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3 Bullet Thursday – Contracting Muscle, Genetic Modification, and DNA Data Density

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Stay alert to the latest and greatest on stem cells.  Enjoy this week’s “3 Bullet Thursday,” a weekly post that we do to update you on interesting and important events within the world of stem cells. 

1. In groundbreaking news this week, scientists used stem cells from rats to create the world’s first contracting muscle. Researchers led by Dr. Macchiarini replaced a section of diaphragm, which contracts in response to signals that regulate breathing.

2. Stem Cell Medicine, Ltd., an Israeli stem cell company with breathtaking research and development facilities, made global headlines this week by announcing a partnership to develop genetically-modified muscle progenitor cells. 

3. A bioengineer and geneticist at Harvard’s Wyss Institute successfully stored 5.5 petabits of data in a single gram of DNA, smashing the previous DNA data density record by 1,000 times. A petabit is 10^15bits, which makes this accomplishment simply astounding. 

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3 Bullet Thursday – Inducing Bone, Growing Vocal Cords, Solving Muscular Dystrophy

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Stay alert to the latest and greatest on stem cells.  Enjoy this week’s “3 Bullet Thursday,” a weekly post that we do to update you on interesting and important events within the world of stem cells. 

1. The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa published a landmark study this week in Nature Medicine identifying that Duchenne muscular dystrophy is actually a stem cell disease. The findings were shocking, because it has always been assumed that the muscle weakness produced by the disease results from defects of the muscle fibres. It is now known that the disease also stems from defects in the function of muscle stem cells, which could lead to new treatment approaches. 

 

2. In a world first, vocal cords that can stretch, vibrate, and make sound were grown in the lab. Could this be early hope for the millions worldwide suffering from impaired vocal cords?
 
3. The most astonishing news of the week came from Dr. Rubin and colleagues, who identified that cytochalasin D can alter gene expression in the nuclei of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and induce them to become osteoblasts (bone cells). What makes this shocking is that cytochalasin D acts to break up the actin cytoskeleton, which theoretically, would terminate a cell’s ability to become a bone cell and prompt it to become a fat cell. However, Dr. Rubin discovered that cytochalasin D instead causes broken up actin to be trafficked into the nuclei of MSCs, where it induces cells to become osteoblasts. This finding that could potentially lead to exciting new methods for growing bone, repairing fractures, or reversing osteoporosis. 

 

Bonus:  In major news yesterday, Merck KGaA announced it had completed its acquisition of Sigma-Aldrich Corporation for $140 per share, a deal valued at $17.0 billion. Merck will now offer 300,000+ products, making it the new behemoth within the $130 billion life science industry. 

Happy Thursday!

 

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Need advanced market analysis? View our global strategic reports for the stem cell and cord blood industry.

 

3 Bullet Thursday – Astellas Acquires Ocata, CDI Partners with Roche, and iPSC Trial for Parkinson’s Delayed

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Stay alert to the latest and greatest on stem cells.  Enjoy this week’s “3 Bullet Thursday,” a weekly post that we do to update you on interesting and important events within the world of stem cells. 

1. In major news this week, Astellas Pharma announced it is acquiring Ocata Therapeutics for $379M. Astellas, a major drug company in Japan, will pay $8.50 a share, a 79% premium over the stock price last Friday. Ocata, which changed its name from Advanced Cell Technology last November, specializes in using pluripotent stem cells, such as embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), to treat diseases of the eye. [Read more…]

3 Bullet Thursday – 3D Printing Skulls, Stem Cell ‘Legos’, and Degree Revocation

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Stay alert to the latest and greatest on stem cells.  Enjoy this week’s “3 Bullet Thursday,” a weekly post that we do to update you on interesting and important events within the world of stem cells. 

1. Wow, Australian scientists are attempting to regrow human skulls with stem cells and 3D printing technology. Specifically, scientists will print a bio-ceramic scaffold less than 100 microns (0.1mm) thick and then inject millions of stem cells, making it the first time stem cells have been used on a 3D printed scaffold to regrow bone.

2. In other exciting news, scientists have discovered how to 3D print “building blocks” of embryonic stem cells. These cell blocks, capable of differentiating into any cell of the body, could potentially be used as the ‘Lego bricks’ to build tissues or even micro-organs.

3. In other controversial news, Dr. Haruko Obokata, the young Japanese scientist responsible for the STAP stem cell scandal, is being stripped of her doctoral degree. The president of Waseda University announced the degree revocation on Monday.

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3 Bullet Thursday – Stem Cells for HIV, ESCs vs. iPSCs, and Twitter as a News Source

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Stay alert to the latest and greatest on stem cells.  Enjoy this week’s “3 Bullet Thursday,” a weekly post that we do to update you on interesting and important events within the world of stem cells.

 

1. Wow, the world’s first clinical trial to treat HIV patients using umbilical cord blood transplants is set to start in Spain. Plans for the trial were announced last week at a haematology conference in Valencia by Spain’s National Organisation of Transplants (ONT).

 

2. Talk about a controversial topic! A new study published in Nature Biotechnology announces embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells to be “equal.” More specifically, the authors state, “We conclude that hESCs and hiPSCs are molecularly and functionally equivalent.”

 

3. In a July 2013 USA Today article, Rem Rieder discusses how Twitter is a news pipeline for more than 200 million active users, often ‘breaking’ news before it’s actually news. Want to know where to get your morning stem cell news? These are the top 15 accounts breaking stem cell news on Twitter.

 

Happy Thursday!

 

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