The Stem Cell Report with Janet Rossant

This November marks the 25th anniversary of the successful isolation and culture of human embryonic stem cells by Jamie Thompson.  This breakthrough was a turning point in biomedical research. This discovery provided scientists with a limitless source of human cells to understand human biology and model disease. The discovery also provided a novel pathway to develop tissues and cells that could po...

Human stem cell technology has led to remarkable insights into human biology in health and disease. However, for the results and outputs from this research to be accurate, meaningful, and durable, it is important that the field have agreed upon standards that ensure reproducibility and reliability of the data. The International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) has developed a set of recommen...

The use of organoids as an experimental system is rapidly advancing in pace and complexity. Derived from pluripotent or tissue stem cells, organoids are three-dimensional, in vitro, structures intended to model functional or developmental aspects of in vivo organs. They are also being used to model complex physiological systems in organ-on-chip devices and in assembloids, the combination of organo...

While teeth have evolved over millions of years, scientists are still working to understand how teeth develop, a process formally known as Odontogenesis. Our guests today have developed a new model of mouse tooth development using long-term expandable 3D tooth organoids from postnatal mouse molars and incisors. This novel mouse model provides a valuable tool to study mouse tooth dental epithelial...

Over the last 10 years of Stem Cell Reports , the journal has published nearly 2,000 papers across the breadth of stem cell research. In this special episode of the podcast, we are celebrating the anniversary of the journal by talking with the authors from some of the most highly cited publications in the journal's history. The guests on this episode of the podcast have collective expertise t...

Human pluripotent stem cells have an unlimited capacity to self-renew in culture. This feature, along with their ability to become any cell type in the adult body, makes them a unique tool to study human biology in health and disease. Unfortunately, human pluripotent stem cells have a propensity to acquire genetic abnormalities in culture that may limit their scientific and clinical use. Among the...

The PiWi family of genes may have a diminutive sounding name, but they have a large role in the function of the germline and germline stem cells. Initially discovered in Drosophila , these highly conserved RNA-binding proteins have well-established roles in the regulation of spermatogenesis and germ stem cell maintenance, in addition to silencing transposable elements. However, PiWi function outsi...

This episode is sponsored by Bio-Techne . While advances in stem cell science have led to an increasing number of stem cell-based therapies entering clinical trials, the field is still relatively immature. Thus, these first-in-human trials are using pioneering approaches unique unto themselves, leaving scientists, physicians, and regulators to assess the best approaches for a specific therapy and/...

This episode is sponsored by Bio-Techne. Computational approaches have become integral to understanding biological processes, in part because of a need to come to grips with the enormous amounts of high dimensional data that we generate using our current tools for cellular analysis. This is especially relevant for stem cell and developmental biology where development, disease modeling, regulatory...

This episode of The Stem Cell Report will explore the scientific applications, advances, and challenges of interspecies chimeras – organisms consisting of cells from at least two different species. The development of interspecies chimeras, most recently advanced by the discovery of pluripotent stem cells and enhancements in genetic editing, have led to greater understanding of fundamental developm...

In this episode of The Stem Cell Report, sponsored by Bio-Techne, we will explore the modeling of complex human neuropsychiatric diseases such as autism, bipolar disorder, and others using stem cell-based, three-dimensional culture models of the brain and its development. Martin Pera will be joined by Drs. Carol Marchetto and Rusty Gage, experts in the normal and pathological development of the br...

To celebrate the ISSCR’s 20th anniversary, Martin Pera is joined by three members of the ISSCR Board of Directors; Fiona Doetsch (Biozentrum at the University of Basel, Switzerland), Clerk of the ISSCR, Takanori Takebe (Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, USA/Tokyo Medical and Dental University and Yokohama City University, Japan) is a Director, and Leonard Zon (Boston Children’s H...

In this episode of The Stem Cell Report, Martin Pera is joined by three experts on the eye, its development, and disease processes.  Dr. Mark Humayun is the Director of the Institute for Biomedical Therapeutics and Co-Director of the Roski Eye Institute at the University of Southern California.  Dr. Anand Swaroop is a Senior Investigator in the Neurobiology, Neurodegeneration and Repair Laboratory...

