In November 2021, Northwestern University researchers introduced an injectable new therapy, which harnessed fast-moving "dancing molecules," to repair tissues and reverse paralysis after severe spinal cord injuries.
Now, the same research group has applied the therapeutic strategy to damaged human cartilage cells. In the new study, the treatment activated the gene expression necessary to regenerate cartilage within just four hours. And, after only three days, the human cells produced protein components needed for cartilage regeneration.
The researchers also found that, as the molecular motion increased, the treatment's effectiveness also increased. In other words, the molecules' "dancing" motions were crucial for triggering the cartilage growth process.
Melbourne researchers have made a world first breakthrough in creating blood stem cells that closely resemble those in the human body. And the discovery could soon lead to personalized treatments for children with leukemia and bone marrow failure disorders.
The research, led by Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI) and published in Nature Biotechnology, has overcome a major hurdle for producing human blood stem cells, which can create red cells, white blood cells and platelets, that closely match those in the human embryo.
MCRI Associate Professor Elizabeth Ng said the team had made a significant discovery in human blood stem cell development, paving the way for these lab grown cells to be used in blood stem cell and bone marrow transplants.
"The ability to take any cell from a patient, reprogram it into a stem cell and then turn these into specifically matched blood cells for transplantation will have a massive impact on these vulnerable patients' lives," she said.
Immune cell injection significantly boosts healing of bone, muscle & skin
By Paul McClure
September 12, 2024
https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/r ... -medicine/
Injecting regulatory T cells or Tregs, which control the body’s immune responses, directly into damaged bone, muscle and skin significantly boosts healing, according to new research. The door is now open to developing a universal cell-based method of enhancing healing after an injury.
A few months ago, we reported on research by the University of Cambridge in the UK that overturned traditional thinking about regulatory T cells or Tregs, finding that these active controllers of the body’s immune response have the potential to be used as an army of healers for “almost everything”.
Now, researchers from the Immunology Frontier Research Center (IFReC) at Osaka University, Japan, and Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, have investigated that potential as part of a new study – and found that it’s true.
Researchers from Queen Mary University of London and the University of Nottingham have developed a biocooperative material that harnesses blood clotting and peptide self-assembly to engineer personalized regenerative implants for healing severe wounds and fractures.
Advancements in scientific knowledge, assisted by new technological tools, have placed effective regenerative therapies tantalizingly within reach of clinical therapeutics. Replicating the body's complex healing environment remains a significant challenge.
Promising approaches often rely on stem cells, biomimetic materials, or allogeneic grafts, each with its own obstacles to becoming successful and reliable treatment options.
Most body tissues have evolved to heal minor injuries efficiently, largely relying on forming a regenerative hematoma in a dynamic environment that coordinates molecular and cellular processes for complete repair.
You can also use stem cells for knee pain therapy by using a harvested mixture, which includes adult stem cells, platelets, and white blood cells, which are then prepared for injection into the affected knee joint.
Injected hydrogel becomes a bone-healing solid when exposed to light
By Ben Coxworth
January 03, 2025
Whether they're caused by injury, disease or other factors, missing sections of bone can be quite difficult to replace. A new injectable hydrogel could change that, however, by transforming into a robust bone regeneration material when exposed to visible light.
While bone injuries such as fractures typically heal on their own, large sections of missing bone (known as "bone deficits") often never grow back.
As a result, they typically have to be filled with a piece of bone tissue harvested from one of the patient's leg bones. Not only is this an invasive and painful procedure, it also simply shifts the bone deficit from one part of the skeleton to another.
Seeking a more effective alternative, some groups are developing bone-like porous materials that are placed in the deficit instead of real bone.
In a potentially major breakthrough for regenerative medicine, scientists at MIT have developed a way to convert skin cells directly into brain cells extremely efficiently, without needing to go through the intermediate step of converting them to stem cells first.
Cooking up a batch of stem cells to treat illness or injury used to involve the ethically hairy practice of harvesting them from embryonic tissue. But in 2006, Japanese scientists identified a way to revert mature cells back into stem cells. From there, these induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) can be coaxed to become whatever cell type is needed for a specific treatment.
However, this Nobel prize-winning discovery isn’t without its own problems. For one, a large portion of the cells can get stuck in the intermediate stages, reducing the efficiency of the technique. In the original study less than 0.1% of cells made it all the way through, although that’s been drastically improved in the almost 20 years since, with some methods closing in on 100%.
A stem cell treatment helped improve the motor function of two out of four patients with a spinal cord injury in the first clinical study of its kind, Japanese scientists said.
