Stem Cell Research with Dr. Yolanda Vasquez

Abstract

Dr. Vasquez is an assistant professor of Chemistry at Oklahoma State University and is heavily involved in the research on stem cells at the University. Her recent research in the topic contributed to the paper “Fine-tuning the degree of stem cell polarization and alignment on arrays of high-aspect ratio nanopillars”. The broad scope of the paper was looking at how there are lots of factors that influence the ability of stem cells to differentiate, and the surface with which they interact is one of them. Mesenchymal stem cells are the specific type of stem cells that their study looked at. Regular stem cells can differentiate into any type of cell, but with the mesenchymal stem cells, they are limited to number of cells they can differentiate into. They can differentiate into at most 10 types of cells, the main cells being bone cartilage and fat. As previously stated, the surface that the stem cell interacts with, can help determine what type of cell it differentiates into. This has great applications in medicine as stem cells are used to regenerate tissue, and the surface on which it is bound must be thoroughly studied or else the stem cells might differentiate into something that is not desired.