background: spinal cord has a limited capacity to repair therefore, medical interventions are necessary for treatment of injuries. transplantation of schwann cells has shown a great promising result for spinal cord injury (sci). however, harvesting schwann cell has been limited due to donor morbidity and limited expansion capacity. furthermore, accessible sources such as bone marrow stem cells ...

Regeneration of the retina in amphibians is initiated by the transdifferentiation of the retinal pigmented epithelium (RPE) into neural progenitors. A similar process occurs in the early embryonic chick, but the RPE soon loses this ability. The factors that limit the competence of RPE cells to regenerate neural retina are not understood; however, factors normally involved in the development of ...

The direct conversion of fibroblasts to induced dopaminergic (iDA) neurons and other cell types demonstrates the plasticity of cell fate. The low efficiency of these relatively fast conversions suggests that kinetic barriers exist to safeguard cell-type identity. Here we show that suppression of p53, in conjunction with cell cycle arrest at G1 and appropriate extracellular environment, markedly...

This chapter provides a detailed protocol for studying the effects of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on the proliferation, differentiation, adipocytic transdifferentiation, and mineralization of primary osteoblasts. SWNTs, DWNTs, and MWNTs with the same mean length and various diameters were shown to reduce the viability of osteoblasts and inhibit the adipocytic transdifferentiation in both time- and ...

The main parenchymal cells of the adipose organ are adipocytes. White adipocytes store energy, whereas brown adipocytes dissipate energy for thermogenesis. These two cell types with opposing functions can both originate from endothelial cells, and co-exist in the multiple fat depots of the adipose organ - a feature that I propose is crucial for this organ's plasticity. This poster review provid...

We assessed the role of PGC-1α (PPARγ coactivator-1 alpha) in glucose-induced proliferation, migration, and inflammatory gene expression of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs). We carried out phagocytosis studies to assess the role of PGC-1α in transdifferentiation of VSMCs by flow cytometry. We found that high glucose stimulated proliferation, migration and inflammatory gene expression of VSM...

AIM To elucidate the role of STAT3 in hepatocarcinogenesis and biliary ductular proliferation following chronic liver injury. METHODS We investigated thioacetamide (TAA)-induced liver injury, compensatory hepatocyte proliferation, and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) development in hepatic STAT3-deficient mice. In addition, we evaluated TAA-induced biliary ductular proliferation and analyzed th...

Prostate cancer represents the second most common diagnosed in men and fifth cause of death from worldwide. In this paper, we consider a nonlinear mathematical model exploring role neuroendocrine transdifferentiation human prostate cell dynamics. Sufficient conditions are given for both biological relevance model’s solutions existence its equilibria. By means suitable Liapunov functional global...