The mechanical properties of the local microenvironment may have important influence on the fate and function of adult tissue progenitor cells, altering the regenerative process. This is particularly critical following a myocardial infarction, in which the normal, compliant myocardial tissue is replaced with fibrotic, stiff scar tissue. In this study, we examined the effects of matrix stiffness...

The discovery of primitive cardiac stem-like cells with the ability for self-renewal and the capacity for differentiation into all cardiac cell lineages has completely changed the prevailing view of the heart as a static, terminally differentiated organ.1 Like virtually all somatic tissues, the adult heart harbors a pool of stem/progenitor cells responsible for the maintenance of organ cell hom...

The skeletal muscle is endowed with an impressive ability to regenerate after injury, and this ability is coupled to paracrine production of many trophic factors possessing cardiovascular benefits. Taking advantage of this humoral capacity of the muscle, we recently demonstrated an extracardiac therapeutic regimen based on intramuscular delivery of VEGF-A(165) for repair of the failing hamster ...

in addition to its antioxidant effect, vitamin e or α–tocopherol is suggested to enhance remyelination in the animal model of non-inflammatory demyelination. in this study, the possible proliferative effect of vitamin e on human- induced pluripotent stem cell-derived neural progenitors (hips-nps) and the underlying mechanisms were investigated in vitro. nps were induced from ips cells via 3 ste...

Cardiomyocytes, the beating cells in all mammalian hearts, generally are believed to be terminally differentiated cells that do not proliferate after birth. Instead, the growth of a heart from the neonatal to adult stage results primarily from a phenomenon called hypertrophy, during which cardiomyocytes increase their cell size without undergoing cell division. This dogma was recently challenge...

The cellular physiology and biology of human cardiac c-kit(+) progenitor cells has not been extensively characterized and remains an area of active research. This study investigates the functional expression of transient receptor potential vanilloid (TRPV) and possible roles for this ion channel in regulating proliferation and migration of human cardiac c-kit(+) progenitor cells. We found that ...

Objective(s): In the past few decades, variety of foetal, embryonic and adult stem and progenitor cells have been tried with conflicting outcome for cell therapy of central nervous system injury and diseases. Cellular characteristics and functional plasticity of Globose basal stem cells (GBCs) residing in the olfactory epithelium of rat olfactory mucosa have not been studied in the past by the ...

RATIONALE Cardiac progenitor cells from the second heart field (SHF) contribute to rapid growth of the embryonic heart, giving rise to right ventricular and outflow tract (OFT) myocardium at the arterial pole of the heart, and atrial myocardium at the venous pole. Recent clonal analysis and cell-tracing experiments indicate that a common progenitor pool in the posterior region of the SHF gives ...