Oggi lascia il Politecnico di Milano la collega Perla Innocenti che molti di voi conoscono per le interessanti lezioni tenute durante il corso Risorse elettroniche per la ricerca

A Perla collega, amica e grande estimatrice e promotrice di questo blog vanno i nostri migliori auguri per la sua attività di ricerca che prosegue in campo internazionale.

MIT creates 3D scaffold for growing stem cells

December 27, 2006

Stem cells grew, multiplied and differentiated into brain cells on a new three-dimensional scaffold of tiny protein fragments designed to be more like a living body than any other cell culture system.

An MIT engineer and Italian colleagues will report the invention–which may one day replace the ubiquitous Petri dish for growing cells–in the Dec. 27 issue of the Public Library of Science (PLoS) ONE.

Shuguang Zhang, associate director of MIT’s Center for Biomedical Engineering, is a pioneer in coaxing tiny fragments of amino acids called self-assembling peptides to organize themselves into useful structures. Working with visiting graduate student Fabrizio Gelain from Milan, Zhang created a designer scaffold from a network of protein nanofibers, each 5,000 times thinner than a human hair and containing pores up to 20,000 times smaller than the eye of a needle.

The researchers were able to grow a healthy colony of adult mouse stem cells on the three-dimensional scaffold without the drawbacks of two-dimensional systems.

In addition to helping researchers get a more accurate picture of how cells grow and behave in the body, the new synthetic structure can provide a more conducive microenvironment for tissue cell cultures and tissues used in regenerative medicine, such as skin grafts or neurons to replace brain cells lost to injury or disease.

The scaffold itself can be transplanted directly into the body with no ill effects.

“The time has come to move on from two-dimensional dishes to culture systems that better represent the natural context of cells in tissues and organs,” said Zhang, whose coauthors on the paper, in addition to Gelain, are from institutes and medical schools in Milan, Italy.

Life in two dimensions

Biomedical researchers have become increasingly aware of the limitations of growing living cells in coated, two-dimensional Petri dishes and glass slides.

In the body, cells are attached to and supported by the cells, other structures and proteins around them. A cell’s normal environment is a complex network of tiny fibers, gaps and pores through which oxygen, hormones and nutrients are delivered and waste products filtered away. Cells move within their natural environments in response to chemical signals or other stimuli.

Researchers are aware that cells on flat surfaces have skewed metabolisms, gene expression and growing patterns. But the only choices have been glass labware and a product called Matrigel, a gelatinous protein mixture secreted by mouse tumor cells. While Matrigel does resemble a complex extracellular environment, it also contains growth factors and unknown proteins that limit its desirability for experiments requiring precise conditions.

“Synthetic biopolymer microfiber scaffolds have been studied for more than 30 years to mimic a living 3D microenvironment, but concerns exist about their degradation products and chemicals,” the authors wrote in the paper.

Other synthetic polymer biomaterials are simply too big. Getting cells to grow on them is like forcing spiders to build webs on skyscraper girders. Zhang’s nanofiber scaffold, around 1,000 times smaller than the existing systems, is much closer in size to the extracellular matrices that living cells manufacture themselves.

Adding motifs

With the addition of defined amino acid fragments called active motifs, the scaffold can be fashioned to coax stem cells to behave in certain desirable ways-such as differentiating into needed body tissues or migrating toward bone marrow and other natural destinations.

“What makes these designer scaffolds particularly interesting is that cells survive longer and differentiate better without additional soluble growth factors,” Zhang said. “This suggests that extracellular microenvironments may play a more important role for cell survival and for carrying out cell functions than previously thought.”

The active motif method could be readily adapted to studying cell-to-cell interaction, cell migrations, tumor and cancer cell interaction with normal cells, cell-based drug testing and other diverse applications.

“I believe that in the next 20 years all cell cultures will be in 3D with the designer scaffolds, and most textbooks about cell biology will have to be revised when people obtain results from 3D cell culture studies,” Zhang said.

The researchers are now testing the designer scaffold with a variety of cells, including tooth, bone, heart, liver, cartilage, skin, pancreas, blood cells and artery-forming cells.

