Human adipose tissue has been shown to contain a population of cells that possesses extensive proliferative capacity and the ability to differentiate into multiple cell lineages. These cells are referred to as adipose tissue-derived stem cells (ADSCs) and are generally similar, though ...

The rapid development of microarray technology during the last decade has greatly expanded the ability to define the genes expressed in cells. This chapter will focus on describing the steps required for conducting successful microarray experiments with multipotential stromal c ...

Adipose tissue has proven to serve as an abundant, accessible, and rich source of adult stem cells with multipotent properties suitable for tissue engineering and regenerative medical applications. Here, we describe a detailed method for the isolation and expansion of adipose-deriv ...

Successful gene therapy technology relies on the delivery of the therapeutic product into appropriate target cells. Gene delivery to mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) has been proposed as a mechanism to promote the augmentation of tissue-engineered replacement systems. In particula ...

MSCs are the plastic adherent adult stem/progenitor cells from bone marrow originally referred to as fibroblastoid colony forming units, then in the hematological literature as marrow stromal cells, subsequently as mesenchymal stem cells, and most recently as multipotential mes ...

The derivation of human embryonic stem (hES) cells is a challenging procedure. The isolation and maintenance of hES is visually and manually complicated, involving mechanical or enzymatic passaging using either collagenase or trypsin. This chapter describes detailed protocols t ...

Since their derivation in 1998, human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) have been the center of tremendous scientific efforts in improve the existing methodologies for their isolation and maintenance to exhaust the potential use of these unique cells in cell-based therapy and development ...

As human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) undergo differentiation, they express genes characteristic of the lineage for which they are destined. However, fully differentiated individual cell types can be characterized by the number of mitochondria they possess and the copies of the mitoc ...

There is no available experimental system wherein human cancer cells can be grown in the context of a mixed population of normal differentiated human cells for testing biological aspects of cancer cell growth (tumor cell invasion, angiogenesis) or response to anti-cancer therapies. Hum ...

Human embryonic stem cells efficiently differentiate blood vessels, which allows using this in vitro model to study the interaction of blood vessels with adjacent tissues. Herein, we introduce confrontation cultures of human embryonic stem cells with multicellular tumor sphero ...

This chapter introduces the representative method to culture human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) under the feeder and feeder-free conditions, the former of which is used to maintain or expand undifferentiated hESCs, and the latter can be used for preparation of pure hESCs RNA samples, or for sc ...

It has been recently identified that cytokines and BMP-4 promote hematopoiesis from human embryonic stem cells (hESC) and that, before hematopoietic commitment, a rare subpopulation of cells lacking CD45, but expressing PECAM-1, Flk-1, and VE-cadherin (hereinafter termed CD45neg ...

The traditional methods of studying the differentiation of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) are to differentiate them in vitro or in immune-deficient mice as teratomas. The chick embryo is a well-studied and accessible experimental system that has been shown to permit the development of ...

Current therapy for acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) includes induction with Ara-C and an anthracycline, such as daunorubicin, idarubicin, or mitoxantrone. Unfortunately, most patients relapse from initial remission. Nearly one-fifth of early relapses experience treatme ...

Standard chemotherapy for cancer usually is accompanied by systemic tox icity, reflecting the large number of cellular targets affected by the chemo therapeutic agent. in principle, an antisense oligonucleotide targeted at a gene essential for neoplastic cell growth should inter ...

Immediate-early genes (IEGs) are members of a class of genes that respond, in many cell types, to a variety of stimuli by rapid, but transient expression (1). Several of these IEGs code for transcription factors and include the widely studied activator protein-1 (AP-1) transcription factor comp ...

Antisense oligonucleotides have attracted special interest as a novel class of therapeutic agents for the treatment of viral infection, cancers, and genetic disorders because of their ablhty to inhibit expression of a disease-associated gene in a sequence-specific manner. Gene ex ...

Biological science is a rapidly flowing experimental stream, at times encountering a dam that impedes further progress. At such a pomt, a single crack may induce a major breakthrough Discovery of the double helical structure of DNA in 1953 (1) caused such an event, with flooding of new information i ...

In the laboratory, antisense oligodeoxynucleotides (ODN) have repeatedly demonstrated efficacy in modulating the expression of various genes, thus providing important insights into their roles in tumorigenesis or normal growth and development (1–3). Although attention has ...

Antisense oligonucleotides represent a new paradigm for drug discovery that holds great promise to deliver potent and specific drugs with fewer undesired side effects. The antisense paradigm offers the opportunity to identify rapidly lead compounds based on knowledge of the biolo ...