Our results from the chicken fat stem cell extraction were surprisingly good. For one, we did not conduct the experiment in the hood because we didn’t want to contaminate the human stem cell lines. Second, we didn’t have access to the freshest chicken, which is required to get enough viable mesenchymal stem cells to grow on the flask. Here are the results. You are looking at the little clump in the center of the image. That represents a small cluster of attached mesenchymal stem cells. The reason why we didn’t see a lot of cells is that normally it takes a week and this is only day three.
A small clump of mesenchymal stem cells extracted from the fat of grocery store bought chicken.
We also wrapped up our human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) experiment. Looking at the image of the flask, you can clearly see four distinct embryoid bodies (EBs). The word embryoid is confusing because iPSCs are adult cells that have been induced into a pluripotent stage. They do not come from fertilized human eggs, but from adult donors. Thus, the controversy about using stem cells is avoided. It is surprising how many people do not know that induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) come from adult donors.
We toured Thermo Fisher’s facility in Madison. They mostly focus on stem cells but we did get to use a lot of their laboratory equipment. I have some pictures below.
Embryoid bodies from iPS(IMR90) stem cells.
Thermo Fisher’s facility in Madison, Wisconsin focuses on stem cell products.
Using the FLoid fluorescent imaging microscope to look at some human stem cells.
