Endocrine Abstracts

The 'Stem Cell Programme' has critically depended upon the discovery of specific growth factors that maintain and regulate the differentiation of specific stem cell populations. Understanding the identity and actions of these agents is therefore critical for realising the promised therapeutic applications of stem cells in tissue repair and gene therapy.In the past discovery of growth factors controlling the behaviour of stem cell populations was dependen...

Medical imaging techniques have been in routine clinical use across many different diseases for the better part of 100 years. During this time, there has been a trend towards progressively greater sensitivity of detection and improved image resolution. The advent of the true molecular imaging techniques of PET (Positron Emission Tomography), SPECT (Single Photon Emission Tomography) and Optical imaging, is now enabling the visualization of biological processes at the cellular ...

Embryos heal wounds very rapidly and efficiently and without leaving a scar. Studying how they do this can tell us much about the natural morphogenetic movements of embryogenesis as well as suggesting ways in which we might make adult tissues repair more efficiently. Using live confocal imaging of transgenic Drosophila embryos expressing gfp-actin in epithelial tissues we have revealed the key actin machineries that drive the paradigm morphogenetic process of dorsal closure wh...

One of the fundamental challenges facing current biology concerns the molecular basis for stem cell formation and behaviour. Haematopoiesis is the best characterised adult stem cell system and continues to provide paradigms of broad biological relevance. The stem cell leukaemia (SCL) gene encodes a transcription factor that is essential for the normal development of haematopoietic stem cells (HSC) and all haematopoietic lineages. Appropriate transcriptional regulation is criti...

Cellular replacement therapy has already shown clinical efficacy in human patients with Parkinson's' and Huntington's diseases. However, this currently relies on a continuous supply of tissue from early first trimester human foetuses and therefore it will be difficult to translate into a widespread therapy. Neural stem cells are self-renewing cells found in both the developing and adult nervous system that can be expanded ex vivo in defined medium and differentiated into all t...

Although mature skeletal muscle fibres are viewed as post-mitotic cells, they possess the ability to regenerate in pathological situations. Regeneration is mediated by satellite cells, which under appropriate conditions, will proliferate, then fuse and finally participate in the formation of regenerated fibres. Other cell types, including stem cells harvested from varied tissues, also fulfil the satellite cell role under certain conditions. Recent research has centred on ident...