Carmen Escobedo-Lucea

University of Helsinki | HY · Division of Pharmaceutical Biosciences

Stem cell responsiveness to extracellular matrix (ECM) composition and mechanical cues has been the subject of a number of investigations so far, yet the molecular mechanisms underlying stem cell mechanobiology still need full clarification. Here we demonstrate that the paralog proteins YAP and TAZ exert a crucial role in adult cardiac progenitor c...

HUMAN ADIPOSE STEM CELLS (HASCS) PLAY A CRUCIAL ROLE IN THE FIELDS OF REGENERATIVE MEDICINE AND TISSUE ENGINEERING FOR DIFFERENT REASONS: the abundance of adipose tissue, their easy harvesting, the ability to multipotent differentiation and the fact that they do not trigger allogeneic blood response or secrete cytokines that act as immunosuppressan...

Biomaterials to be used as cell delivery systems for cardiac tissue engineering should be able to comply with cardiac muscle contractile activity, while favoring cell survival and neo-angiogenesis in a hostile environment. Biocompatible synthetic materials can be tailored to mimic cardiac tissue three-dimensional organization in the micro- and nano...

The majority of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines have been derived and grown using mouse or human feeder cells, or using Matrigel, an animal derivative rich in extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins. However, reliance on feeder layers and animal products limits the manipulation and clinical application of hESC. Alternatively, human fibroblasts p...

The transmission of microbial infection through tissue allografts is one of the main risks that must be controlled in tissue banks. Therefore, microbiological monitoring controls and validated protocols for the decontamination of tissues during processing have been implemented. This study is based on the evaluation of data from microbiological cult...

Background Microbiological contamination is one of the main risks that must be controlled in tissue banking practices. For this reason, strict donor selection criteria are applied, disinfection protocols are used, and microbiological monitoring in the different stages is performed. Aim This study was focused on the detection of Candida auris in ar...

Three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting promises to be essential in tissue engineering for solving the rising demand for organs and tissues. Some bioprinters are commercially available, but their impact on the field of Tissue engineering (TE) is still limited due to their cost or difficulty to tune. Herein, we present a low-cost easy-to-build printhead...

Three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting promises to be essential in tissue engineering for solving the rising demand for organs and tissues. Some bioprinters are commercially available, but their impact on the field of TE is still limited due to their cost or difficulty to tune. Herein, we present a low-cost easy-to-build printhead for microextrusion-ba...

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most devastating and least treatable brain tumor with median survival <15 months and extremely high recurrence rates. Promising results of immune checkpoint blockade obtained from pre-clinical studies in mice did not translate to clinic, and new strategies are urgently needed, particularly those targeting GBM stem cells (G...

Hybrid constructs represent substantial progress in tissue engineering (TE) towards producing implants of a clinically relevant size that recapitulate the structure and multicellular complexity of the native tissue. They are created by interlacing printed scaffolds, sacrificial materials, and cell-laden hydrogels. A suitable biomaterial is a polyca...

Most of the studies in three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting have been traditionally based on printing a single bioink. Addressing the complexity of organ and tissue engineering, however, will require combining multiple building and sacrificial biomaterials and several cells types in a single biofabrication session. This is a significant challenge, an...

Background Multiple types of extracellular vesicles (EVs), including microvesicles (MVs) and exosomes (EXOs), are released by all cells constituting part of the cellular EV secretome. The bioactive cargo of EVs can be shuffled between cells and consists of lipids, metabolites, proteins, and nucleic acids, including multiple RNA species from non-cod...

Tumor-cell-secreted extracellular vesicles (EVs) can cross the disrupted blood-brain barrier (BBB) into the bloodstream. However, in certain gliomas, the BBB remains intact, which might limit EVs release. To evaluate the ability of tumor-derived EVs to cross the BBB, we used an orthotopic xenotransplant mouse model of human glioma-cancer stem cells...

Human gliomas harbour cancer stem cells (CSCs) that evolve along the course of the disease, forming highly heterogeneous subpopulations within the tumour mass. These cells possess self-renewal properties and appear to contribute to tumour initiation, metastasis and resistance to therapy. CSC cultures isolated from surgical samples are considered th...

Background: Although new therapeutic approaches for burn treatment have made progress, there is still need for better methods to enhance wound healing and recovery especially in severely burned patients. Nanofibrillar cellulose (NFC) has gained attention due to its renewable nature, good biocompatibility and excellent physical properties that are...

Upon surgery, local inflammatory reactions and postoperative infections cause complications, morbidity, and mortality. Delivery of human adipose mesenchymal stem cells (hASC) into the wounds is an efficient and safe means to reduce inflammation and promote wound healing. However, administration of stem cells by injection often results in low cell r...

Heart disease, including valve pathologies, is the leading cause of death worldwide. Despite the progress made thanks to improving transplantation techniques, a perfect valve substitute has not yet been developed: once a diseased valve is replaced with current technologies, the newly implanted valve still needs to be changed some time in the future...

The use of animal products in the derivation and maintenance of human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) limits their possible applications in research and in clinics. Thus, one of the major goals in regenerative medicine is the establishment of animal-free conditions to support the culture and differentiation of human stem cells. Human fibroblasts pro...

