May 16, 2017 by David Stacey Credit: University of Western Australia

Research led by The University of Western Australia has discovered a new, simple and less expensive way of growing human stem cells.

Using hydrogel, a gel with a gradient that can be used to mimic the stiffness of human body tissues, the researchers were able to generate positive outcomes for the growth of stem cells.

Dr Yu Suk Choi from UWA's School of Human Sciences at The University of Western Australia led the international collaboration which also included researchers from the University of California, San Diego (USA) and Max Planck Institute for Medical Research (Germany).

"Stem cells work by using the 'stiffness' of surrounding tissue as a gauge to identify the way they need to behave in a particular environment in the human body," Dr Choi said.

"By using hydrogel to mimic the stiffness of tissue, we found we could 'trick' the stem cells into behaving in particular ways to help them grow and encourage the cells to behave in positive, regenerative ways.

"Hydrogel is simple and inexpensive to produce and could have a wide range of applications in biology labs that don't always have the infrastructure available to use other methods to mimic the stiffness of tissue to aid stem cell growth."

Dr Choi said the research may have important uses in combating serious illnesses affecting the human population.

"Many degenerative diseases result in changes to tissue stiffness which alters the behavior of cells," he said.

"But by controlling tissue stiffness we can revert cell behavior back to normal, and change their behavior at the disease site into more regenerative behaviour. This will help us us to treat diseases such as cancer that are currently very difficult to treat."

The next step for the researchers will be to use hydrogel with patient originated cells to further understand the effect of tissue stiffness on cell behaviour.

Explore further: Inbuilt body clocks link breast stiffness to cancer risks

More information: William J. Hadden et al. Stem cell migration and mechanotransduction on linear stiffness gradient hydrogels, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2017). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1618239114

University of Manchester biologists have discovered that breast tissues have 24-hour body clocks, and that several hundred genes are regulated in a daily cycle.

Bioengineers at the University of California, San Diego have proven that when it comes to guiding stem cells into a specific cell type, the stiffness of the extracellular matrix used to culture them really does matter. When ...

EPFL scientists have developed a gel for growing miniaturized body organs that can be used in clinical diagnostics and drug development.

Researchers at the University of Illinois report they can alter blood cell development through the use of biomaterials designed to mimic characteristics of the bone marrow.

A new biomaterial can be used to study how and when stem cells sense the mechanics of their surrounding environment, found a team led by Robert Mauck, PhD, the Mary Black Ralston Professor for Education and Research in Orthopaedic ...

A new method for manipulating the gel-like environments that house stem cells could help researchers direct the growth of these versatile cells into bone, tendon, tissue or other specific lineages, says a Texas A&M University ...

Large families and strong social ties help animals live longer, new research suggests.

The beginnings of agriculture changed human history and has fascinated scientists for centuries.

Clocks and calendars, sports scores and stock-market tickers - our society is saturated with numbers. One of the first things we teach our children is to count, just as we teach them their ABCs. But is this evidence of a ...

Human teeth evolved from the same genes that make the bizarre beaked teeth of the pufferfish, according to new research by an international team of scientists.

Scientists from the University of Aberdeen are part of an international team which has been working to better understand the biology of a snail species that transmits a disease infecting 200 million people, killing around ...

Findings of a new study solve a key mystery about the chemistry of how plants tell time so they can flower and metabolize nutrients.

Please sign in to add a comment. Registration is free, and takes less than a minute. Read more

View post:
Researchers uncover new way of growing stem cells - Phys.Org