The emerging field of regenerative medicine will require a reliable source of stem cells in addition to biomaterial scaffolds and cytokine growth factors. Adipose tissue has proven to serve as an abundant, accessible and rich source of adult stem cells with multipotent properties suitable for tissue engineering and regenerative medical applications. There has been increased interest in Adipose-derived Stem Cells (ASCs) for tissue engineering applications. Here, methods for the isolation, expansion and differentiation of ASCs are presented and described in detail. While this article has focused on the isolation of ASCs from human adipose tissue, the procedure can be applied to adipose tissues from other species with minimal modifications.
A retrospective analysis was performed on fertility outcomes among a colony of captive Indian rhesus monkeys. The analysis covered over 30 years and was based on 1443 females with a total of 11 453 pregnancies. Various determinants of fertility were assessed including birth rates, pregnancy loss, infant survival, interbirth intervals, and interval from last birth to death. Binary variables were analyzed with generalized linear models with random intercepts, while linear mixed models were used for analysis of continuous variables. Age of the dam was a significant factor in determining whether a pregnancy resulted in a birth and whether an infant survived the first 30 days with primiparous or older mothers being less likely to produce an infant surviving to that age. In contrast, sex proved to be the only significant factor in determining whether an infant lived to 1 year, with females being more likely to survive. The interval between births proved to be affected primarily by dam age, while the late death of an infant depressed the likelihood of an extended time interval between her last birth and her death. Overall, these results demonstrate that maternal age contributes significantly to a decline in fertility and older females can live relatively long periods following birth of their last infant.
The development of therapeutic interventions for genetic disorders and diseases that affect the central nervous system (CNS) has proven challenging. There has been significant progress in the development of gene therapy strategies in murine models of human disease, but gene therapy outcomes in these models do not always translate to the human setting. Therefore, large animal models are crucial to the development of diagnostics, treatments, and eventual cures for debilitating neurological disorders. This review focuses on the description of large animal models of neurological diseases such as lysosomal storage diseases, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and neuroAIDS. The review also describes the contributions of these models to progress in gene therapy research.
Records from a colony of captive Indian rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) were used to estimate heritability for a number of reproductive traits. Records were based on a total of 7,816 births by 1,901 females from 1979 to 2007. Heritability was estimated with a linear animal model using a multiple trait derivative free REML set of programs. Because no male parents were identified, the numerator relationship matrix contained female kinships established over six generations. Reproductive traits included female age at the birth of the first, second and last infant, age at death, inter-birth intervals, number of infants born per female and infant survival. Heritability for each trait was estimated as the ratio of the additive genetic variance to phenotypic variance adjusted for significant fixed effects. Estimates of heritability for early reproduction ranged from 0.000 ± 0.072 for birth interval following the first reproduction to 0.171 ± 0.062 for age of female at the first infant. Higher estimates of heritability were found for female longevity [0.325 ± 0.143] and for productivity of deceased females born before 1991 [0.221 ± 0.138]. Heritability for infant survival ranged from 0.061 ± 0.018 for survival from 30d to 1yr to 0.290 ± 0.050 for survival from birth to 30d when adjusted to an underlying normal distribution. Eight of the 13 estimates of heritability for reproductive traits in this study were different from zero [P < 0.05]. Generally, heritability estimates reported here for reproductive traits of captive rhesus macaque females are similar to those reported in the literature for free ranging rhesus macaque females and for similar reproductive traits of other species. These estimates of heritability for reproductive traits appear to be among the first for a relatively large colony of captive rhesus macaque females.
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