Three publications from UCR stem cell labs were recently featured on the covers of journals. The papers come from the labs for Dr. Jin Nam, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering and Dr. Prue Talbot, Professor of Cell Biology and Director of the UCR Stem Cell Center. 


Dr Nam's lab's paper: 

Maldonado, M., Ico, G., Low, K., Luu, R.J., Nam, J. (2016) Enhanced Lineage-Specific Differentiation Efficiency of Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells by Engineering Colony Dimensionality Using Electrospun Scaffolds, Advanced Healthcare Materials 5(12): 1408-12." 

The first author on this study, Maricela Maldonado, recently completed her PhD with Dr. Nam. She has worked with electrospun scaffold substrates which have the ability to influence differentiation of pluripotent stem cells." 

This article can be found at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27333402 

Dr Talbot's lab's papers: 

Bahl, V., Weng, N., Schick, S., Sleiman, M., Whitehead, J. Ibarra, A., and P. Talbot (2016). Cytotoxicity of Thirdhand Smoke and Identification of Acrolein as a Volatile Thirdhand Smoke Chemical That Inhibits Cell Proliferation. Toxicological Sciences, 150: 234-246. doi: 10.1093/toxsci/kfv327." 

Bahl, V., K. Johnson, G. Phandthong, A. Zahedi, S. F. Schick and P. Talbot (2016) Thirdhand Smoke Causes Stress Induced Mitochondrial Hyperfusion and Alters the Transcriptional Profile of Neural Stem Cells. Toxicological Sciences doi: 10.1093/toxsci/kfw102." 

The first author on these studies, Vasu Bahl, recently completed her PhD with Dr. Talbot and is currently working at BioVision. She used mouse neural stem cells to study the toxicity of thirdhand smoke (THS). She identified acrolein as the most cytotoxic volatile organic chemical in THS and studied alterations in mitochondria caused by THS." 

These articles can be found at: 
http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/content/org/content/150/1/234.long 
and 
http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/content/153/1/55.long