A hub for Engineering and exploiting the stem cell niche

干细胞在医学上具有巨大的潜力，因为它们可以在体内生长成许多不同类型的细胞。我们的目标是建立一个科学家和临床医生的中心，致力于了解是什么控制了干细胞在正常组织环境中的行为。在发育或受损的器官中，围绕干细胞/祖细胞(“种子”)的利基(“土壤”)对干细胞/祖细胞的行为有深远的影响。在世界各地的研究项目中，这一利基比干细胞本身受到的关注更少。这项工作计划旨在填补这一空白，并将工作重点放在这一领域。通过了解利基如何影响组织中的干细胞，我们的目标是利用这一知识开发未来对严重不可治疗疾病的治疗方法。为此，我们将在三个主要工作计划中扩展对利基的了解。(1)我们将通过创建人造利基并观察它们如何影响在其中生长的干细胞来扩展我们对利基的理解。通过操纵壁龛和干细胞之间的信号和连接，我们可以清楚地了解壁龛是如何与干细胞“对话”的。当我们清楚地了解了壁龛和干细胞之间的信号后，我们可以尝试通过在干细胞上添加药物或其他合成分子来影响它们的行为，从而影响人造壁龛中的干细胞。(2)为了促进组织和器官的“健康再生”，我们将使用目标1中的信息来测试我们是否可以使用药物和作用于干细胞及其壁龛的合成小分子来改善器官损伤和再生实验模型中器官和组织中干细胞的生长。(3)治疗受损组织和器官的一种方法是将干细胞或干细胞中的细胞移植到受损器官中(如骨髓移植)。虽然这在某些情况下是成功的，但在许多情况下，这种治疗不起作用，因为细胞在组织中不能很好地生长。我们还需要了解为什么组织(“土壤”)不允许细胞(“种子”)生长良好。通过使用第1部分和第2部分中的信息，我们将寻求添加我们已发现的使细胞“快乐”的因素，并允许它们在受损组织中良好生长。通过创建具有不同但互补技能的科学家和医生网络，我们的目标是尽快取得这些进展。

Stem cells have great potential in medicine as they can grow into many different cell types in the body. Our aim is to create a hub of scientists and clinicians working to understand what controls the behaviour of stem cells in their normal tissue environment.The niche ("the soil") that surrounds stem/progenitor cells ("the seed") in developing or damaged organs has a profound effect upon the behaviour of stem/progenitor cells. The niche has received less attention than the stem cells themselves in research programs around the world. This program of work aims to fill that gap and focus work on this area. By understand how the niche influences stem cells in tissues we aim to use this knowledge to develop future treatments for serious untreatable diseases. We will do this by extending the knowledge of the niche in three main programs of work.(1) We will extend our understanding of niches by creating artificial niches and looking at how they influence stem cells growing in them. By manipulating signals and attachments between the niches and the stem cells we can develop a clear understanding of how the niches "talk" to stem cells. When we understand clearly the signals between the niches and the stem cells we can try to influence the stem cells in the artificial niches by adding drugs or other synthetic molecules onto the stem cells to influence their behaviour. (2) To promote "healthy regeneration" in tissues and organs we will use the information from aim 1 to test whether we can improve the growth of stem cells in the organs and tissues of experimental models of organ injury and regeneration using drugs and small synthetic molecules that will act on the stem cells and their niches. (3) One way of treating damaged tissues and organs is to transplant stem cells or cells from stem cells into the damaged organ (such as bone marrow transplantation). Whilst this is successful in some situations, in many cases this treatment doesn't work as the cells don't grow well in the tissues. We need too understand why the tissue ("soil") does not allow the cells ("seeds") to grow well. By using information from part 1 and 2 we will seek to add the factors that we have found to keep cells "happy" and allow them to grow well in the damaged tissue.By creating a network of scientist and doctors with different but complementary skills we aim to make these advances as quickly as possible.