In this episode of The Stem Cell Report , Martin Pera is joined by Douglas Melton, a pioneer in the use of stem cell-based transplants to treat Type 1 diabetes, and Nayara Leite, a former postdoc in the Melton laboratory who now works for Vertex Pharmaceuticals, one of the companies currently testing stem cell-derived transplants for diabetes in clinical trials. Drs. Melton and Leite will talk abo...

In this episode of the Stem Cell Report, Martin Pera is joined by a team of scientists from the Neural Stem Cell Institute in Rensselaer, NY, USA.  Drs. Elizabeth Fisher, Xiuli Zhao, and Institute Director Sally Temple talk about their new paper on neural stem and progenitor cell function in the aging adult brain. They use live time-lapse imaging with computer-based image analysis to assess young...

In this episode, Drs. Shimpei Gotoh, Takahiro Suezawa, and Carla Kim join the podcast to talk about using stem and progenitor cells to understand the adult lung and model disease processes impacting lung function. Their research and discoveries provide insight into lung homeostasis, the potential for regeneration, and understanding diseases like pulmonary fibrosis and cancer. Drs. Gotoh and Suezaw...

In this episode, Drs. Fiona Watt and Alice Vickers join the podcast to talk about uncovering the relationship between genetic variants and cellular behavior. They recently developed a platform to quantify iPSC differentiation propensity to investigate the genetic contribution to phenotypic variability. Drs. Vickers and Watt are authors of the recent paper,  " Plating human iPSC lines on micro...

In this episode Drs. Charles Murry and Kenta Nakamura join the podcast to talk about “cardiac remuscularization therapy,” and the general approach of transplanting human pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes to restore cardiac function after injury. Guests Charles Murry, MD, PhD, University of Washington and Sana Biotechnology Kenta Nakamura, MD, University of Washington and VA Puget Sound...

In this episode Drs. Peter Loskill and Christine Mummery join the podcast to talk about the intersection of stem cells, microphysiological systems and organs-on-a-chip technology in understanding disease, screening drugs and personalized medicine. Drs. Loskill and Mummery are guest editors of a special issue on this topic appearing now in Stem Cell Reports .  Guests Peter Loskill, PhD W3-Professor...

In this episode, sponsored by Bio-Techne , Drs. Hans Clevers and Kai Kretschmar join the podcast to talk broadly about the role of adult stem cells in tissue maintenance and repair. Specifically, they will focus on the expression and function of Troy and stem cells in the development and homeostasis of the epidermis, the outermost layer of the skin, that functions as a protective mechanical and bi...

In this episode, sponsored by bit.bio ,  Drs. Marius Wernig and Yi Han Ng join the podcast to talk about the directed differentiation of pluripotent stem cells into dopaminergic neurons. Their approach, which is based on the expression of specific transcription factors to drive cell fate directly to a specific neuronal identity, has been demonstrated to robust generalate functional dopaminergic ne...

In this episode, Drs. Zubin Master, Kirstin Matthews, Mohamed Abou-el-Enein, and Sean Morrison join the podcast to talk about unproven stem cell-based interventions. These so-called “stem cell therapies” or “regenerative therapies” currently being marketed direct-to-consumers have insufficient evidence of safety and efficacy to justify their use and pose a potential risk to recipients. A recent pa...

In today’s episode, we will talk about new research on the use of an induced pluripotent stem cell-based vaccine to potentially protect against pancreatic cancer. This approach takes advantage of shared antigens between stem cells and pancreatic cancer cells and seeks to exploit them for clinical benefit. We will talk with the authors of this new research published in Stem Cell Reports on why they...

In this episode, we will talk about morphogenesis in embryo development, a process that in mammalians is known to show considerable plasticity. Understanding how this process is coordinated and how it responds to stress and physiological regulatory mechanisms provides us with a more complete picture of the regulation of mammalian development. We will talk with the authors of new research published...

In this episode Drs. Janet Rossant and Patrick Tam , join the podcast. They are experts in early embryonic development and authors of new Perspective article in Stem Cell Reports,   Opportunities and Challenges with Stem Cell-Based Embryo Models . Embryo modeling is a rapidly emerging area of science which can help advance the understanding of early development, especially human development where...