Keep quiescent and carry on

A major obstacle for stem cell therapies is their loss of regenerative potency as the cells are expanded or modifiedin vitro. A team from Stanford University has developed an artificial niche whose pharmacological and biophysical properties preserve muscle stem cell quiescence and improve their therapeutic potency when grafted in vivo.

"If you transplant freshly isolated cells, they are able to make a lot of tissue, but if you grow them in culture, they are much less effective. What happens generally is that the cells begin to differentiate," said Thomas Rando, a professor of neurology and neurological sciences at Stanford...