BACKGROUND Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are cell-derived membrane vesicles. EVs contain several RNAs such as mRNA, microRNAs, and ncRNAs, but less is known of their genomic DNA (gDNA) content. It is also unknown whether the DNA cargo is randomly sorted or if it is systematically packed into specific EV subpopulations. The aim of this study was to a...

Introduction: Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most frequent malignancy in men in developed countries and the sixth leading cause of cancer mortality worldwide. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) have been suggested as a source of more specific and sensitive biomarkers of PCa. The aim of this study was firstly to analyze whether different PCa EV subpopulatio...

Objectives A number of neurodegenerative diseases progress with a loss of myelin, which makes them candidate diseases for the development of cell-replacement therapies based on mobilisation or isolation of the endogenous neural/glial progenitor cells, in vitro expansion, and further implantation. Cells expressing A2B5 or PDGFRA/CNP have been isolat...

ackground: Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common primary malignant brain tumor in adults accounting for -75% of astrocytic tumors. It corresponds to WHO grade IV glioma. Hedgehog (Hh)-Gli pathway is activated in primary glioblastoma-initiating cells, where inhibition of the pathway reduces growth either in vitro or in vivo. However, inhibition of t...

Background: Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common primary malignant brain tumor in adults accounting for 60-75% of astrocytic tumors. It corresponds to WHO grade IV. Microvesicles (MVs) are vesicles that can be found in body fluids from patients with different types of cancer. These MV can be classified into apoptotic breakdown (up to several µm),...

Introduction: Extracellular vesicles (EVs) have an important role in the intercellular transfer of genetic information. EVs have been shown to contain nucleic acids such as mRNA, microRNAs, ncRNAs and even DNA. However, less is known of the genomic DNA (gDNA) packed into EVs. It is also unknown, whether the gDNA cargo is randomly sorted to the diff...

Adult stem cells which can be obtained from adipose tissue (hASC) are important tools for tissue engineering for various reasons: adipose tissue is abundant, hASC are easily isolated and differteniated to multiple lineages, and do not trigger an immune response. Most research and clinical protocols using hASC contain reagents derived from xenogenic...

Evolution of CD34 and CD45 gene expression in hASC cultures xenogeneic –free isolated and maintained. (PDF)

Flow cytometry analysis and percentage of expression of mesenchymal stem cell markers in HS-hASCs versus FBS-hASCs. The figures show the flow cytometry analysis of some mesenchymal (CD90, CD73, CD44) and hematopoietic (CD14, CD117, CD166, CD144) stem cell markers in hASCs (passage 5) cultured in A) HS and B) FBS respectively. (PDF)

Microarray gene expression analysis. (XLS)

Supplementary Methods. (PDF)

Primer sequences for the characterization of isolated hASCs. PCR primers used in the study and conditions. All of them had been designed using Primer 3 tools. Cartilage differentiation primers have been performed by Zuk et al., 2002. (PDF)

Genetic studies such as microarray chips generate a large volume of data which must be properly analysed to obtain the biological significance of the resulting list of genes. Data mining techniques are useful to identify and characterize the role of these genes by construction of maps reflecting expression or function. However, the choice of a suit...

SOX2 expression is linked to the undifferentiated state of stem cells in mammalian neurogenic niches. While its expression has been reported in the adult human subventricular zone (SVZ), to date it has not been detected in adult human white matter. Here we describe a population of SOX2+ cells from the white matter of the adult human temporal lobe,...

Objective: characterize the behavior of progenitor cells isolated from subcortical parenchyma of human brain in culture. We have analyzed the changes in expression patterns of differentiation/undifferentiation markers as well as cell morphology along the passages and evaluated the potential to be further used as oligodendrocyte progenitors source....

Early development of mammalian embryos occurs in an environment of relative hypoxia. Nevertheless, human embryonic stem cells (hESC), which are derived from the inner cell mass of blastocyst, are routinely cultured under the same atmospheric conditions (21% O(2)) as somatic cells. We hypothesized that O(2) levels modulate gene expression and differ...

During murine development, the formation of tight junctions and acquisition of polarity are associated with allocation of the blastomeres on the outer surface of the embryo to the trophoblast lineage, whereas the absence of polarization directs cells to the inner cell mass. Here, we report the results of ultrastructural analyses that suggest a simi...

During murine development, the formation of tight junctions and acquisition of polarity are associated with allocation of the blastomeres on the outer surface of the embryo to the tropho-blast lineage, whereas the absence of polarization directs cells to the inner cell mass. Here, we report the results of ultrastruc-tural analyses that suggest a si...

To evaluate ultrastructural features of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) blastocysts before and after vitrification. Descriptive study of both vitrified and fresh hatching blastocysts. PGD program at the Instituto Universitario, Instituto Valenciano de Infertilidad. Patients undergoing PGD donated their abnormal embryos for research (n = 26)...

The first two human embryonic stem cell lines (VAL-1 and VAL-2) have been derived in Spain with long-term cryopreserved embryos under animal-free conditions. In the first series, 40 human embryos that had been cryopreserved at day 2 of development were thawed after >5 years. A derivation efficiency of 5% per frozen embryo or 12.5% per blastocyst wa...