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The hESC Core Facility at Children's Hospital Boston
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| The photo above shows human embryonic stem cell colonies, stained for expression of markers of pluripotency. [Photo courtesy Thorsten Schlaeger.] |
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The hESC Core Facility provides essential research, technical,
training and educational services to the hESC research Community at Children's and to the wide range of institutions affiliated with the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.
The Core Facility serves as a centralized source for the collection, expansion, analysis and banking of hESC lines. Many practical considerations and regulatory issues can make it difficult for most individual laboratories to embark on hESC research. The cells are challenging to grow and manipulate, and several technical obstacles must be overcome before the full potential of hESCs can be realized. By providing available cell lines to prospective researchers, the Core Facility makes it possible for an increasing number of labs to undertake research in this area. The Core also provides hands-on instruction in hESC laboratory protocols and techniques, making it possible to widen the scope of hESC work at Children's and Harvard Stem Cell Institute even further.
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One area of especially intense research for the Core is the derivation of
specialized, therapeutically valuable cells from hESCs. To identify conditions
that allow for efficient derivation of hematopoietic stem cells from hESCs, the
Core will apply high-throughput screening (HTS) technologies to hESC
Biology, thereby identifying molecules, factors and conditions able to direct
the differentiation of the desired cell type(s).
To ensure institutional awareness of and compliance with existing federal regulations and internal requirements pertaining to hESC research, the Core develops guidelines and administers training programs for researchers, administrators, and faculty.
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| Prospective hESC researchers have the opportunity to practice hands-on research protocols and techniques in the hESC Core Facility |
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The HSCI Education Core is a new and exciting component of the hESC
Core Facility at Children's Hospital. Funded by a grant from the Harvard Stem
Cell Institute, the Education Core (EC) is a central HSCI/Children's resource
for education, training, and information-sharing in the challenging field of mouse and
human embryonic stem cell research.
The educational services include a weekly Journal Club, a monthly series of stem cell seminars and a bi-monthly Bioethics meeting. Speakers and topics to date have included:
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- Caiquong Qiu, Ph.D., Albert Einstein College of Medicine, From Human Embryonic Stem Cells to Primitive Red Blood Cells
- Thorsten Schlaeger, Ph.D., Children's Hospital Boston, Separation of Funding and Cost Allocation Protocols for Research on Federal Funding-Ineligible Human Embryonic Stem Cells
- Carmen Escobedo-Lucea, Ph.D., University of Valencia, Spain;First Derivation in Spain of Two New hESC Lines in Serum Free Medium, VAL-1 and Val-2
- Betty Zhou, MD, Ph.D., Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Inducible and Reversible Transgene Expression in Human Embryonic Stem Cells by a Lentiviral Vector
- Markus J. Manz, M.D., Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB, Switzerland; Human Adaptive Immune System in Rag2-/-gc-mice.
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These meetings are open to any member of an HMS/HSCI-affiliated lab. For more information on seminars and meetings, or on any other activities of the Education Core or the hESC Core Facility overall, contact Thorsten Schlaeger.
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| Dr. Willy Lensch, in a recent Stem Cell Journal Club, presents and leads the discussion of a paper on the efficiency of somatic cell nuclear transfer |
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