Clays have played an important role in medicine since the dawn of mankind and are still applied widely as active ingredients and/or excipients in pharmaceutical formulations. Due to their outstanding properties of large retention capacity, swelling and rheological properties, and relative low cost, they have been used widely as advanced carriers for the efficient delivery of drugs by modifying their release (rate and/or time), increasing the stability of the drug, improving the dissolution profile of a drug, or enhancing their intestinal permeability. In addition, recent studies have shed new light on the potential of clay minerals in the nanomedicine field due to their biocompatibility, beneficial effects of clay nanoparticles on cellular adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation. Use as active ingredients and excipients are exerted via the oral and topical administration pathways. Skin drug delivery represents an attractive alternative to the oral route, providing local and/or systemic drug delivery. Due to their complex structures, however, most drugs penetrate the human skin only with difficulty. Enormous efforts have been invested, therefore, in developing advanced drug delivery systems able to overcome the skin barrier. Most strategies require the use of singular materials with new properties. In particular, and on the basis of their inherent properties, clay minerals are ideal candidates for the development of intelligent skin drug delivery systems. In this article, the properties of clay materials and their use in the skin-addressed pharmaceutical field are reviewed. A brief introduction of skin physiology and biopharmaceutical features of penetration by a drug through the skin layers is also included and is designed to shed light on the optimum properties of ideal nanosystems for advanced skin drug delivery. Special attention is devoted to the pharmacological functions of clays and their biomedical applications in pelotherapy, wound healing, regenerative medicine, antimicrobial, and dermocosmetics.

The advancement of human retinal pigment epithelial cell (hRPE) replacement therapy is partly dependent on optimization of cell culture, cell preservation, and storage medium. This study was undertaken to search for a suitable storage temperature and storage medium for hRPE. hRPE monolayer sheets were cultured under standard conditions at 37°C and then randomized for storage at six temperatures (4, 16, 20, 24, 28, and 37°C) for 7 days. After revealing a suitable storage temperature, hRPE sheets were subsequently stored with and without the silk protein sericin added to the storage medium. Live/dead assay, light microscopy, pH, and phenotypic expression of various proteins were used to assess cell cultures stored at different temperatures. After 7 days of storage, hRPE morphology was best preserved at 4°C. Addition of sericin to the storage medium maintained the characteristic morphology of the preserved cells, and improved pigmentation and levels of pigmentation-related proteins in the cultured hRPE sheets following a 7-day storage period at 4°C.

Advances in embryology, genetics, and regenerative medicine regularly attract attention from scientists, scholars, journalists, and policymakers, yet implications of these advances may be broader than commonly supposed. Laboratories culturing human embryos, editing human genes, and creating human-animal chimeras have been working along lines that are now becoming intertwined. Embryogenic methods are weaving traditional in vivo and in vitro distinctions into a new “in vivitro” (in life in glass) fabric. These and other methods known to be in use or thought to be in development promise soon to bring society to startling choices and discomfiting predicaments, all in a global effort to supply reliably rejuvenating stem cells, to grow immunologically nonprovocative replacement organs, and to prevent, treat, cure, or even someday eradicate diseases having genetic or epigenetic mechanisms. With humanity’s human-engineering era now begun, procedural prohibitions, funding restrictions, institutional controls, and transparency rules are proving ineffective, and business incentives are migrating into the most basic life-sciences inquiries, wherein lie huge biomedical potentials and bioethical risks. Rights, health, and heritage are coming into play with bioethical presumptions and formal protections urgently needing reassessment.

In 2014, the Japanese government amended the laws concerning regenerative medicine. This reform aimed to contribute to the appropriate promotion of regenerative medicine and new drug discovery for intractable diseases using stem cells. It also helped restrict stem cell tourism, that is, provision of stem cell therapy of unclear efficacy and safety to tourists from abroad, and its relaxed regulations may even lead to the resolution of the drug lag problem. Stem cell medicine is positioned as a part of a national growth strategy that requires cooperation among the industry, government, healthcare field, and academia. It can be characterized as a “mesoscopic strategy,” in that it aims to achieve high-level technological developments that would allow results from human-induced pluripotent stem cell and traditional stem cell research to contribute to regenerative medicine and drug development for intractable diseases, while attempting to strike a balance with commercialization and improved access of citizens to cutting-edge medical care.

Phenotype of cultured ocular epithelial transplants has been shown to affect clinical success rates following transplantation to the cornea. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between cell nucleus morphometry and phenotype in three types of cultured epithelial cells. This study provides knowledge for the development of a non-invasive method of determining the phenotype of cultured epithelium before transplantation. Cultured human conjunctival epithelial cells (HCjE), human epidermal keratinocytes (HEK), and human retinal pigment epithelial cells (HRPE) were analyzed by quantitative immunofluorescence. Assessments of nucleus morphometry and nucleus-to-cytoplasm ratio (N/C ratio) were performed using ImageJ. Spearman’s correlation coefficient was employed for statistical analysis. Levels of the proliferation marker PCNA in HCjE, HEK, and HRPE correlated positively with nuclear area. Nuclear area correlated significantly with levels of the undifferentiated cell marker ABCG2 in HCjE. Bmi1 levels, but not p63α levels, correlated significantly with nuclear area in HEK. The N/C ratio did not correlate significantly with any of the immunomarkers in HCjE (ABCG2, CK7, and PCNA) and HRPE (PCNA). In HEK, however, the N/C ratio was negatively correlated with levels of the undifferentiated cell marker CK14 and positively correlated with Bmi1 expression. The size of the nuclear area correlated positively with proliferation markers in all three epithelia. Morphometric indicators of phenotype in cultured epithelia can be identified using ImageJ. Conversely, the N/C ratio did not show a uniform relationship with phenotype in HCjE, HEK, or HRPE. N/C ratio therefore, may not be a useful morphometric marker for in vitro assessment of phenotype in these three epithelia.

This article explores the changing expectations and contested identity of blood stem cells (haematopoietic stem cells or HSCs). While much social science critique has of late been focused on embryonic stem cells, relatively little attention has been given to the historical emergence of stem cell biology, especially the importance of blood innovation stretching back through the middle of the twentieth century and beyond. Present-day stem cell networks inherit much from the historical engagement of medical technology with blood, especially in the contexts of blood processing, bone marrow transplantation and, more recently, gene therapy. In making sense of the shaping of blood stem cells this article draws on perspectives in the ‘sociology of expectations’ in exploring the way current expectations of stem cells are historically constituted. In this way we examine the way biological entities—HSCs in this case—become the focus and bearers of future value in contemporary global stem cell economies.

The possibility of recreating various tissues and organs for the purpose of regenerative medicine has received much interest. However, the field of tissue engineering has been restricted by the limitations of conventional approaches. A method to circumvent the need for traditional scaffold-based technologies is cell-sheet engineering, which uses temperature-responsive culture dishes. These surfaces, which are created by grafting the temperature-responsive polymer poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) onto ordinary culture dishes, enable the non-invasive harvesting of cells as intact sheets by simple temperature reduction. This article reviews current research on the applications of cell-sheet engineering for the reconstruction of various tissues, as well as the intelligent surfaces used by this novel technology.