Whether designing new proteins or mapping DNA structure, these scientists aim to shed light on these fundamental questions through large-scale data collection, mathematical modeling, and quantitative analysis.

The International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) announces the launch of a new online continuing education course, Stem Cell Medicine: From Scientific Research to Patient Care. The comprehensive course comes at a pivotal moment, addressing the growing demand for evidence-based, expert-led education amid the proliferation of unproven and potentially harmful stem cell interventions that threaten patient safety around the world. The activity, jointly provided by Harvard Medical School and the ISSCR, is open access, available on demand, and offered at no cost to clinicians, nurses, medical students, scientists, and the public. It is also available in five languages.

The protein DNase1 is one of the oldest biological agents in history: It has been on the market since 1958 and is now used, among other things, to treat cystic fibrosis. However, it takes considerable effort to produce it in immortalized hamster cells. This process is also costly. It would be far more cost-effective to produce it with undemanding yeast cells. A team under Dr. Markus Napirei in the Department of Anatomy and Molecular Embryology at Ruhr University Bochum, led by Professor Beate Brand-Saberi, has been able to achieve this for the first time. “This is the result of years of work, and could lay the groundwork for the manufacture of human DNase1 in yeast as a biological agent,” says the researcher. The work was published in the journal PLOS One on April 29, 2025.