Now a research team lead by Kevin Kit Parker, a Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) Principal Faculty member has identified a set of 64 crucial parameters from more than 1,000 by which to judge stem cell-derived cardiac myocytes, making it possible for perhaps the first time for scientists and pharmaceutical companies to quantitatively judge and compare the value of the countless commercially available...

Harvard Stem Cell Institute Principal Faculty member David Langenau, PhD, and his lab members in the Department of Pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital used zebrafish to search for these rare, relapse-driving leukemia cells and then designed therapies that could kill these cells. The research took five-and-a-half years to complete, and has its origins as one of the first projects Langenau took...

Modeling Early Pancreatic Cancer In Barrett’s esophagus, the cells that line the lower esophagus, called epithelial cells, slowly change to resemble abnormal stomach or intestinal cells. The condition eventually progresses to esophageal cancer in up to 10 percent of cases. Scientists want to better understand the cellular mechanisms driving Barrett’s esophagus to find ways to help treat...

A team led by Jean-François Côté, researcher at the IRCM, identified a ”conductor” in the development of muscle tissue. The discovery, published online by the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), could have an important impact on the treatment of muscular diseases such as myopathies and muscular dystrophies. “For several years, we have been...

“By using an inhibitor of Notch signaling, we could push even more cells to differentiate into hair cells,” says Dr. Edge. “It was surprising that the Lgr5-expressing cells were the only supporting cells that differentiated under these conditions.” Story Source: Combining this new knowledge about Lgr5-expressing cells with the previous finding that Notch inhibition can regenerate...

Story Source: The above story is based on materials provided by University of Michigan Health System. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Currently, there are no molecularly targeted therapies aimed at triple-negative breast cancer, which is a type of cancer negative for estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor and the HER2 protein — all key targets for current therapies. Patients...

Using this approach, alongside conventional flow cytometry, the investigators found that CD4+ and CD8+ lymphocytes exhibit different reconstitution patterns following transplantation. The scientists observed that the dominant CD8+ T cell clones present at baseline were expanded at 12 months post-transplant, suggesting these clones were not effectively eradicated during treatment. In contrast, the dominant...