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Stanford researchers develop a gel for growing large quantities of neural stem cells
[Sarah] Heilshorn described a solution to the dual challenges of growing and preserving neural stem cells in a state where they are still able to mature into many different cell types. The first challenge is that growing stem cells in quantity requires space. Like traditional farming, it is a two-dimensional affair. If you want more wheat, corn or stem cells, you need more surface area. Culturing stem cells, therefore, requires a lot of relatively expensive laboratory real estate, not to mention the energy and nutrients necessary to pull it all off.
The second challenge is that once they've divided many times in a lab dish, stem cells do not easily remain in the ideal state of readiness to become other types of cells. Researchers refer to this quality as "stemness." Heilshorn found that for the neural stem cells she was working with, maintaining the cells' stemness requires the cells to be touching.
Heilshorn's team was working with a particular type of stem cell that matures into neurons and other cells of the nervous system. These types of cells, if produced in sufficient quantities, could generate therapies to repair spinal cord injuries, counteract traumatic brain injury or cure some of the most severe degenerative disorders of the nervous system, like Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases.
Heilshorn's solution involves the use of better materials in which to grow stem cells. Her lab has developed new polymer-based gels that allow the cells to be grown in three dimensions instead of two. This new 3-D process takes up less than 1 percent of the lab space required by current stem cell culturing techniques. And because cells are so tiny, the 3-D gel stack is just a single millimeter tall, roughly the thickness of a dime. "For a 3-D culture, we need only a 4-inch-by-4-inch plot of lab space, or about 16 square inches. A 2-D culture requires a plot four feet by four feet, or about 16 square feet," more than 100-times the space, according to first author Chris Madl, a recent doctoral graduate in bioengineering from Heilshorn's lab.
Maintenance of neural progenitor cell stemness in 3D hydrogels requires matrix remodelling (DOI: 10.1038/nmat5020) (DX)
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(Score: 3, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday November 10 2017, @09:05PM (2 children)
Caltech's freshman orientation takes place at a summer camp on one of the Catalina islands. It is there that The Caltech Community Cult captured our hearts and minds.
Physicist Jerry Pine gave a talk in which he said he used to work on Big Science experiments at CERN and SLAC, but he longed to have a simple project that was all his own, that he could do in a lab on the Caltech campus.
He created very small Petri dishes on top of integrated circuit chips. The base of the Petri dishes was an array of electrodes. They could be used as voltage sensors, or as a source of current.
He was using these to grow human neurons, then he tickled them with electricity while he measured their reactions.
This was in the Fall of 1982. I never heard anything else about it. I expect he published but it must not have been Nobel Prize work.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 11 2017, @08:43AM (1 child)
Not sure if it was on slashdot, or in a biological psychology class back around 2000, but I remember hearing about those chips and experiments with sensing neural potentials or stimulating axon growth (?) using the currents.
Having said that it was mostly a passing section of a chapter on neurology and I don't think I remember it being discussed after that.
Also, thanks MDC, it is not often I find myself with technical mental stimulation on such a variety of subjects as some of your comments on soylentnews :)
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday November 12 2017, @06:21AM
I was permitted to return after taking some summer school classes.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]