CELL CULTURE

Within our bodies, in tissues such as skin and blood where individual cells are short-lived and constantly replaced, we have cells with the ability to generate and replenish the cells that are lost.

Cells with that ability are stem cells.

To be called a stem cell, two abilities are essential.

One is the ability to produce the many kinds of cell that make up our bodies — skin, red blood cells, platelets and so on (differentiation); the other is the ability to divide into cells with exactly the same abilities as itself (self-renewal).

Stem cells fall broadly into two types.

One continues to produce replacements for lost cells within a particular tissue or organ, as in skin or blood.

This type is called a tissue stem cell.

Tissue stem cells cannot become anything at all; their role is fixed. Hematopoietic stem cells produce blood cells, neural stem cells produce cells of the nervous system, and so on.

The other is the pluripotent stem cell, such as the ES cell (embryonic stem cell), which can produce any cell in our bodies.

In other words, pluripotent stem cells can also produce the various tissue stem cells within our bodies.

An iPS cell (induced pluripotent stem cell) is a pluripotent stem cell created artificially from an ordinary cell.

These properties of stem cells are being put to use in research into regenerative medicine — a new form of treatment that uses cells themselves as a medicine to treat injury and illness — and in research that recreates the state of cells outside the body to investigate how disease works.

Stem cells produce proteins that promote cell proliferation and differentiation according to their environment.

These proteins are called cytokines.

Cytokines act as signalling substances between cells and play an important role in restoring function to damaged tissue and cells in the body 。

Cells communicate with one another, and a cell that receives a cytokine begins to act.

Aging occurs when tissue and cells in the body are damaged by various causes and that damage accumulates to the point where recovery is no longer complete.

Regenerating damaged tissue and cells and restoring lost function is a highly effective form of aging care.

By waking dormant cells with cytokines, a powerful aging-care effect is expected.

Stem cell culture is a technology attracting great expectations across drug development, regenerative medicine and other fields.

The settings that need cell culture technology in this field of great potential are wide-ranging, and the technologists who specialize in it are drawing attention.

A cell culture technologist is a specialist who cultures stem cells for use in experiments and treatment in medicine and research.

Stem cells have a high capacity to differentiate into many kinds of cell, and great hopes rest on them in regenerative medicine and the development of new treatments.

The technology to culture stem cells is therefore one of the most important in medicine and the life sciences.

Specifically, a stem cell culture technologist carries out the full range of work required: preparing the medium for culture, optimizing culture conditions, regulating cell differentiation and proliferation, testing and analyzing cells, and managing the cultured cells.

Because stem cells behave differently from ordinary cells, the knowledge and skill to handle the technical difficulties of cell culture are also needed — removing abnormal cells that arise during culture, preventing infection, and so on.

A stem cell culture technologist needs deep specialist knowledge and skill in culture technique.

Those working as stem cell culture technologists have therefore studied the handling of stem cells and the fundamentals of cell culture at university or technical college, and built practical experience in laboratories, pharmaceutical companies and hospitals.

Let us hear about this increasingly prominent role from Yoshichika Yamaguchi, Chief Cell Culture Technologist at BiOStyle Clinic.

I have loved living things since I was small, and at university I studied biotechnology and researched plant cells.

After graduating I worked in clinical testing at a major medical company. When I moved to a hospital that was recruiting a cell culture technologist, I took the chance to move into work I had long been interested in.

Since then I have worked on research into stem cell culture supernatant, drawing on my knowledge of cell culture to refine my technique.

I have been working as a cell culture technologist for about 13 years.

Treatment using culture supernatant derived from fat or dental pulp stem cells is the mainstream in this industry, but we are now researching new stem cell culture supernatants that can perform better by using cells from cord blood, amniotic membrane, placenta and bone marrow 。

In cosmetics, stem cell culture supernatant is attracting the most attention of all.

This liquid contains cell growth factors, cytokines, enzymes, proteins and micronutrients, and is said to benefit skin quality and anti-aging.

It appears in a range of products — toners, serums, creams, masks — and is said to be particularly effective for skin elasticity, firmness and clarity.

That said, many products currently on sale do not state the concentration or the type, and there is a real chance they have not been stored well, so I am skeptical about their effect.

I think it is important to choose cosmetics that use technology to avoid direct sunlight and heat and humidity, which are what stem cell culture supernatant is least able to tolerate.

Stem cell culture supernatant is stored in two forms: liquid and freeze-dried.

The liquid form must be kept refrigerated 。

It keeps for only a short time and is easily affected by temperature change and light, so buy from a supplier you trust, store it away from direct sunlight, heat and humidity, and use it up promptly once opened.

In freeze-dried form the proteins are stable and it can be stored at room temperature for long periods, which makes it valuable in research and product development 。