Stem Cell Secrets Discovered Allows Faster Tissue Regeneration
Scientists have been trying for quite some time now to devise a way to engineer cells so that they self-renew or expand themselves when repairs are needed. The main problem they have been having is that scientists have an incomplete picture of how cells interact with the environment.
Scientists have been trying for quite some time now to devise a way to engineer cells so that they self-renew or expand themselves when repairs are needed. The main problem they have been having is that scientists have an incomplete picture of how cells interact with the environment. But, it’s this information that is critical to advancing biomaterial design that would be used in tissue engineering, wound healing, and cell expansion.
Kelly Shultz, P.C. Rossin assistant professor pf chemical and biomolecular engineering at Lehigh University’s P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science has just received a three-year grant from the National Institutes if Health Grant (NIH) that will allow her to study how stem cells act within their environment. Shultz will use the grant to continue with her existing work in this area.
As part of the ongoing research, Shultz, and her team observed that while the stem cells moved through a hydrogel, they would pause between points before carrying on. This was seen to be caused by an inhibitor that temporarily stops enzymes from degrading the material before it gets to its next point. The next move for the team now is to work out which particular inhibitor is responsible for this so that it can be turned off during secretion so the cell can move and degrade the material at a much faster rate.
This would be a fantastic breakthrough for the healthcare industry if scientists can pinpoint the inhibitor and devise a way to stop it as cells would get to the wound quicker, and regeneration could start sooner. Shultz said that her goal is to prevent the cell from stalling, to get it to arrive at the wound site at twice the speed. The team will also carry out extensive research using different materials to see if the inhibitors act differently. Hopefully, the results from these studies will contribute to a better understanding of cell-material interactions and how they can be manipulated to enhance tissue regeneration.
More News To Read
- Electric Delivery Trucks Will Get More Efficient With New Hydrogen Fuel Cell
- Retraining Gas and Coal Workers For Solar Jobs
- Work, Love, and Life When Robots Rule the Earth
- The Greatest New Innovative Technologies of 2016
Related Coverage
- Scientists Developed A Stem Cell Repair System
- A Better Material Has Now Been Discovered for Use in the Solar Industry
- Engineers Use Graphene to Create New Revolutionary Photodetector
- Scientists Uncover A New Material That Could Transform Solar Power Use
- Stem Cells Researchers Are on The Way to Finding the Cure of Blindness
Don't miss new tech stories on Google
Add TrendinTech once in the Google app and our stories appear in your news suggestions.
Daniel Okafor
Daniel Okafor is the Senior AI Reporter at TrendinTech, where he covers large language models, machine learning research and the practical use of artificial intelligence across business and government. He previously reported on artificial intelligence for MIT Technology Review, covering the labs behind the current generation of frontier models and the policy debates in Washington and Brussels. Daniel holds a Master of Science in Machine Learning from Carnegie Mellon University and follows the research community closely, attending NeurIPS and ICML each year to speak with the people behind the papers. He has a particular interest in evaluation: how models are benchmarked, where those benchmarks fail and what that means for the companies betting on them.
All stories by Daniel Okafor (316)