Astrocyte-like cells differentiated from a novel population of CD45-positive cells in adult human peripheral blood

Expression of CD45 in non-hematopoietic cells: implications in regenerative medicine and disease management

CD45 plays a crucial role in the regulation of hematopoiesis. However, a comprehensive understanding of its role in non-hematopoietic cells is lacking. Several tissue precursors express CD45, indicating its crucial role in tissue regeneration. These precursors would fall prey to the recent therapies involving CD45 as a target. CD45+ double-positive tumor cells contribute to cancer progression, but whether CD45 is involved in the process needs to be investigated. Recently, we showed that aging induces CD45 expression in mesenchymal stromal cells and affects their differentiation potential. In this review, we, for the first time, unravel the important implications of the expression of CD45 in non-hematopoietic cells and provide novel insights into its potential therapeutic target in regenerative medicine and disease management.

Transgene and Chemical Transdifferentiation of Somatic Cells for Rapid and Efficient Neurological Disease Cell Models

For neurological diseases, molecular and cellular research relies on the use of model systems to investigate disease processes and test potential therapeutics. The last decade has witnessed an increase in the number of studies using induced pluripotent stem cells to generate disease relevant cell types from patients. The reprogramming process permits the generation of a large number of cells but is potentially disadvantaged by introducing variability in clonal lines and the removal of phenotypes of aging, which are critical to understand neurodegenerative diseases. An under-utilized approach to disease modeling involves the transdifferentiation of aged cells from patients, such as fibroblasts or blood cells, into various neural cell types. In this review we discuss techniques used for rapid and efficient direct conversion to neural cell types. We examine the limitations and future perspectives of this rapidly advancing field that could improve neurological disease modeling and drug discovery.

The Promising Effects of Transplanted Umbilical Cord Mesenchymal Stem Cells on the Treatment in Traumatic Brain Injury

Many studies have reported the recovery ability of umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells (UC-MSCs) for neural diseases. In this study, the authors explored the roles of UC-MSCs to treat the traumatic brain injury. Umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells were isolated from healthy neonatal rat umbilical cord immediately after delivery. The traumatic brain injury (TBI) model was formed by the classical gravity method. The authors detected the behavior changes and measured the levels of inflammatory factors, such as interleukin-lβ and tumor necrosis factor-α by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) at 1, 2, 3, 4 weeks after transplantation between TBI treated and untreated with UC-MSCs. Simultaneously, the expression of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) and brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) were measured by real-time-polymerase chain reaction and ELISA.The authors found that the group of transplantation UC-MSCs has a significant improvement than other group treated by phosphate buffered saline. In the behavioral test, the Neurological Severity Scores of UC-MSCs + TBI group were lower than TBI group (P < 0.05), but not obviously higher than control group at 2, 3, and 4week, respectively. The inflammatory factors are significantly reduced comparison with TBI group (P < 0.05), but both GDNF and BDNF were higher than TBI group (P < 0.05). The results indicated that UC-MSCs might play an important role in TBI recovery through inhibiting the release of inflammatory factors and increasing the expression of GDNF and BDNF.