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Stem Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicine—2nd Edition

A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Biology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 November 2025 | Viewed by 715

Special Issue Editor

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

More than 50% of pre-clinical studies fail despite a long and expensive journey of drug discovery using animal models.

Currently, there is a human-relevant replacement: human patient induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs)/human embryonic stem cells (hESs) and their counterpart corrected cells using Crispr methodology, which enables the establishment of disease-in-a-dish models encompassing patients’ genetics.

We invite papers that use hiPSC/hES-derived cells (cardiomyocytes, fibroblasts, glial cells, neurons, astrocytes, brain microvascular endothelial cells and more) as disease models to screen leads for drugs.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:

  1. hiPSC/hES-derived microglia/glia/astrocytes as models for screening anti-inflammation compounds.
  2. New materials for establishing hiPSC-derived three-dimensional (3D) scaffolds as platforms for drug discovery.
  3. Compounds that act as neuro-regeneration activators for cases like traumatic brain injury (TBI), Alzheimer’s disease, ALS, Parkinson’s disease and more.
  4. The hiPSC/hES-based blood–brain barrier (BBB) model as a tool for distinguishing between drugs that can penetrate/damage the BBB and drugs that failed in preclinical studies because they cannot penetrate the BBB.
  5. Identifying pain relievers by screening cannabis-derived compounds and other pain relievers using hiPSC/hES-derived sensory cells.
  6. Crispr methods to accurately correct/generate disease-related mutations in hiPSC/hES.
  7. Unique markers for identifying hiPSC/hES-derived cells in 3D-scaffold-based models.

Dr. Rivka Ofir
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • hiPSC
  • hES
  • Crispr
  • BBB
  • disease in a dish
  • neuro-regeneration
  • pain reliever
  • scaffold

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

18 pages, 2950 KB  
Article
Formation of 3D Human Osteoblast Spheroids Incorporating Extracellular Matrix-Mimetic Phage Peptides as a Surrogate Bone Tissue Model
by Maria Giovanna Rizzo, Dario Morganti, Antonella Smeriglio, Emanuele Luigi Sciuto, Massimo Orazio Spata, Domenico Trombetta, Barbara Fazio, Salvatore Pietro Paolo Guglielmino and Sabrina Conoci
Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2025, 26(17), 8482; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms26178482 - 1 Sep 2025
Viewed by 342
Abstract
Cell–cell communication and extracellular matrix (ECM) organization in a bone microenvironment are essential to replicate the bone microenvironment accurately. In this study, the extracellular matrix (ECM) was emulated by incorporating M13 phages, selected through phage display for displaying engineered peptides that mimic bone [...] Read more.
Cell–cell communication and extracellular matrix (ECM) organization in a bone microenvironment are essential to replicate the bone microenvironment accurately. In this study, the extracellular matrix (ECM) was emulated by incorporating M13 phages, selected through phage display for displaying engineered peptides that mimic bone matrix proteins, into human osteoblast cultures to develop a three-dimensional bone model (3D BMP-Phage). Comprehensive analysis was performed to investigate: (i) the morphological development of spheroids, assessed by optical microscopy and quantified via fractal dimension analysis using box-counting algorithms; (ii) the biochemical composition of the extracellular matrix, evaluated by Raman spectroscopy; (iii) ECM protein deposition, analyzed through immunofluorescence staining; (iv) matrix mineralization, assessed by Alizarin Red staining and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity assay; and (v) osteogenic gene expression, measured by quantitative RT-PCR. The findings demonstrate that the 3D BMP-Phage model, facilitated by a cocktail of bone-mimicking peptides, enhances structural integrity, ECM complexity, mineralization, and osteogenic pathways compared to the control. This novel approach replicates key aspects of the bone microenvironment, providing a valuable platform for advanced physiological and regenerative medicine research under controlled conditions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Stem Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicine—2nd Edition)
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