2007, scientists have wondered whether they were functionally equivalent to embryonic stem cells, which are sourced in early-stage embryos.

Researchers at UCLA have identified a new stem cell that participates in the repair of the large airways of the lungs, which play a vital role in protecting the body from infectious agents and toxins in the environment.

Human-induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells can be directed to develop into light-sensing photoreceptor cells of the retina. Researchers have used cutting-edge stem cell technology to correct a genetic defect present in a rare blinding disorder, another step on a promising path that may one day lead to therapies to reverse blindness caused by common retinal diseases such as macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa which affect millions of individuals.

What does it take to regenerate a limb? Biologists have long thought that organ regeneration in animals like zebrafish and salamanders involved stem cells that can generate any tissue in the body. But new research suggests that multiple cell types are needed to regrow the complete organ, at least in zebrafish.

A team of American and Chinese scientists studying the role of stem cells in repairing damaged retina tissue have found that pigs represent an effective proxy species to research treatments for humans. The study, published in STEM CELLS, demonstrates how stem cells can be isolated and transplanted between pigs, overcoming a key barrier to the research.

Scientists have discovered a new way to generate human motor nerve cells in a development that will help research into motor neurone disease.

If Dr. Doolittle is famous for talking to animals, then here's a story that might make him hold his tongue: According to new research published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), scientists have successfully fused human stem cells derived from subcutaneous adipose (fat) tissue with muscle cells from rat hearts. Not only did these cells "talk" to form new muscle cells altogether, but they actually beat.

Stem cells are ideal tools to understand disease and develop new treatments; however, they can be difficult to obtain in necessary quantities. In particular, generating induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells can be an arduous task because reprogramming differentiated adult skin cells into iPS cells requires many steps and the efficiency is very low – researchers might end up with only a few iPS cells even if they started with a million skin cells. A team at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) set out to improve this process. In a paper published February 1 in The EMBO Journal, the team identified several specific microRNAs (miRNAs) that are important during reprogramming and exploited them to make the transition from skin cell to iPS cell more efficient.

Among stem cell biologists there are few better-known proteins than nestin, whose very presence in an immature cell identifies it as a "stem cell," such as a neural stem cell. As helpful as this is to researchers, until now no one knew which purpose nestin serves in a cell.

Using stem cell technology, reproductive scientists in Texas, led by Dr. Richard R. Berhringer at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, have produced male and female mice from two fathers.

SINGAPORE – Researchers at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore have uncovered a novel feedback mechanism that controls the delicate balance of brain stem cells.

A collaborative effort between researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the University of California, San Diego, successfully used human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells derived from patients with Rett syndrome to replicate autism in the lab and study the molecular pathogenesis of the disease.

Biologists at Tufts University School of Arts and Sciences have discovered that a change in membrane voltage in newly identified "instructor cells" can cause stem cells' descendants to trigger melanoma-like growth in pigment cells. The Tufts team also found that this metastatic transformation is due to changes in serotonin transport. The discovery could aid in the prevention and treatment of diseases like cancer and vitiligo as well as birth defects.

Stem cells, the prodigious precursors of all the tissues in our body, can make almost anything, given the right circumstances. Including, unfortunately, cancer. Now research from Rockefeller University shows that having too many stem cells, or stem cells that live for too long, can increase the odds of developing cancer. By identifying a mechanism that regulates programmed cell death in precursor cells for blood, or hematopoietic stem cells, the work is the first to connect the death of such cells to a later susceptibility to tumors in mice. It also provides evidence of the potentially carcinogenic downside to stem cell treatments, and suggests that nature has sought to balance stem cells' regenerative power against their potentially lethal potency.

Biomedical researchers at the University at Buffalo have engineered adult stem cells that scientists can grow continuously in culture, a discovery that could speed development of cost-effective treatments for diseases including heart disease, diabetes, immune disorders and neurodegenerative diseases.

Stem cells that glow like fireflies could someday help doctors heal damaged hearts without cutting into patients' chests.

One of the characteristics of embryonic stem cells is their ability to form unusual tumors called teratomas. These tumors, which contain a mixture of cells from a variety of tissues and organs of the body, are typically benign. But they present a major obstacle to the development of human embryonic stem cell therapies that seek to treat a variety of human ailments such as Parkinson's, diabetes, genetic blood disorders and spinal cord injuries.

A new study from researchers in Ottawa and Toronto suggests that a commonly used type of bone marrow stem cell may be able to help treat sepsis, a deadly condition that can occur when an infection spreads throughout the body. The study, published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, shows that these cells can triple survival rates in an experimental model of sepsis.