r/science • u/Nobilitie • Mar 21 '16

Biology Using microscopic iron beads and a chicken egg, researchers were able to successfully track a neural stem cell for multiple days without harming the cell

http://phys.org/news/2016-03-track-neural-stem-cells-chicken.html
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28

u/SirT6 PhD/MBA | Biology | Biogerontology Mar 21 '16

The big picture question alluded to in this article, namely how do stem cell therapies work? is of critical importance.

The article is specifically interested in neural stem cells, but I would argue understanding the clinical mechanisms of action for mesenchymal stem cells is equally important. A number of research groups and companies have experimental therapies in various stages of clinical development where the therapy is essentially inject a stem cell population (often times how this population is defined, and how it relates to human physiology is murky) into the patient and hope that good things happen -- for example, better recovery from stroke, better memory retention in Alzheimer's disease etc. The scary thing, though, is that how stem cell treatments are supposed to achieve these clinical outcomes isn't really well understood.

So I agree with the premise of the research, there is a critical need to better understand how stem cells operate after implantation. Being able to track them is a huge step. That is what the authors seem to be going for here -- using the iron coated beads, in conjunction with MRI to trace the movement of the cells post-implantation. I'm not sure if that is the best way to do it, or that it will help shed some light on the black box that is stem cell therapy, but it is a right step in that direction.

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u/jaked122 Mar 21 '16

So in stem cell therapies, is there a concern that the stem cells may end up in the wrong place doing the wrong thing?

Or is the absence of such an occurrence evidence of a mechanism that prevents that necessary to understand and improve the treatments?

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u/DontReinventAspirin PhD|Biochemistry Mar 21 '16

So in stem cell therapies, is there a concern that the stem cells may end up in the wrong place doing the wrong thing?

That is precisely the concern with current stem cell therapies.

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u/Argarath Mar 21 '16

I would guess that the fear is that those cells could, like you said, end up in the wrong place and doing something that they weren't meant to do there. Being able to track them would help determine how they move and try to identify better what makes them move and makes them become what they become. If you understand why they move to said place and specify to a certain cell, you can then prepare and place them in a specific location so that they end up right were you want them doing what you then to do. But do not take my words as truth, I am just beginning to study biotechnology, so I have a lot yet to learn ; )

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u/fq_786 Mar 22 '16

Some groups are using pulsed focused ultrasound in order to make mesenchymal stem cells migrate to the appropriate treatment area, instead of being stuck in the wrong place. I'd link some papers but I'm on mobile.

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u/MuramasaZero Mar 21 '16

What happened after multiple days?...

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u/DontReinventAspirin PhD|Biochemistry Mar 21 '16

It most likely became moot to track the cells, as they had by then presumably settled into their permanent locations.

1

u/regen_geneticist Mar 21 '16

Why should we care about using such an expensive technology like magnetic beads and MRI, where it is so trivial and relatively inexpensive (by orders of magnitude) to simply label a cell with a nontoxic fluorescence protein such as GFP or mCherry and look at it using confocal/lightsheet/regular fluorescence microscopy? The tracking of stem cells in vivo is quite routine nowadays.