abstract introduction: cancer stem cells are a small subpopulation of cells within a tumor which are responsible for maintaining the tumor mass. a number of factors such as oct-4 that govern the fate of adult stem cells also play a role in malignant cell transformation. oct-4 is a key regulator of self-renewal in embryonic stem cells; its expression is potentially correlated with tumorigenesis ...

The transcriptional profiles of mouse embryonic, neural, and hematopoietic stem cells were compared to define a genetic program for stem cells. A total of 216 genes are enriched in all three types of stem cells, and several of these genes are clustered in the genome. When compared to differentiated cell types, stem cells express a significantly higher number of genes (represented by expressed s...

Three-dimensional (3D) in vitro spheroid/organoid culture increasingly appears to better mimic physiological states than standard 2D systems. The biological consequence of 3D spheroids, however, differs for different cell types: pluripotent embryonic stem cells (ESCs), differentiation and loss stemness occur, while the converse is true somatic cancer cells. Despite such diverse consequences, th...

The transcription factor Pax7 plays a key role during embryonic myogenesis and in adult organisms in that it sustains the proper function of satellite cells, which serve as adult skeletal muscle stem cells. Recently we have shown that lack of Pax7 does not prevent the myogenic differentiation of pluripotent stem cells. In the current work we show that the absence of functional Pax7 in different...

The precise time of appearance of the first hematopoietic stem cell activity in the developing mouse embryo is unknown. Recently the aorta-gonad-mesonephros region of the developing mouse embryo has been shown to possess hematopoietic colony-forming activity (CFU-S) in irradiated recipient mice. To determine whether the mouse embryo possesses definitive hematopoietic stem cell activity in the a...

background degenerative retinal diseases, including age related macular degeneration, glaucoma, and hereditary retinal dystrophies are major causes of blindness. the principal defect in these diseases is cell loss which is amenable to both cell based neuroprotective and neuroregenerative therapies. to briefly review the lines of research and potential candidates for cell based therapies among r...

Pluripotent stem cells are defined by their capacity to differentiate into all three tissue layers that comprise the body. Chimera formation, generated by stem cell transplantation to the embryo, is a stringent assessment of stem cell pluripotency. However, the ability of human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) to form embryonic chimeras remains in question. Here we show using a stage-matching app...

Oct4 and Oct5 are two mouse maternally expressed proteins binding to the octamer motif. Both are found in unfertilized oocytes and embryonic stem cells, whereas Oct4 is also found in primordial germ cells. In this study, the activity of the octamer motif was analysed in two embryonic stem cell lines containing Oct4 and Oct5, the teratocarcinoma-derived cell line F9 and the blastocyst-derived ce...