purpose: to describe a novel surgical technique for in vivo limbal stem cell cultivation for reconstruction of corneal epithelium in total limbal stem cell deficiency (lscd). methods: patients suffering from chronic total unilateral lscd due to a chemical injury were sequentially included. one small limbal block (2x1 mm) harvested from contralateral healthy eye sutured over the amniotic membran...

 Nanotechnology presents countless opportunities to develop new and improved consumer products for the benefit of the society . A most prominent nanoproduct is nanosilver. Nanosilver particles are generally smaller than 100 nm and contain 20–15,000 silver atoms. Despite the wide application of nanomaterials, there is a serious lack of information concerning their impact on human health. In the ...

received: 23/sep/2008, accepted: 23/nov/2008oct-4/ pou5f1/ oct-3, a pou domain family protein acts as a crucial transcription factor dur- ing embryonic development. it helps in maintenance of self renewal as well as pluripotential state of embryonic stem (es) cells. its expression starts right from 2 cell stage especially prior to 8 cell stage till the blastocyst stage where it is strongly exp...

tissue and cell transplantation are regarded as a popular procedure in clinical sciences, prospecting a new horizon for several incurable diseases. along with its usefulness, many ethical concerns accompany this development. the ethical issue of organ transplant is unique to the source used which includes: living related, living unrelated, cadaveric, and xenotransplant. obtaining organs has a s...

objective(s): bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (bm-mscs) potentials make them appropriate for cell therapy including ability of differentiation and release of anti-inflammatory cytokines and growth factors secreta. for treatment of azoospermia to induce proliferation and differentiation of germ cells, mscs transplantation has been introduced. the aim of the present experimental case-c...

the provision of an adequate quantity of cells with proper function and purity is one of the main challenges of tissue engineering studies. stem cells, with their self-renewal and differentiation capacity, are considered one of the main cell sources in the field of tissue engineering. previously, the use of chemical factors seemed to be the only possible way for stem cell differentiation. howev...

objective: demyelination of cns axons occurs under pathological conditions such as multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injuries, but can be repaired by cell therapy. within the cns remyelination can be achieved by transplantation of neural stem cells (nscs). nscs are self-renewing cells that maintain the capacity to differentiate into cns-specific cell types and can differentiate into the three ...

According to the cancer stem cell theory, cancers can be initiated by cancer stem cells. This makes cancer stem cells prime targets for therapeutic intervention. Eradicating cancer stem cells by efficient targeting agents may have the potential to cure cancer. In this review, we summarize recent breakthroughs that have improved our understanding of cancer stem cells, and we discuss the therapeu...

objective(s):some evidence showed that calcitriol has an important role in regulating growth and differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells (mscs). however, the interaction between mesenchymal stem cells and macrophage is not clear yet.  the current study was done to investigate the in vitro effects of calcitriol on the interactions between bone marrow-derived mscs and rat macrophages. materials...