Scientists working on finding treatment therapies for spinal cord injuries, Parkinson’s disease, burns, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and other ailments, find human pluripotent stem (hPS) of great interest, as their cells are able to generate any given cell type in the adult human body.

However, before hPS cell technologies are translated into clinical applications, certain obstacles need to be overcome, first.

Cell death is one such obstacle that seems to be frustrating stem cell researchers, and which major types of hPS cells, such as, human embryonic stem cells and human induced pluripotent stem cells, undergo when cultured as single cells, rendering them unsuitable for research.

Now, University of California researchers from Riverside show a molecular motor called ‘nonmuscle myosin II’ (NMII) existing naturally inside each hPS cell and controlling various cellular functions, is responsible for triggering the death of hPS cells when broken down to single cells.

Details of the exact function of NMII remain unknown, however, researchers widely agree NMII induces a contraction of the main internal cell components, which eventually results in the cells dying.

Researchers trying to prevent this cell death, treated hPS cells with blebbistatin, a chemically synthesized compound, finding it to substantially enhance cell survival, by chemically inhibiting NMII. (Blebbistatin can be commercially sourced from several companies selling biologically active chemical compounds.

Results of the study have been published online in Nature Communications.

The most current culture methods for growing hPS cells require animal-derived materials like Matrigel, for coating the culture surfaces, without which hPS cells cannot adhere to the culture plate. The drawback in using these is they could contaminate hPS cells by introducing viruses and unknown pathogens.