The department takes pride in having derived two human embryonic stem cell lines on human feeders (click here for details) and recently have been successful in making them feeder free. We showed that the feeder fibroblasts differentiate into myofibroblasts to support continuous proliferation of embryonic stem cells in vitro (click here for details). Our recent publication demonstrates that the two cell lines have good propensity to make mesoderm and endoderm (click here for details). Studies have thus been initiated for lineage specific differentiation of in-house derived embryonic stem cell lines into cardiomyocytes and insulin producing cells.

We aim to generate autologous human embryonic stem cell lines by somatic cell nuclear transfer and parthenogenesis (click here for details). These procedures have been standardized using sheep eggs (click here for details). We propose to initiate basic research to study whether sheep oocytes can reprogram human somatic cells.

We have detected novel pluripotent stem cells termed very small embryonic-like stem cells (VSELs) in adult human testis (click here for details) and in peri-menopausal human ovary (click here for details). VSELs were also observed in adult rabbit, sheep and monkey ovaries. Presence of VSELs has provided newer information and led to modification of basic understanding of pre-meiotic expansion of germ cells in testis. In the females, the results suggest that oogenesis and follicular assembly occurs throughout postnatal life in females as opposed to the presence of a finite pool of follicles at birth.

Our recent paper shows that during volume reduction of cord blood prior to banking or during isolation of adult stem cells from bone marrow for autologus stem cell therapy, VSELs are unknowingly discarded – although being pluripotent they have maximum regenerative potential (click here for details). A patent has been filed (1257/DEL/2011) for the development of a simple procedure to isolate VSELs from the cord blood and bone marrow as compared to the existing sophisticated flow cytometric approach to isolate VSELs. The results have great clinical relevance and call for modification of cord blood banking procedures and also explain why various adult stem cell trials carried out till date have shown minimal efficacy.

Our work on differential Oct-4 immunolocalization in the nuclei of pluripotent stem cells and in the cytoplasm of progenitor stem cells is intriguing and is being quoted by the source company in their data base (http://www.abcam.com/index.html?pageconfig=references&intAbID=19857).