Tag Archives: platform

Scientists control cells following transplantation, from inside out

Associate Professor Jeffrey Karp, PhD, and James Ankrum, PhD, demonstrate in this month’s issue of Nature Protocols how to load cells with microparticles that provide the cells cues for how they should behave over the course of days or weeks as the particles degrade. "Regardless of where the cell is in the body, it’s going to be receiving its cues from the inside," said Karp, a Harvard Stem Cell Institute Principal Faculty member at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. "This is a completely different strategy than the current method of placing cells onto drug-doped microcarriers or scaffolds, which is limiting because the cells need to remain in close proximity to those materials in order to function. Also these types of materials are too large to be infused into the bloodstream." Cells are relatively simple to control in a Petri dish. …

Staurosporine safely delivered in liposomes

"By itself, staurosporine shows potent activity against a number of cancer cell lines, including chemotherapy-resistant tumors. However, it also harms normal tissue," said senior author Santosh Kesari, MD, PhD, director of neuro-oncology at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center. "With this study, we have been able to overcome the pharmacokinetic barriers to delivering staurosporine to tumors with the use of liposomes." STS was originally isolated from the bacterium Streptomyces staurosporeus in 1977. The compound prompts a wide variety of cancer cell types to self-destruct, a process called apoptosis or programmed cell death. …