Stem Cells

Researchers at Whitehead Institute have identified a key target protein of glucocorticoids, the drugs that are used to increase red blood cell production in patients with certain types of anemia, including those resulting from trauma, sepsis, malaria, kidney dialysis, and chemotherapy.

Three Members of the Whitehead Institute faculty are poised to play significant roles in the establishment of a new stem cell research center based at Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skolkovo Tech) in suburban Moscow.

New genetic markers identified by researchers at Whitehead Institute and MIT could help make the process for reprogramming regular body cells into pluripotent stem cells more efficient, allowing scientists to predict which treated cells will successfully become pluripotent.

Using a stepwise trans-differentiation process, Whitehead Institute researchers have turned skin cells into embryonic Sertoli-like cells.

Whitehead Institute researchers have created a complete catalog of genes active in the planarian eye. Several identified genes are known to have versions that play a role in the vertebrate eye, including genes involved in eye development and others associated with age-related macular degeneration and Usher syndrome, a disorder that causes progressive retinal degradation.

Despite their unassuming appearance, the planarian flatworms in Whitehead Institute Member Peter Reddien's lab are revealing powerful new insights into the biology of stem cells—insights that may eventually help such cells deliver on a promising role in regenerative medicine.

Whitehead Institute researchers have determined the critical role one enzyme, lysine-specific demethylase 1 (LSD1), plays as mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs) differentiate.

By irradiating typical polystyrene lab plates with ultraviolet (UV) waves, Whitehead Institute and MIT scientists have created a surface capable of tripling the number of human embryonic stem (ES) and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells that can be grown in culture by current methods.

New findings by scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Whitehead Institute point to a decentralized society in tumors, with cancer cells able to interconvert between different types. These results have potential implications for the treatment of tumors, in particular, that attacking cancer stem cells alone may not be enough to fight cancer.