UCSF's Robert Blelloch, MD, PhD, has received the 2011 Outstanding Young Investigator Award from the International Society for Stem Cell Research, for his pioneering research on the role of molecular tools known as microRNAs in embryonic stem cells and cancer.
Blelloch will present his research today, June 15, 2011, at the opening of the ISSCR annual meeting in Toronto (6 p.m. EDT). He will participate in a press briefing at ISSCR tomorrow, June 16 (noon EDT).
MicroRNAs play a subtle, but key, role in regulating the production of proteins, which carry out all cell functions. After a gene's message has been transcripted into messenger RNA, microRNA binds a particular site on the mRNA and ratchets down the amount of protein it produces.
In recent years, research on the role of microRNAs in stem cells and cancer has "exploded," said Blelloch, a member of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at the University of California, San Francisco.
Thanks in part to his team, scientists now know that microRNAs are part of the molecular framework that determines an embryonic stem cell's fate. The cell either will duplicate its genetic material and divide into two identical copies of itself, thus "self renewing," or it will begin to differentiate as a particular type of adult cell, say, a heart muscle cell.
Scientists also know that faulty microRNA function allows unregulated stem cell growth, contributing to cancers. These molecular tools regulate the switch between proliferation and differentiation in both stem cells and cancer.
There are many hundreds of microRNAs, with different roles. Furthermore, each microRNA influences hundreds of messenger RNAs, exerting significant influence on the cell.
During the last few years, Blelloch's team has reported several key findings. In 2008, they reported that microRNAs promote self renewal of embryonic stem cells in mice (Natu
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| Contact: Jennifer O'Brien jennifer.obrien@ucsf.edu 415-502-6397 University of California - San Francisco Source:Eurekalert |