Ole Isacson, MD, and colleagues developed a new protocol that allows implanted dopamine-producing neurons derived from iPSCs to survive up to two years and reduces Parkinson's symptoms in primates, while Chad Cowan, PhD, and colleagues identified two compounds with the potential to turn white fat cells to brown.

• Jeffrey Karp, PhD, and colleagues engineered MSCs with improved homing abilities, making them better able to seek out and target inflamed tissues. These findings may have implications for inflammation therapy development. (Read the paper in Cell Reports). 
• Reza Abdi, MD, Robert Sackstein, MD, PhD, and colleagues showed that glycan engineering to enforce HCELL expression boosted trafficking of infused MSCs to pancreatic islets of non-obese diabetic mice and substantially improved their efficacy in reversing autoimmune diabetes. (Read the paper in Stem Cells.)