Stem Cells Field of Research

Stem cells are cells found in most, if not all, multi-cellular organisms. They are characterized by the ability to renew themselves through mitotic cell division and differentiating into a diverse range of specialized cell types. Stem cells can now be grown and transformed into specialized cells with characteristics consistent with cells of various tissues such as muscles or nerves through cell culture. Highly plastic adult stem cells from a variety of sources, including umbilical cord blood and bone marrow, are routinely used in medical therapies. Embryonic cell lines and autologous embryonic stem cells generated through therapeutic cloning have also been proposed as promising candidates for future therapies.

Congress must act now to continue lifesaving stem cell researc

afagen posted a photo:

Advertising enouraging suport for stem cell research in The Washington Post from the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Reading the paper aboard an Amtrak train on the Northeast Corridor from Washington, DC, to New York, NY

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Jacobs School of Engineering posted a photo:

UCSD assistant bioengineering professor Karen Christman is working to help fuel the growing field of tissue engineering.

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Jacobs School of Engineering posted a photo:

UCSD assistant bioengineering professor Karen Christman (left) is helping to prepare the next generation of bioengineers.

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Jacobs School of Engineering posted a photo:

Bioengineer is One of Five UCSD Recipients of NIH Awards to Encourage High-Risk Research and Innovation

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Jacobs School of Engineering posted a photo:

Bioengineer is One of Five UCSD Recipients of NIH Awards to Encourage High-Risk Research and Innovation

www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?...

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Jacobs School of Engineering posted a photo:

Bioengineer is One of Five UCSD Recipients of NIH Awards to Encourage High-Risk Research and Innovation

www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?...

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Jacobs School of Engineering posted a photo:

Supportive Materials will Help Regenerate Heart Tissue

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Jacobs School of Engineering posted a photo:

Supportive Materials will Help Regenerate Heart Tissue

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Jacobs School of Engineering posted a photo:

Supportive Materials will Help Regenerate Heart Tissue

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Jacobs School of Engineering posted a photo:

Supportive Materials will Help Regenerate Heart Tissue

www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?...

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Madison Area Technical College posted a photo:

Tracking Stem Cells in 3-D using Computer Vision Technology

ConnectedSocialMedia posted a video:

Mei Chen explains, "The vertical axis is time and the horizontal one is the frame. And then you just get to see how the cell trajectories are moving and crossing each other."

Mei comments on her work on computer vision and stemness on the online radio show Future Lab:
connectedsocialmedia.com/5431/future-lab-stemness

Side-By-Side Stem Cell Tracking Results

ConnectedSocialMedia posted a video:

"Different colors denote different cells," Mei Chen notes. "And the little tail they are dragging around is like a 2-D projection of their 3-D trajectory. So the little tails they are dragging around are their own trajectory of how they have been moving around."

Mei Chen comments on her work on computer vision and stemness on the online radio show Future Lab:
connectedsocialmedia.com/5431/future-lab-stemness

Mei Chen of Intel Labs, Pittsburgh

ConnectedSocialMedia posted a photo:

Mei Chen is a senior scientist at Intel Research Pittsburgh. Her research interests include medical image computing, computer vision, robotics, and machine learning.

Looking back at the genesis of her interest in science Mei recounts, "My parents are both scientists who work in the Chinese Aeronautics Administration. That's like NASA in the US. In China, I did my college education in China before I came to the U.S. for grad school. The cultural revolution was over and China realized it needed to develop technology, so teachers held up people like Madame Curie as a role model for students. I actually once thought I could be like that someday. Now I realize how hard that is. But still, I see the work I'm doing is very significant and helping to save lives."

Mei is a co-investigator of the Interactive Search-Assisted Decision Support (ISADS) project, she has been leading the development of ISADS applications in Dermatology and Ophthalmology. Prior to joining Intel, she was a research scientist at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories from 2001-2006. With a focus on computational photography, technologies she developed have been transferred to five HP products that are on the market. Before her career at HP Labs, Dr. Chen was a Member of Technical Staff at Sarnoff Corporation from 1999-2001, developing innovative video enhancement and rendering technologies. From 1996-1999, during her graduate study at Carnegie Mellon University, she designed a 3-D deformable registration algorithm for medical images that is used by peers today. Dr. Chen is the author of 31 peer-reviewed publications and 16 patents. She holds a Ph.D. and a M.S. from the School of Computer Science in Carnegie Mellon University, and a M.S. and B. S. from Tsinghua University in China.

