
Exercise and Stem Cells - Part IV, Regenerative Medicine Approaches to Sarcopenia and Muscle Loss
The microenvironment is crucial to successful satellite cell activation as well as repair and regeneration of muscle. Skeletal muscle has an

Exercise and Stem Cells - Part III, Muscle Stem Cells and Mesenchymal-Derived Cells
Exercise training benefits the elderly and the young as well as men and women consistently with regard to stem cells / progenitor cells. Lon

Exercise and Stem Cells - Part II, Haematopoietic Stem, Endothelial Progenitor, and Mesenchymal Stem
This is an important area for future research in order to optimize cell-based therapies for disease. The transient mobilization increase in

Exercise and Stem Cells - Part I, Introduction and Haematopoietic Stem and Progenitor Cells
Data suggest that the ideal training stimulus for increasing stem cell quantity involves moderate to high training intensity and frequency u

Bicycle Racing and Stem Cells
Why the velodrome? First, to place this blog in some sort of "stem cell" world, I do believe that exercise and racing are helpful

Obesity and Stem Cells - Part VI, Obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, and Immune Properties of Human Adipose-D
INTRODUCTION As we have seen in previous blog posts in this mini-series of obesity and stem cells, there is a chronic low-grade systemic inflammation (metabolic inflammation) in obesity. The proinflammatory condition of obesity is considered the main factor in the pathogenesis of insulin resistance, leading to Type 2 diabetes; previous blog posts in this mini-series have discussed some of the association of obesity and Type 2 diabetes, but we haven’t yet discussed their impac

Obesity and Stem Cells - Part IV, Bone
Image Source: Mayo Clinic INTRODUCTION An hypothesis was offered roughly a decade ago that osteoporosis might be considered the obesity of the bone.(1) The reason I find this hypothesis so engaging and interesting is that because for years obesity and overweight were considered to be protective against osteoporosis. Today’s blog will be focused on a more recent paper(2) that reviews obesity and osteoporosis as well as the hypothesis that rather than protective against osteopo

Obesity and Stem Cells - Part III, Haematopoiesis and the Bone Marrow Niche
INTRODUCTION In this series on the impact of obesity upon stem cells, we have reviewed a bit of data on stem cells (and/or progenitor cells) from various sources and seen that the impact in terms of the numbers of cells and the cellular functions are influenced by obesity as well as cell source. Additionally, we have seen that there are long-term consequences of obesity and there may be some irreversible damage caused by obesity. Some of these long-term consequences involve h

Obesity and Stem Cells - Part II, Bone Marrow
INTRODUCTION As we saw in Obesity and Stem Cells, Part I, the impact of obesity could be variable depending upon the source of the stem cells. In this particular blog, we will focus upon haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) in the bone marrow. For this, we are reviewing the paper by van den Berg, et al (2016). Despite the previous blog showing that marrow cells change differently than subcutaneous fat and infrapatellar fat pad cells, Wu et al (2013) only investiga

Obesity and Stem Cells - Part I, General Overview and Mesenchymal Stem/Stromal Cells (aka, Medicinal
INTRODUCTION Obesity is never a fun topic to discuss. In fact, even the discussion of the topic can be associated with "fat shaming." However, ignoring the realities of the effects of obesity is more shameful. Moreover, obesity has a special, and difficult, meaning for me personally - I have been obese. I had been very athletic and then was injured. Athletes often struggle with weight gain once they stop competing. Naturally, obesity and its comorbidities have been of interes