NTU scientists find an easier way to harvest healing factors from adult stem cells

A research team at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has found an easier way to harvest healing factors – molecules that promote tissue growth and regeneration – from adult stem cells.

Presently, scientists ‘pre-condition’ adult stem cells to secrete healing factors by putting them in a low-oxygen chamber or by using biochemicals or genetic engineering.

However in lab experiments, the NTU team of materials scientists and biologists tried mimicking the physical conditions that cells find inside the body and grew a particular type of stem cell – Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSCs) – on a softer surface than is normally used.

MSCs grown on the softer surface, known as hydrogel, increased their secretion of healing factors, known as the secretome, compared to normal growing surfaces. 

This method of growing MCSs on hydrogel, a three-dimensional network of polymers with high water content, could potentially be scaled up for mass production of healing factors by biotech companies. The findings were reported in Advanced Healthcare Materials by a multi-disciplinary team comprising NTU Assistant Professor Dalton Tay from the School of Materials Science and Engineering, and NTU associate professors Andrew Tan from the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine and Newman Sze from the School of Biological Sciences.