Healing critical-size defects (defects that would not otherwise heal on their own) in intramembraneous bone, the flat bone type that forms the skull, is a vivid demonstration of new techniques devised by researchers at John Hopkins University to use hESCs for tissue regeneration.
Using mesenchymal precursor cells isolated from hESCs, the Hopkins team steered them into bone regeneration by using "scaffolds," tiny, three-dimensional platforms made from biomaterials
Physical context, it turns out, is a powerful influence on cell fate. Nathaniel S. Hwang, Jennifer Elisseeff, and colleagues at Hopkins demonstrated that by changing the scaffold materials, they could shift mesenchymal precursor cells into either of the body's osteogenic pathways: intramembraneous, which makes skull, jaw, and clavicle bone; or endochondral, which builds the "long" bones and involves initial formation of cartilage, which is then transformed into bone by mineralization.
It appears that material in the environment, the scaffolds, can influence the generation of different cell types for ESC. Usually, growth factors etc have been used so this is a different approach.
Tags: ESC, intramembraneous, endochondral, bone, stem cells, embryonic stem cells
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