News

Step Change for Stem Cell Research – New Building Tops Out

27 April 2017

The Wellcome Trust – MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute marked a major milestone this month with the topping out of its new purpose-built home on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. Construction of the 18,000sqm, £94million facility is due to be completed in late 2018, when all 29 research groups that make up the Cambridge...

Cambridge discovery paves the way for new diabetes treatment options

27 April 2017

Cambridge stem cell scientists have revealed a new mechanism controlling the formation of insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells. These beta cells are the same cells that are damaged and lost in people living with diabetes. With this new understanding, researchers now have the opportunity to improve the production of...

Rising Star: Cambridge Stem Cell Scientist awarded Young Investigator Award

20 April 2017

Cambridge stem cell scientist Dr Florian T. Merkle has been announced as a 2017 Young Investigator (C.J. Herrick) Award winner by the American Association on Anatomists. The Young Investigator awards recognise outstanding investigators in the early stages of their careers who have made important contributions to the field...

Miniature ‘womb lining’ grown in lab could reveal secrets of menstrual cycle and early pregnancy

13 April 2017

Scientists at the Wellcome Trust – MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute are part of a team who have succeeded in growing miniature functional models of the lining of the womb (uterus) in culture. These organoids (lab-grown clusters of cells mimicking the womb lining) could provide new insights into the early stages of...

Stem Cell Exchange podcasts launch

11 April 2017

Today marks the launch of a series of podcasts put together by CSCI student Mariana Alves (Silva group) talking to CSCI group leaders and discovering more about their research. #cscipodcasts Mariana has been interviewing a selection of our CSCI Principal Investigators and the first podcast, released today, stars Professor...

Genome rewiring during neural cell development

29 March 2017

Affiliate PI Peter Rugg-Gunn ’s group at the Babraham Institute has mapped the changes in the three-dimensional shape of DNA that occur as human stem cells specialise towards becoming developing neural cells, the cells that make up the nervous system. These changes in DNA shape rewire the circuitry that connects genes with...

New tool allows analysis of single-cell RNA data in pre-malignant tumours

27 March 2017

CSCI researchers and their collaborators at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute have developed a new analysis tool that was able to show, for the first time, which genes were expressed by individual cells in different genetic versions of a benign blood cancer. Single cell RNA sequencing can define cell types by revealing...

New stem cell method produces millions of human brain and muscle cells in days

27 March 2017

CSCI (Vallier lab) and Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute scientists along with their collaborators at the University of Cambridge have created a new technique that simplifies the production of human brain and muscle cells - allowing millions of functional cells to be generated in just a few days. The results published in...

A Tale of Two States

24 March 2017

Researchers from Peter Rugg-Gunn’s lab (Cambridge Stem Cell Institute Affiliate PI, Babraham Institute) and colleagues at the Karolinska Institute have identified a set of molecular ‘flags’ that are present on the surface of human embryonic stem cells. Embryonic stem cells are cells that have the potential to differentiate...

Visualising the genome: researchers create first 3D structures of active DNA

13 March 2017

Scientists in Dr Brian Hendrich’s group at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, together with colleagues from the Departments of Biochemistry, Chemistry and the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology have determined the first 3D structures of intact mammalian genomes from individual cells, showing how the DNA from all the...