Dec. 18, 2013 Regenerative medicine may offer ways to banish baldness that don't involve toupees. The lab of USC scientist Krzysztof Kobielak, MD, PhD has published a trio of papers in the journals Stem Cells and The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that describe some of the factors that determine when hair grows, when it stops growing and when it falls out.

Authored by Kobielak, postdoctoral fellow Eve Kandyba, PhD, and their colleagues, the three publications focus on stem cells located in hair follicles (hfSCs), which can regenerate hair follicles as well as skin. These hfSCs are governed by the signaling pathways BMP and Wnt -- which are groups of molecules that work together to control cell functions, including the cycles of hair growth.

The most recent paper, published in the journal Stem Cells in November 2013, focuses on how the gene Wnt7b activates hair growth. Without Wnt7b, hair is much shorter.

The Kobielak lab first proposed Wnt7b's role in a January 2013 PNAS publication. The paper identified a complex network of genes -- including the Wnt and BMP signaling pathways -- controlling the cycles of hair growth. Reduced BMP signaling and increased Wnt signaling activate hair growth. The inverse -- increased BMP signaling and decreased Wnt signaling -- keeps the hfSCs in a resting state.

Both papers earned the recommendation of the Faculty of 1000, which rates top articles by leading experts in biology and medicine.

A third paper published in Stem Cells in September 2013 further clarified the workings of the BMP signaling pathway by examining the function of two key proteins, called Smad1 and Smad5. These proteins transmit the signals necessary for regulating hair stem cells during new growth.

"Collectively, these new discoveries advance basic science and, more importantly, might translate into novel therapeutics for various human diseases," said Kobielak. "Since BMP signaling has a key regulatory role in maintaining the stability of different types of adult stem cell populations, the implication for future therapies might be potentially much broader than baldness -- and could include skin regeneration for burn patients and skin cancer."

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Stem cells offer clues to reversing receding hairlines

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18-Dec-2013

Contact: Neha Okhandiar n.okhandiar@qmul.ac.uk 020-788-27927 Queen Mary, University of London

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London have shown for the first time that the specialised role stem cells go on to perform is controlled by primary cilia tiny hair-like structures protruding from a cell.

Stem cells are capable of becoming any cell type within the body through the process of differentiation.

The discovery has the potential for application in the development of new therapies for a range of medical treatments where scientists aim to replace or regenerate tissues that have become diseased or dysfunctional.

Publishing in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers found that growing adult stem cells on micro-grooved surfaces disrupts the biochemical pathway that determines the length of the primary cilia. This change in length of the structure ultimately controls the subsequent behaviour of the stem cells.

"Primary cilia are a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair and are a ubiquitous feature of most cell types but were once thought to be irrelevant. However, our research shows that they play a key role in stem cell differentiation," explains co-author Professor Martin Knight from Queen Mary's School of Engineering and Materials Science and the Institute of Bioengineering.

"We found it's possible to control stem cell specialisation by manipulating primary cilia elongation, and that this occurs when stem cells are grown on these special grooved surfaces."

Stem cells are being considered to treat a number of degenerative conditions such as arthritis, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.

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Scientists find a groovy way to influence specialization of stem cells

Patients who undergo experimental stem cell treatments run the risk of serious injury, Australian experts have warned.

A team of leading stem cell scientists say the treatments, which involve injecting patients with stem cells from their own fat deposits, have become available to Australian consumers without the protection of regulation or evidence of benefits.

Stem Cells Australia, a consortium of medical and scientific researchers from eight leading Australian universities and research institutes, raised concerns after it became clear the treatments, which are popular overseas, had spread to Australia.

They say vulnerable people with degenerative conditions, such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and Parkinson's disease, are being misled into paying up to $9,000 on stem cell therapies with little or no evidence of the benefits.

However, the industry says there is some good evidence available and treatments are safe as long as patients are only injected with their own unaltered cells.

Practising doctors are forming an industry group to write a code of conduct to keep patients safe.

In a submission to the National Health and Medical Research Council, Stem Cells Australia says many of the practices used by overseas doctors are now being witnessed among Australian practitioners.

These include direct-to-consumer marketing, using patient testimonials instead of evidence, offering the same treatments for unrelated illnesses, lack of safety evidence, no results in peer-reviewed journals, and hefty fees.

Program leader Professor Martin Pera says stem cell treatments are falling through a regulatory loophole because patients are treated with their own cells.

"What's going on is a large scale human experiment without proper scientific procedure and without proper regulatory oversight," he said.

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Stem cell warning: experts fear experimental treatments will lead to serious injury

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Newswise Bladder cancer will kill upward of 170,000 people worldwide this year, but bladder cancer isn't fatal in the bladder. Instead, in order to be fatal the disease must metastasize to faraway sites. The question has been this: does localized, non-muscle invasive (NMI) bladder cancer eventually become the more dangerous, muscle-invasive (MI) form of the disease, or are NMI and MI bladder cancers genetically distinct from the start?

A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published today in the journal Stem Cells shows it's the latter: the progenitor cells that create MI bladder cancer are different than the progenitor cells that create NMI bladder cancer. Though these two cancers grow at the same site, they are different diseases.

"This work provides an important new perspective on how we look at bladder cancer biology," says Dan Theodorescu, MD, PhD, director of the University of Colorado Cancer Center and the study's senior author.

The group including first author Garrett Dancik, PhD, genetically profiled two cell types that could give rise to bladder cancer the basal and umbrella layers of the normal bladder lining (urothelium) to discover the gene signatures specific to each of these cell populations.

Then the group compared these gene signatures to human bladder cancer samples. The tumor samples were distinct: those with the signature of umbrella cells were likely to be lower stage and patients eventually had favorable outcomes; tumors with the signatures of basal layer cells were likely to be higher stage and patients eventually had worse outcomes.

"We saw a fairly stark difference between these tumor types: those with basal signatures were distinctly more aggressive than those with umbrella signatures," Theodorescu says. In fact, these signatures predicted tumor stage and patient survival better than many existing prognostic markers.

"Our results suggests that NMI cells arise from non-basal cells, whereas MI tumors arise from basal cells," Theodorescu says.

"This may be an important biomarker for prognosis," Theodorescu says. "With additional testing, we could use the signature to predict how aggressive a bladder cancer is likely to be. Knowing the risk can help doctors and patients make informed treatment decisions."

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Different Parents, Different Children: Muscle-Invasive and Non-Muscle Invasive Bladder Cancers Arise From Different ...