The International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) will award its 2023 ISSCR Achievement Award to Thomas A. Rando, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research and professor of Neurology and of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology, UCLA, USA. The prize recognizes the transformative body of work of an investigator that has had a major impact on the field of stem cell research or regenerative medicine. He will present his research on 17 June 2023 during Plenary VII at ISSCR 2023 Boston + Virtual, the world’s leading gathering of the brightest minds in stem cell research and regenerative medicine.

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Dr. Thomas Rando, a renowned neurologist and stem cell biologist, has been named director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA.

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We’ve all met older adults who seem younger, whose bodies and brains seem decades nimbler than their actual ages, and wondered, “What makes them different?” Despite the wide range of supplements and related products that claim, without scientific evidence, that they can turn back the years, the key to foiling Father Time may lie in the field of epigenetics.
Documents for a married couple – in 95% of cases, spouses applying for a mortgage become co-borrowers and are equally responsible for repaying the loan. Borrowers in a registered relationship must provide the same package of documents as the marriage certificate. When calculating the loan, the total family income will be taken into account, so a married couple can count on more favorable take control of your finances conditions. In the case of a co-borrower / guarantor, the parties to the transaction bear the same financial responsibility as the borrower, therefore, no less strict requirements are imposed on them. In addition to the standard list of documents for a mortgage, at the request of the bank, the guarantor is obliged to provide a tax return for the last year, a photocopy of the employment contract and a certificate in the form of 2-NDFL. … The co-borrower must, among other things, provide a pension insurance certificate.

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Pretreatment with a stem-cell-activating protein significantly enhances healing in mice, Stanford researchers say. The approach could eventually help people going into surgery or combat heal better from injuries they sustain.

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Can billions of dollars’ worth of high-tech research succeed in making death optional?

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At the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., scientists are trying to get time to run backward. Biological time, that is. In the first attempt to reverse aging by reprogramming the genome, they have rejuvenated the organs of mice and lengthened their life spans by 30 percent. The technique, which requires genetic engineering, cannot be applied directly to people, but the achievement points toward better understanding of human aging and the possibility of rejuvenating human tissues by other means.

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The National Academy of Medicine announced today the election of 70 regular members and 9 international members during its annual meeting. Election to the Academy is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine and recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service. Dr. Thomas Rando was among those elected.

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We are often told that sleep is one of the most important elements of a healthy lifestyle, that it helps in the healing and repair of our heart and blood vessels – among other things.

It turns out that sleep, or something very similar, is equally important for stem cells, helping them retain their power or potency, which is a measure of their effectiveness and efficiency in generating the mature adult cells that are needed to repair damage. Now researchers from Stanford, with a little help from CIRM, have found a way to help stem cells get the necessary rest before kicking in to action. This could pave the way for a whole new approach to treating a variety of genetic disorders such as muscular dystrophy.

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Click to play webinar

Dr. Rando participated in a webinar hosted by the journal ‘Current Opinion in Cell Biology’, and sponsored by Beckman Coulter.  A recording is available on demand at the link to the left.

Abstract:

Many adult stem cells reside in the quiescent state, or the G0 state of the cell cycle, for prolonged periods of time. This state, one reversible cell cycle withdrawal, has long been viewed as a dormant state with minimal basal activity. However, increasingly there is evidence that suggests that quiescent cells have specific transcriptional, post-transcriptional and metabolic programs that serve at least two functions. The first is to actively maintain the quiescent state, indicating that this is not simply a state of dormancy but in fact under active regulation. The second is to prime the cells for activation, a process that is characterized by the upregulation of multiple cellular processes necessary for cells to enter the cell cycle and begin the process of differentiation.

Skeletal muscle stem cells, or satellite cells, have proven to be extremely valuable in the study of stem cell quiescence because they persist in the quiescent state for weeks, months, and at least in long-lived mammals, perhaps years. In addition, they can be readily identified in situ, they can be rapidly purified by FACS at very high yield and very high purity, and the states of quiescence, activation and “re-quiescence” (i.e. the process by which a proliferating cell returns to quiescence in the process of stem cell self-renewal) can be modeled and studied in vitro. We have focused our studies of stem cell quiescence on this population, and we have discovered unexpected levels of regulation of quiescence and activation. These include the maintenance of the quiescent state by quiescence-specific miRNAs and by active signaling via the Notch pathway. Recent epigenetic profiling using ChIP-seq analysis has revealed evidence of dynamic regulation of chromatin in quiescent stem cells and intriguing epigenetic changes that occur during chronological stem cell aging. Finally, recent results from our laboratory have revealed an unexpected ability of quiescent stem cells to respond to systemic signals and poise themselves in a “pre-activation” state, which we call the “alert state”, and which suggests that in addition to the traditional cell cycle there is also a “quiescence cycle” that allows stem cells to cycle between the quiescent state and the alert state while remaining in G0. Deciphering the molecular mechanisms regulating the quiescent state of adult stem cells will offer new insights into how tissue regeneration is accomplished and how it is dys regulated in pathological conditions and in ageing.