Mei commenst on her work on computer vision and stemness on the online radio show Future Lab:
connectedsocialmedia.com/5431/future-lab-stemness

Dr. Takeo Kanade, Carnegie Mellon University

ConnectedSocialMedia posted a photo:

Takeo Kanade is the U. A. and Helen Whitaker University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics and the director of Quality of Life Technology Engineering Research Center at Carnegie Mellon University. He is also the director of Digital Human Research Center in Tokyo, which he founded in 2001. He received his Doctoral degree in Electrical Engineering from Kyoto University, Japan, in 1974. After holding a faculty position in the Department of Information Science, Kyoto University, he joined Carnegie Mellon University in 1980, where he was the Director of the Robotics Institute from 1992 to 2001.

Dr. Kanade comments on his work on computer vision on the online radio show Future Lab:
connectedsocialmedia.com/5431/future-lab-stemness

Mei Chen bringing up the cell tracking system

ConnectedSocialMedia posted a photo:

Mai says that a big challenge in tracking stem cells in vitro is keeping count in real time. Using computer vision, cells can be tracked even as they explode in population. As meu puts it, "The specific goal of the project is to develop a computer vision system that can automatically try to quantify the spatial temporal history of stem cell division from phase contrast imagery."

Mei comments on her work on computer vision and stemness on the online radio show Future Lab:
connectedsocialmedia.com/5431/future-lab-stemness

Takeo Kanade, tracking thousands of cells

ConnectedSocialMedia posted a photo:

"My major thrust is the "science of computer vision," Dr. Kanade points out. "Traditionally, many computer vision algorithms were derived heuristically either by introspection or biological analogy. In contrast, my approach to vision is to transform the physical, geometrical, optical and statistical processes, which underlie vision, into mathematical and computational models. This approach results in algorithms that are far more powerful and revealing than traditional ad hoc methods based solely on heuristic knowledge. With this approach we have developed a new class of algorithms for color, stereo, motion, and texture."

Dr. Kanade comments on his work on computer vision on the online radio show Future Lab:
connectedsocialmedia.com/5431/future-lab-stemness

Dr. Phil Campbell, Carnegie Mellon University

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Dr. Phil Campbell is a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute of Complex Engineered Systems and Biomedical and Health Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Animal Science from Auburn University as well as a Ph.D. in Physiology from Pennsylvania State University. Currently, Dr. Campbell is actively involved in research efforts focusing on the bioavailability of growth factors.

During a Future Lab interview, Dr. Cambell spoke about his long-term vision. "Most people have heard of newts and salamanders or starfish. What's interesting about those types of animals is they can lose significant amounts of their body and then completely regenerate them. If a newt loses its hand, it can grow that hand back and it's completely functional. But if you lose your hand it will not grow back. But, you do have the genetic potential. That's a vision for the future in the research. Everything moves toward that, but I don't hold that to be achievable anytime in the next few hundred years. What I hold as my own personal vision is that we can come up with constructs of hormones that will promote stem cells to develop into various interconnected tissues, like the Achilles tendon."

Dr. Campbell has been featured in several publications for his research efforts in his field. His current projects incorporate the study of growth factor association and dissociation with the various interstitial components, proteolytic processing, etc. under a variety of physiological conditions. By utilizing this basic scientific information, Dr. Campbell and his research personnel are working towards improving biomimetic tissue engineered materials appropriate for musculoskeletal tissue repair and regeneration.

Dr. Phil Campbell comments on his stem cell research on the online radio show Future Lab:
connectedsocialmedia.com/5431/future-lab-stemness

Stem cells

BWJones posted a photo:

From this Jonesblog entry: prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/2010/08/back-to-louisvil...

transplant

detritus posted a photo:

my father getting 22 billion of his stem cells put back into him. over the next couple weeks they will find their way back into his bones and make fresh bone marrow and re-grow his immune system.

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