There is currently no effective treatment for paralysis caused by serious spinal cord injuries, which affect more than 150,000 patients in Japan alone, with 5,000 new cases each year.
Researchers at Tokyo's Keio University are conducting their study using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS)—created by stimulating mature, already specialized, cells back into a juvenile state.
They can then be prompted to mature into different kinds of cells, with the Keio researchers using iPS-derived cells of the neural stem.
We're one step closer to not just treating baldness but preventing it, with scientists making an important discovery that offers keen insight into why hair growth comes to a screeching halt, offering new hope to millions of people across the globe.
In a new study led by Australia's Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Reesearch (WEHI) and Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, researchers have found that all-important hair follicle stem cells (HFSCs), which are in charge of hair growth, can't do their job without a certain "bodyguard" protein. This protein, MCL-1, is a powerful agent in regulating cell death – and if levels are lowered, by way of outside forces such as stress, aging, cancer drugs or genetics, HSFCs are left vulnerable and overworked as they try to produce new growth. This ultimately causes them to die off, too.
"This study advances our understanding of how stem cell survival and tissue regeneration are orchestrated," the researchers noted. "Our findings may have broader implications for controlling the survival of stem and progenitor cells in tissue regeneration and cancer."
A research team has identified the impact of stem cell infusion timing on the incidence and severity of acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD) in allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT), highlighting the role of the recipient's circadian rhythms. The team was led by Prof. Zhan Cheng from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chief Physician Zhu Xiaoyu from the Department of Hematology at the First Affiliated Hospital of the University of Science and Technology of China.
The results are published in Cell.
Allo-HSCT is a critical therapeutic strategy for diseases including hematological malignancies, bone marrow failure syndromes, and congenital immunodeficiencies. However, despite effective prophylactic measures, aGVHD remains a common complication and a leading cause of transplant-related mortality in allo-HSCT.
A study published April 12 in Nature Communications identifies a protein that helps prevent excessive scarring. The protein, called fibromodulin (FMOD) forms a complex of molecules with interleukin 1β that stops myofibroblasts from forming excessive scar tissue.
The findings could lead to a new way to reduce or prevent excessive scarring, which could benefit patients recovering from surgery, injuries, or burns.
Stem cells can produce any other cell type, it is just a matter of telling them in the right way. From a biological perspective, this means activating the proper genetic program by pressing the right keys, that is, the right genes, at the right moment. Quite often, blood cancer patients require the replacement of their blood stem cells in the bone marrow, the tissue producing blood cells where their cancer grows.
Unfortunately, finding a compatible donor happens to be too challenging sometimes. What if we could produce the cells that make blood in the lab, right from basic stem cells, and use them to regenerate new and healthy bone marrow?
A breakthrough treatment has allowed damaged retinal cells to regenerate themselves. The current research has been conducted on mice, but the pathways are the same in humans, which opens hope for a new way to treat certain kinds of blindness.
While considered a relatively rare disease, retinitis pigmentosa affects approximately 1.5 million people worldwide and is considered the number one cause of inherited retinal degeneration-associated blindness. The disease causes the breakdown of light-sensitive cells called photoreceptors in the retina, leading to progressively declining vision and eventually the loss of central vision entirely.
There is currently no known cure for retinitis pigmentosa, but researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have just had a breakthrough in treatment that could certainly lead to one.
Anti-aging "glue" naturally repairs damaged DNA to protect brain cells
By Bronwyn Thompson
June 17, 2025
A protein found in our cells has emerged as a secret weapon against biological aging, acting like a glue to repair damaged DNA and ward off neurological degeneration including that seen in motor neuron, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.
Macquarie University researchers targeted a protein known as disulphide isomerase (PDI), most commonly found in the gelatinous liquid (cytoplasm) of cells, where it helps guide other proteins into correct formation. However, the team discovered that PDI can move through the cytoplasm and into the cell's control center – the nucleus – to repair breaks in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) strands.
With age, our body's ability to repair and maintain DNA strands can lead to premature aging and neurodegeneration, as well as increase the risk of developing serious diseases.
Researchers from Columbia Engineering have established a framework for the design of bioactive injectable hydrogels formulated with extracellular vesicles (EVs) for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications.
Published in Matter, Santiago Correa, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering, and his collaborators describe an injectable hydrogel platform that uses EVs from milk to address longstanding barriers in the development of biomaterials for regenerative medicine.
EVs are particles naturally secreted by cells and carry hundreds of biological signals, like proteins and genetic material, enabling sophisticated cellular communication that synthetic materials cannot easily replicate.