Fight Aging!

Far too much is going on in the field of stem cell research to give more than a flavor of progress in any document of a reasonable length, but here are a few interesting items that caught my eye today.

Elusive pancreatic stem cells found in adult mice:

Just as many scientists had given up the search, researchers have discovered that the pancreas does indeed harbor stem cells with the capacity to generate new insulin-producing beta cells. If the finding made in adult mice holds for humans, the newfound progenitor cells will represent "an obvious target for therapeutic regeneration of beta cells in diabetes"

If the past couple of years have made anything clear, it's that an absence of stem cells in a particular organ or tissue means that researchers aren't looking hard enough. A steady stream of newly identified stem cell populations flows through the popular science press, sometimes one a month. An identified population is raw material for first generation stem cell therapies, often based on autologous transplantation, that aim to kick-start existing regenerative and growth processes to heal what the body will not heal on its own.

Meanwhile, the existing drug research and development community is giving rise to a hybrid school aiming to produce (or repurpose) drugs that can manipulate stem cell behavior in desired ways, controlling growth or regrowth in damaged or wasted tissue:

Building stronger bones, 1 stem cell at a time:

These studies raise the possibility that drug-induced progenitor/stem cell differentiation could be used in vivo to therapeutically modulate bone formation from a primitive reservoir of cells and that an existing clinical-grade drug can be "repurposed" to modulate stem biology. This strategy may be applicable to increase bone volume in the osteolytic disease of malignancy or in osteoporosis, where the function of more mature populations of cells has been compromised.

Aiding the variety of paths presently followed to manipulate stem cell behavior are those researchers who untangle stem cell biochemistry. You can get a machine to do the job if you only have half the instructions, but it's a lot easier with the full set.

Protein that controls hair growth also keeps stem cells slumbering:

Like fine china and crystal, which tend to be used sparingly, stem cells divide infrequently. It was thought they did so to protect themselves from unnecessary wear and tear. But now new research from Rockefeller University has unveiled the protein that puts the brakes on stem cell division and shows that stem cells may not need such guarded protection to maintain their potency.

...

"It seems like the resting phase isn't as necessary as was once thought," says Horsley. "Even though these stem cells are highly proliferative, they still maintain their stem cell character."

This particular immediate application - restoration of hair growth - isn't all that interesting for someone who cares about whether their organs are aging them to death. It will no doubt garner intense interest and investment from the hair restoration industry (which is larger and more involved in fundamental research than you might imagine) and people whose priorities are not quite so in line with healthy longevity. You can live without hair - it's harder to do so with the other degenerations of age, and repairing those other degenerations should be higher on everyone's priority list.