Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Using skin to save the heart


Scientists at the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA), Kyoto University, Japan took induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells that were reprogrammed from skin cells and made them into heart cells.

Heart cells differentiated from iPS cells effectively go through all stages of development.  Therefore they prepared heart cells of different maturation and transplanted them into damaged hearts of living mice. Hearts that received cells differentiated for 20 days showed much better engraftment than those that received cells differentiated for more or less, suggesting there is an optimal maturation stage for cell therapies.


Paper:
https://www.cira.kyoto-u.ac.jp/e/pressrelease/news/160108-190000.html

Image:
Skin cells were reprogrammed into iPS cells, which were then differentiated into heart cells. Heart cells are shown. Blue indicates nuclei.

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