A research team at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has found an easier way to harvest healing factors—molecules that promote tissue growth and regeneration—from adult stem cells.
Presently, scientists ‘pre-condition’ adult stem cells to secrete healing factors by putting them in a low-oxygen chamber or by using biochemicals or genetic engineering.
However in lab experiments, the NTU team of materials scientists and biologists tried mimicking the physical conditions that cells find inside the body and grew a particular type of stem cell—Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSCs) – on a softer surface than is normally used.
MSCs grown on the softer surface, known as hydrogel, increased their secretion of healing factors, known as the secretome, compared to normal growing surfaces.
