News

Two of the UK’s largest funders of medical research are to invest £8 million in a new world-leading centre for stem cell biology and medicine.The Wellcome Trust-Medical Research Council Cambridge Stem Cell Institute will advance our understanding of stem cells and their potential to treat a range of life-threatening conditions that currently have n…

The 2nd International Cambridge Stem Cell SymposiumThe Symposium took place in July at the Homerton College. It brought together world-leading scientists working on different aspects of cancer initiation, maintenance and recurrence. The meeting covered the latest findings in stem cell biology and cancer, including novel techniques in tracking the c…

Hiro Nakauchi obtained his M.D. from Yokohama City University School of Medicine and a Ph.D. in immunology from University of Tokyo Graduate School of Medicine.  He isolated CD8 genes during his post-doc period at the Laboratory of Prof. Leonard Herzenberg, Stanford University. After coming back to Japan, he started working on hematopoietic stem ce…

A collaboration between two EuropeanCommission projects, HEROIC and EuroSyStem, has cast new light on the study of embryonic stem (ES) cells. The research was led by HEROIC coordinator Professor Henk Stunnenberg, and EuroSyStem coordinator and SCI Director Professor Austin Smith.You can read the article here: Marks et al., The Transcriptional and E…

Cambridge research that created liver cells from stem cells has today been recognised with a national prize by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs).Producing liver cells that demonstrate inherited liver diseases from human skin cells has earned Dr Ludovic Vallier from the University of Cam…

Frye Lab researcher Claire Cox has provided the 10th video in the University of Cambridge Under the Microscope series. You can watch the video here.Under the Microscope is a collection of videos that show glimpses of the natural and man-made world in stunning close-up. They are released every Monday and Thursday via the series' YouTube playlist.The…

Barcelona, February 13th, 2012.As life begins, embryonic stem cells start to divide and develop into tissue ("differentiate"). Each stem cell has the potential to differentiate into different types of tissue cells, such as neurons, muscle, or blood cells, and the molecular mechanisms that determine its fate are highly complex. The earliest steps of…

Cambridge scientists have, for the first time, created cerebral cortex cells – those that make up the brain’s grey matter – from a small sample of human skin.  The researchers’ findings, which were funded by Alzheimer’s Research UK and the Wellcome Trust, were published today in Nature Neuroscience.Diseases of the cerebral cortex range from develop…

Cambridge scientists have used skin stem cells to create vascular smooth muscle cells, which make up the walls of blood vessels. This research could pave the way to new treatments and better screening for cardiovascular disease.Read the full story on the University website.

Stem Cell researchers at Cambridge and Edinburgh have discovered a promising stem cell therapy for multiple sclerosis. While much work is still needed to translate the discovery into an effective treatment, this breakthrough provides a promising road map towards a cure.A video story featuring the SCI's Robin Franklin can be viewed on the BBC News w…

New article from the Frye Lab published in NatureElevated protein synthesis and increased cell division rates are key physiological tasks for cancer cells and the protein translation machinery emerged as promising therapeutic target to control tumour growth. However, our study reveals that skin stem cells in both normal tissues and tumours synthesi…

New article from the Frye Lab in Nature CommunicationsMitochondrial disease is a chronic, genetic disorder caused by dysfunctional mitochondria, the organelles that generate energy for cells. Researchers used patient cells to identify a novel mechanism causing mitochondria to fail: Loss-of-function mutations in an enzyme called NSUN3 prevents the s…

A new atlas of gene expression during the earliest stages of life boosts studies of development - new study published in Nature led by CSCI researchers from the Gottgens Lab and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI).In the first genome-scale experiment of its kind, researchers have gained new insights into how a mouse embryo first begins…

Scientists have identified for the first time the ‘cell of origin’ – in other words, the first cell from which the cancer grows – in basal cell carcinoma, the most common form of skin cancer, and followed the chain of events that lead to the growth of these invasive tumours.Until now, there has been intense interest in the scientific field about wh…

Scientists have identified the function of Sall4, a protein important in early development and a hallmark of many cancers.In their paper, published in Development, they show that Sall4 functions to control gene expression in early embryonic cells, controlling their entry into the neural lineage. It is proposed that Sall4 acts to ensure only the rig…