MGH team shows how injured muscles might be repaired with patients’ own skin cells – FierceBiotech

Several years ago, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) figured out a way to convert skin cells into muscle cells that were self-renewing and seemed promising for treating injuries and degenerative diseases like muscular dystrophy. But they werent quite sure how the conversion was happening. Now they knowand they believe their insights could yield recipes for generating patient-matched muscle cells to treat a range of disorders.

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Regenerative Medicine Market Key Players are making Heavy Investments to Develop Regenerative Therapies in order to meet Clinical Demands – BioSpace

The onset of gene therapy and development in tissue engineering, as well as stem cells, are boosting the regenerative medicine market. The rising regulatory approvals for the growth of advanced therapy medicinal products will propel growth in the market. There has been an urgent requirement to develop new therapies for the treatment against SARS-COV-2 to cure patients

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Scientists Grew Stem Cell ‘Mini Brains’. Then, The Brains Sort-of Developed Eyes – ScienceAlert

Mini brains grown in a lab from stem cells have spontaneously developed rudimentary eye structures, scientists report in a fascinating new paper. On tiny, human-derived brain organoids grown in dishes, two bilaterally symmetrical optic cups were seen to grow, mirroring the development of eye structures in human embryos. This incredible result will help us to better understand the process of eye differentiation and development, as well as eye diseases

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Evolving Role of Autologous Stem Cell Transplantation for Light Chain Amyloidosis in the Modern Era – Cancer Network

It must also be highlighted that accurate subtyping in all patients with amyloidosis remains the key initial step, irrespective of the presence of a plasma cell dyscrasia and especially despite it, since crucially, monoclonal gammopathy plus positive amyloid biopsy does not always equal AL amyloidosis, due to significant co-occurrence with wild-type transthyretin amyloidosis.1 Authors of this comprehensive review further list the essential components that dictate achievement of best long-term outcomes for AL amyloidosis, which include the optimal utility and timing of ASCT which was first reported nearly 3 decades ago for this rare hematologic malignancy.2 Previous limited availability of effective therapies for AL amyloidosis meant that rates of stringent complete response (CR) with full normalization of serum free light chains were low. In the modern era, though, it can be argued that therapy goal is too modestconsidering the very low clonal plasma cell burden at diagnosis, the goal should perhaps be a minimal residual disease (MRD)-negative state. Rather remarkably, the first therapy for the treatment of AL amyloidosis to receive US FDA approval garnered it only quite recently.3 As such, the use of ASCT as a treatment modality in a subset of patients with AL amyloidosis who were deemed fit, and in whom the therapy would likely be safe, remained an important option.

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