Contact Information Available for logged-in reporters only Newswise Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have identified a protein critical to hematopoietic stem cell function and blood formation. The finding has potential as a new target for treating leukemia because cancer stem cells rely upon the same protein to regulate and sustain their growth. Hematopoietic stem cells give rise to all other blood cells. Writing in the February 2, 2014 advance online issue of Nature Genetics, principal investigator Tannishtha Reya, PhD, professor in the Department of Pharmacology, and colleagues found that a protein called Lis1 fundamentally regulates asymmetric division of hematopoietic stem cells, assuring that the stem cells correctly differentiate to provide an adequate, sustained supply of new blood cells. Asymmetric division occurs when a stem cell divides into two daughter cells of unequal inheritance: One daughter differentiates into a permanently specialized cell type while the other remains undifferentiated and capable of further divisions. This process is very important for the proper generation of all the cells needed for the development and function of many normal tissues, said Reya. When cells divide, Lis1 controls orientation of the mitotic spindle, an apparatus of subcellular fibers that segregates … Continue reading →

Dartmouth researchers have developed a protocol that permits cells harvested from melanoma tumors in mice to grow readily in cell culture. Their findings were published in an article, Multiple murine BRafV600E melanoma cell lines with sensitivity to PLX4032, in the January 25, 2014 issue of Pigment Cell & Melanoma Research. "We anticipate that these cell lines will be extremely useful to many investigators who use mouse melanoma as a model system," said Constance E. Brinckerhoff, PhD, professor of Medicine and of Biochemistry at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College and a member of the Norris Cotton Cancer Center (NCCC) Mechanism Research Program. There is a lack of mouse cell lines that harbor the BRAF mutation that is so prevalent in human melanomas, and the cell lines that are available grow slowly in culture and are not representative of human melanoma cell lines. Detailed experiments on molecular mechanisms controlling mouse cell line behavior have been difficult because the currently available mouse cell lines do not grow well in culture. The Geisel researchers are the first to have developed a protocol that permits mouse melanoma cells to be harvested from tumors in the mice and to grow readily in cell … Continue reading →

An international research effort has found that mature animal cells can be shocked into an embryonic state simply by soaking them in acid or putting them under physical stress. The fortuitous breakthrough could prove to be massive for many fields of medical research if the method can be replicated using human cells, something researchers are confident will be possible. The collaboration between Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Womens Hospital (BWH) and the Riken Center for Developmental Biology in Japan found that by bathing mature cells harvested from mice in a weak acid, they reverted to a stem cell-like pluripotent state. Pluripotency, as the name suggests, is when a cell has the potential to become one of the many different cells found in an animal; "pluri" refers to many, as in plural, and "potent" the potential to become that many. Pluripotent cells are an important resource for many forms of medical research. Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are one type of pluripotent cell, yet the harvesting of ESCs has its opposition, as it involves the destruction of human embryos. Successful attempts at creating stem cells culminated in the 2012 Nobel Prize-winning research in which Shinya Yamanaka produced Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSC) from mature … Continue reading →