A Speed Limit Could Be a Breakthrough for Stem Cell Therapy

Less speed, improved cellular reprogramming

10-Mar-2022 - Replacing sick or damaged cells with healthy cells: this is a major goal of regenerative medicine. One of the most promising approaches is cellular reprogramming, whereby one cell type in our body converts to another cell type. Research carried out at Helmholtz Munich and ...

Unlimited potential: New ways to generate totipotent-like cells

13-Jan-2020 - Totipotency is set to become a key tool for research and future medical applications. Finding efficient ways to generate totipotent-like cells is therefore crucial. In a new study, a group of researchers at Helmholtz Zentrum München found that totipotent-like cells can be induced by manipulating ...

Pluripotency or differentiation – that is the question

07-May-2019 - Induced pluripotent stem cells can turn into any type of cell in the body or remain in their original form. In the current edition of Molecular Cell, scientists from the Helmholtz Zentrum München describe how cells “decide” which of these two directions to take. During their research, they ...

Brain Confetti: Why our Sense of Smell Declines in Old Age

21-Dec-2018 - As mammals age, their sense of smell deteriorates. In a study published in the journal ‘Cell Reports’, an interdisciplinary research team at Helmholtz Zentrum München and the University Medical Centre Mainz investigated why this is the case. For their study, the researchers tracked the ...

(Re)-acquiring the potential to become everything

20-Dec-2017 - A new study identifies a specific population of pluripotent embryonic stem cells that can reprogram to totipotent-like cells in culture. Moreover, the scientists of Helmholtz Zentrum München and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) have identified bottlenecks and drivers of this ...

Repetitive elements shape embryonic chromatin landscape

30-Aug-2017 - Retrotransposons are repetitive elements that form almost half of the mammalian genome. Even though they are so common, they have previously been considered to be fairly insignificant. Together with colleagues from the USA, scientists from the Helmholtz Zentrum München have now shown that ...

Clear view on stem cell development

Image correction software simplifies quantification of stem cells

22-Jun-2017 - Today, tracking the development of individual cells and spotting the associated factors under the microscope is nothing unusual. However, impairments like shadows or changes in the background complicate the interpretation of data. Now, researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and ...

Enough is enough

Stem cell factor Nanog knows when to slow down

28-Nov-2016 - The transcription factor Nanog plays a crucial role in the self-renewal of embryonic stem cells. Previously unclear was how its protein abundance is regulated in the cells. Researchers at the Helmholtz Zentrum München and the Technical University of Munich, working in collaboration with ...

Big Data for small cells – a new tracking and quantification tool for single cells

20-Jul-2016 - Working with colleagues from the ETH Zürich, scientists at the Helmholtz Zentrum München and the Technical University of Munich have developed software that allows observing cells for weeks while also measuring molecular properties. Certain questions in modern cell biology can only be answered by ...