Main Category: Ear, Nose and Throat
Also Included In: Heart Disease; Stem Cell Research
Article Date: 12 Jul 2013 – 1:00 PDT
Previous attempts to “grow” inner-ear hair cells in standard cell culture systems have worked poorly in part because necessary cues to develop hair bundles – a hallmark of sensory hair cells and a structure critically important for detecting auditory or vestibular signals – are lacking in the flat cell-culture dish. But, Dr. Hashino said, the team determined that the cells needed to be suspended as aggregates in a specialized culture medium, which provided an environment more like that found in the body during early development.
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However, the work opens a door to better understanding of the inner-ear development process as well as creation of models for new drug development or cellular therapy to treat inner-ear disorders, they said.
Support for the research was provided by National Institutes of Health grants RC1DC010706, R01GM086544 and R01MH52619, a Paul and Carole Stark Neurosciences Fellowship and an Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute Predoctoral Fellowship (NIH TL1RR025759).
MLA
“We were surprised to see that once stem cells are guided to become inner-ear precursors and placed in 3-D culture, these cells behave as if they knew not only how to become different cell types in the inner ear, but also how to self-organize into a pattern remarkably similar to the native inner ear,” Dr. Hashino said. “Our initial goal was to make inner-ear precursors in culture, but when we did testing we found thousands of hair cells in a culture dish.”
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“The three-dimensional culture allows the cells to self-organize into complex tissues using mechanical cues that are found during embryonic development,” Koehler said.
University, Indiana. “Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells Transformed Into Key Structures Of The Inner Ear.” Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 12 Jul. 2013. Web.
12 Jul. 2013. <http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/263199.php>
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