In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of scientists shows how mutations in the gene GPT2 lead to a rare developmental and potentially degenerative brain disease.(more…)
UCLA stem-cell researchers have identified a certain type of cell and a signaling pathway in the placental niche that play a key role in stopping blood stem cells from differentiating into mature blood cells in the placenta. Preventing this premature differentiation is critical to ensuring a proper blood supply for an individual’s lifetime.
The placental niche is considered a stem cell “safe zone,” which supports the creation and expansion of blood stem cells without promoting their differentiation into mature cells. This allows for the establishment of a pool of precursor cells that will later provide blood cells for fetal and post-natal life, said the study’s senior author, Dr. Hanna Mikkola, an associate professor of molecular cell and developmental biology at UCLA and a researcher at UCLA’s Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research. (more…)
Researchers from UCLA’s cancer and stem cell centers have demonstrated for the first time that blood stem cells can be engineered to create cancer-killing T-cells that seek out and attack a human melanoma. The researchers believe the approach could be useful in about 40 percent of Caucasians with this malignancy.