Publications

Background Chronic liver injury triggers a progenitor cell repair response, and liver fibrosis occurs when repair becomes deregulated. Previously, we reported that reactivation of the hedgehog pathway promotes fibrogenic liver repair. Osteopontin (OPN) is a hedgehog-target, and a cytokine that is highly upregulated in fibrotic tissues, and regulates stem-cell fate. Thus, we hypothesised that OPN may modulate liver progenitor cell response, and ...

Transplantation of pancreatic progenitors derived from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) is a promising way to treat diabetes. Strategies to obtain the required cell mass would rely on the up scaling of current differentiation protocols, or the proliferation of committed progenitors. We aimed at finding conditions that maintain a proliferating pancreatic progenitor pool and we assessed the role of BMP4 signaling in this process. hESCs were ...

Background/aims: Several liver dysfunctions are life-threatening conditions for which the most effective treatments rely on orthotropic liver transplantation (OLT). However, drawbacks related to OLT reduce its application on a large-scale. Recently, the role of progenitor cells in liver repair and fibrosis has been described but strategies for their purification have been quite limited making their characterization and use in regenerative ...

The pituitary gland represents the endocrine core, governing the body's hormonal landscape by adapting its cellular composition to changing demands. It is assumed that stem/progenitor cells are involved in this remodeling. Recently, we uncovered a candidate stem/progenitor cell population in the anterior pituitary. Here, we scrutinized this "side population" (SP) and show that, unexpectedly, not the subset expressing high levels of "stem cell ...

In humans, nephrogenesis is completed prenatally, with nephrons formed until 34 weeks of gestational age. We hypothesized that urine of preterm neonates born before the completion of nephrogenesis is a noninvasive source of highly potent stem/progenitor cells. To test this hypothesis, we collected freshly voided urine at day 1 after birth from neonates born at 31-36 weeks of gestational age and characterized isolated cells using a single-cell ...

Among the animal models of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), the Golden Retriever Muscular Dystrophy (GRMD) dog is considered the best model in terms of size and pathological onset of the disease. As in human patients presenting with DMD or Becker muscular dystrophies (BMD), the GRMD is related to a spontaneous X-linked mutation of dystrophin and is characterized by myocardial lesions. In this respect, GRMD is a useful model to explore cardiac ...

-Many chronic liver diseases can lead to hepatic dysfunction with organ failure. At present, orthotopic liver transplantation represents the benchmark therapy of terminal liver disease. However this practice is limited by shortage of donor grafts, the need for lifelong immunosuppression and very demanding state-of-the-art surgery. For this reason, new therapies have been developed to restore liver function, primarily in the form of hepatocyte ...

Aims. There are large differences in the proposed progenitor models for the Cas A Supernova remnant (SNR). One of these differencesis the presence or absence of a Wolf-Rayet (WR) phase of the progenitor star. The mass loss history of the progenitor star stronglyaffects the shape of the SNR. In this paper we investigate whether the progenitor star of Cas A had a WR phase or not and how longit may have lasted.Methods. We performed two-dimensional ...

Widespread use of liver transplantation in the treatment of hepatic diseases is restricted by the limited availability of donated organs. One potential solution to this problem would be isolation and propagation of liver progenitor cells or stem cells. Here, we report on the isolation of a novel progenitor cell population from unmanipulated (that is, no prior exposure to chemicals and no injury) adult rat liver. Rat liver cells were cultured ...