Human pluripotent stem cells have tremendous replicative capacity and demonstrated potential to generate functional cardiomyocytes. These cardiomyocytes represent a promising source for cell replacement therapy to treat heart disease and may serve as a useful tool for drug discovery and disease modeling. Efficient cardiomyocyte differentiation, a prerequisite for the application of stem cell-de...

c-kit, the transmembrane tyrosine kinase receptor for stem cell factor, is required for melanocyte and mast cell development, hematopoiesis, and differentiation of spermatogonial stem cells. We show here that in the heart, c-kit is expressed not only by cardiac stem cells but also by cardiomyocytes, commencing immediately after birth and terminating a few days later, coincident with the onset o...

Introduction: In adult mammalian brain, neural stem cells are isolated from both the dentate gyrus and subventricular zone. This study aimed to isolate neural stem cells from adult rat subventricular zone and differentiate them into neurons and astrocytes.  Methods: In this study, the whole brain was removed after full anesthesia and creating cervical dislocation. Under a microscope, subv...

Brain ischemia is a leading cause of mortality and morbidity in premature infants. Knowing the fate of neural stem cells in the subventricular zone (SVZ) after ischemia and the mechanisms that determine this fate would be useful in manipulating neural stem cell proliferation and differentiation and possibly in reversing ischemic damage. We sought to identify the genes involved in the proliferat...

Ultrasound at 5.0 MHz was noted to be chondro-inductive, with improved SOX-9 gene and COL2A1 protein expression in constructs that allowed for cell-to-cell contact. To achieve tissue-engineered cartilage using macroporous scaffolds, it is hypothesized that a combination of ultrasound at 5.0 MHz and transforming growth factor-β3 induces human mesenchymal stem cell differentiation to chondrocytes...

Mitochondrial morphology is crucial for tissue homeostasis, but its role in cell differentiation is unclear. We found that mitochondrial fusion was required for proper cardiomyocyte development. Ablation of mitochondrial fusion proteins Mitofusin 1 and 2 in the embryonic mouse heart, or gene-trapping of Mitofusin 2 or Optic atrophy 1 in mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs), arrested mouse heart de...

background: in this study, we examined a new two step induction protocol for improving the differentiation of human umbilical cord blood-derived mesenchymal stem cells into neural progenitor cells. materials and methods: human umbilical cord blood-derived mesenchymal stem cells were first cultured in dulbecco’s modified eagle medium supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum in a humidified incub...

embryonic stem cells are capable of differentiating to variety of cell tissues including cardiomyocytes. this developmental change is accompanied with a great deal of ion channel expression and functions. mouse stem cell derived cardiomyocytes were prepared and separated to yield isolated single cell suspension for cell current recording. in the present study some properties of the k + -current...

background: osteoarthritis is one of the most common diseases in middle‑aged populations in the world and could become the fourth principal cause of disability by the year 2020. one of the critical properties for cartilage tissue engineering (te) is the ability of scaffolds to closely mimic the extracellular matrix and bond to the host tissue. therefore, te has been presented as a technique to ...

The concept of tissue-restricted differentiation of postnatal stem cells has been challenged by recent evidence showing pluripotency for hematopoietic, mesenchymal, and neural stem cells. Furthermore, rare but well documented examples exist of already differentiated cells in developing mammals that change fate and trans-differentiate into another cell type. Here, we report that endothelial cell...