Stem cell technology for regenerative medicine
Integrating transgenesis, pluripotency and animal chimerism for cell-based therapies
Our lab explores the feasibility of producing various cell types such as muscle stem cells within animal chimeras for potential use in treating muscle-related disorders. This method may offer a solution to the challenge of harvesting sufficient amount of myogenic stem cells from muscles of donors or cadavers, representing a major obstacle in cell-based therapy. For instance, we recently demonstrated that xenogeneic and therapeutically-competent mouse muscle stem cells can be propagated in rat-mouse chimeras, and can be harvested to treat muscular dystrophy (external pageDomenig et al, BioRxiv, 2023call_made). Looking ahead, this technology may allow scaling up production of human muscle stem cells within larger animals for broader therapeutic applications.