Endocrine Abstracts

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Spermatogonial stem cells open novel strategies for derivation of pluripotent cell lineages and fertility preservation in boys and men exposed to gonadotoxic therapies. The testicular stem cells are descendants of the primordial germ cells. They are the only germline cells remaining mitotically active in adulthood. Their highly specialized task is the preservation of DNA integrity in the germline. In contrast to all other stem cells they do not serve any beneficial functions f...

A longstanding unsettled question is whether pancreatic β-cells originate from exocrine duct cells. We have now used a genetic labeling approach to fate map embryonic and adult pancreatic duct cells. We employed a BAC genomic clone containing the Hnf1b locus to generate a transgenic mouse line that expresses a hormone-inducible form of Cre in pancreatic ducts. We verified that in this model Cre is specifically expressed throughout the pancreatic duct epithelium, in...

Human pluripotent stem cells can be generated from embryos at the blastocyst stage (human embryonic stem cells or hESCs) or from reprogrammed somatic cells (human induced pluripotent stem cells or hIPSCs). These cells combine the property to grow indefinitely in vitro and the capacity to differentiate into a broad number of cell types. Thus, human pluripotent cells represent a unique opportunity for regenerative medicine since they could enable to production of infinite...