We report here the isolation of a population of non-transformed pluripotent human cells from bone marrow after a unique expansion/selection procedure. This procedure was designed to provide conditions resembling the in vivo microenvironment that is home for the most-primitive stem cells. Marrow-adherent and -nonadherent cells were co-cultured on fibronectin, at low oxygen tension, for 14 days. ...

Cardiovascular diseases and cancers are the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the world. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short non-coding RNAs that primarily repress target mRNAs. Here, miR-24, miR-125b, miR-195, and miR-214 were selected as representative cardio-miRs that are upregulated in human heart failure. To bridge the gap between miRNA studies in cardiology and oncology, the targets a...

Obesity is accompanied by an increase in both adipocyte number and size. The increase in adipocyte number is the result of recruitment to the adipocyte lineage of pluripotent stem cells present in the vascular stroma of adipose tissue. These pluripotent cells have the potential to undergo commitment and then differentiate into adipocytes, as well as myocytes, osteocytes, and chondrocytes. In th...

Major advances in the genetics of vertebrate limb development have been obtained in recent years. However, the nature of the signals which trigger differentiation of the mesoderm to form the limb skeleton remains elusive. Previously, we have obtained evidence for a role of TGFbeta2 in digit formation. Here, we show that activins A and B and/or AB are also signals involved in digit skeletogenesi...

Abstract Introduction Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a rare, severe disorder of multifactorial origin. Genetic alterations in BMP/SMAD pathways were previously associated with disease development, however the exact role other genetic factors from signalling still unclear. Purpose We aimed to search for known PAH-associated mutations and potential novel variants responsible onset Polis...

In this study, we use a mouse insertional mutant to delineate gene activities that shape the distal limb skeleton. A recessive mutation that results in brachydactyly was found in a lineage of transgenic mice. Sequences flanking the transgene insertion site were cloned, mapped to chromosome 3, and used to identify the brachydactyly gene as the type IB bone morphogenetic protein receptor, BmprIB ...

Although the multilineage potential of human adipose-derived adult stromal cells (ADAS) has been well described, few published studies have investigated the biological and molecular mechanisms underlying osteogenic differentiation of mouse ADAS. We report here that significant osteogenesis, as determined by gene expression and histological analysis, is induced only when mouse ADAS are cultured ...

Bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling plays a key role in the control of skin development and postnatal remodeling by regulating keratinocyte proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. To study the role of BMPs in wound-induced epidermal repair, we used transgenic mice overexpressing the BMP downstream component Smad1 under the control of a K14 promoter as an in vivo model, as well as ...