Cell therapies, based on transplantation of immature cells, are being considered as a promising tool in the treatment of neurological disorders. Many efforts are being concentrated on the development of safe and effective stem cell lines. Nevertheless, the neurogenic potential of some cell lines, i.e., the ability to generate mature neurons either in vitro or in vivo, is largely unknown. Recent...

The repair of diseased or damaged cartilage remains one of the most challenging problems of musculoskeletal medicine. Tissue engineering advances in cartilage repair have utilized autologous and allogenic chondrocyte and cartilage grafts, biomaterial scaffolds, growth factors, stem cells, and genetic engineering. The mesenchymal stem cell has specifically attracted much attention because of its...

The aim of this study was to isolate mouse embryonic stem cells from late blastocyst stage embryos and to use them as a model system for the study of hematopoietic induction outside the embryo by coculturing of embryonic stem cells with bone marrow stromal cells. Blastocyst stage embryos from pregnant NMRI mice were obtained and cultured for 1-2 days in DMEM medium. The inner cell masses formed...

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to identify phenotypic markers of human limbal stem cells in fetal and adult corneas. METHODS RNA from microscopically dissected superficial limbal and central fetal (18 weeks) corneas was amplified and used to generate P(32)-labeled, reverse-transcribed antisense RNA that was linearly amplified and hybridized to a focused stem cell cDNA microarray. Diffe...

Recently we reported that the human thymus contains a minute population of CD34+CD38dim cells that do not express the T-cell lineage markers CD2 and CD5. The phenotype of this population resembled that of CD34+CD38dim cells present in fetal liver, umbilical cord blood, and bone marrow known to be highly enriched for pluripotent hematopoietic stem cells. In this report we tested the hypothesis t...

Background: Fibroblast cell lines have different application in biological research including nuclear transfer in cloning, feeder layer of embryonic stem cells, wound healing research and tissue engineering. The objective of the present study was to determine the proper pregnancy age for collecting and culturing guinea pig fetal fibroblast. Materials and Methods: Guinea pig fetuses were collect...

BACKGROUND The transcriptional regulation of stem cell genes is still poorly understood. Kit, encoding the stem cell factor receptor, is a pivotal molecule for multiple types of stem/progenitor cells. We previously generated mouse lines expressing transgenic green fluorescent protein under the control of Kit promoter/first intron regulatory elements, and we demonstrated expression in hematopoie...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Increasing evidence has suggested that hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) might originate from a distinct subpopulation called cancer stem cells (CSCs), which are responsible for the limited efficacy of conventional therapies. We have previously demonstrated that granulin-epithelin precursor (GEP), a pluripotent growth factor, is upregulated in HCC but not in the adjacent non-tu...

The persistence of fetal stem cells with multilineage potential in women who have been pregnant, a phenomenon known as fetal microchimerism, is emerging as a potential contributing factor in certain diseases, including cancer. For example, fetal microchimerism has been implicated in autoimmune disease, wound healing, and cancer. Studies of this phenomenon may provide a novel perspective on canc...