This work was supported by Olympus Corp. and the National Institutes of Health.

Ebbene sì, dopo anni di fatiche, gli sforzi della nostra eroina sono stati premiati…Valeria ha vinto il concorso ed è a tutti gli effetti “La Bibliotecaria di Bioingegneria”! Ora che ha conquistato l’agognato trono, nessuno sarà più al sicuro! Utenti, siete avvertiti: preparatevi a estenuanti corsi, training e addestramenti da marines!

Ma per ora festeggiamo: da tutti i colleghi e amici sinceri auguri per una radiosa (e non più precaria) carriera!

Buone feste!

Ci rivediamo a Gennaio.

Valeria e Pietro

Oggi 2 novembre 2006 è nata Anita, figlia della nostra ex collega Silvia.

Tanti cari auguri e un abbraccio da tutti noi.

Medical Technology Business Europe

http://www.mtbeurope.info/index.htm

An online magazine covering developments in electromedical technology, medical imaging and related technologies.

Versione in italiano disponibile qui http://www.mtbeurope.info/italiano/index.htm

Pubblicato sulla Gazzetta Ufficiale il DECRETO LEGISLATIVO 6 aprile 2006, n. 164 -

Riordino della disciplina del reclutamento dei professori universitari, a norma dell'articolo 1, comma 5 della legge 4 novembre 2005, n. 230

Il D.L. entra in vigore dal 18 maggio 2006

Il testo completo è leggibile sul sito della Gazzetta Ufficiale è scaricabile qui

Si terrà al Conneticut College (New London, Connecticut) la Conferenxa organizzatasotto l'egida del Gordon Research Conference dal titolo

"MEMS Technology and Biomedical Applications"

June 25-30, 2006.

Tutte le informazioni sull'evento comprese le mdoalità per l'iscrizione sul sito

  http://www.grc.uri.edu/programs/2006/mems.htm.

Session topics:

• Novel BioMEMS Sensing
• Chemical Specificity for BioMEMS Sensing
• BioMaterials for BioMEMS
• MEMS Technology as a Biomedical Device Platform
• Biologically Inspired MEMS
• Biofluidic Microsystems
• Lab-on-a-Chip
• Implantable MEMS Devices
• Applications of BioMEMS in Human Health

(more…)

Pubmed mette a disposizione una ricca serie di ebook gratuiti e liberamente accessibili nella sua sezione Bookshelf

Un esempio:

Molecular Biology of the cell

4th ed.
Alberts, Bruce; Johnson, Alexander; Lewis, Julian;
Raff, Martin; Roberts, Keith; Walter, Peter.
New York: Garland Publishing; c2002.
(more…)

Disponibile il motore di ricerca dedicato alla chimica CHMOOGLE

E' apparsa sul sito della prestigiosa rivista Lancet ed è stata ripresa dai quotidiani di tutto il mondo la notizia che una vescica è stata costruita in laboratorio. L'intervento è stato eseguito da Anthony Atàla della Wake Forest University (Carolina del Nord) e risale al 1999 ma la notizia è stata diffusa solo in questi giorni

Dal sito dell'Editore:

"Bladder reconstruction to prevent kidney disease - which usually involves grafts from the small intestine or stomach - has been associated with complications. Anthony Atala (Wake Forest University Medical School, Winston-Salem, NC, USA) and colleagues have investigated an alternative approach using engineered bladders grown from patients' own cells"

(more…)

Nel numero 21 del 20-03/2006 di la copertina è dedicata alla telemedicina con un articolo intitolato

"Telemedicina oggi in Italia"    

Nello stesso numero un approfondimento sul progetto HOMEY, finanziato dall'Unione Europea, per la gestione domiciliare del malato cronico

Appena nati ci siamo subito gemellati con Biblò, il blog della Biblioteca della Facoltà di Ingegneria dell'Università di Pisa

Siamo molto felici di questa collaborazione e ringaziamo i colleghi e i lettori per il caloroso benvenuto

Google sta per lanciarsi nel mondo della medicina con Google Health. (more…)