Osteoporosis, or bone loss, is a progressive, systemic skeletal disease that affects millions of people worldwide. Osteoporosis is generally age related, and it is underdiagnosed because it remains asymptomatic for several years until the development of fractures that confine daily life activities, particularly in elderly people. Most patients with osteoporotic fractures become bedridden and are in a life-threatening state. The consequences of fracture can be devastating, leading to substantial morbidity and mortality of the patients. The normal physiologic process of bone remodeling involves a balance between bone resorption and bone formation during early adulthood. In osteoporosis, this process becomes imbalanced, resulting in gradual losses of bone mass and density due to enhanced bone resorption and/or inadequate bone formation. Several growth factors underlying age-related osteoporosis and their signaling pathways have been identified, such as osteoprotegerin (OPG)/receptor activator of nuclear factor B (RANK)/RANK ligand (RANKL), bone morphogenetic protein (BMP), wingless-type MMTV integration site family (Wnt) proteins and signaling through parathyroid hormone receptors. In addition, the pathogenesis of osteoporosis has been connected to genetics. The current treatment of osteoporosis predominantly consists of antiresorptive and anabolic agents; however, the serious adverse effects of using these drugs are of concern. Cell-based replacement therapy via the use of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) may become one of the strategies for osteoporosis treatment in the future.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive and irreversible neurodegenerative disease causing neural cell degeneration and brain atrophy and is considered to be the most common form of dementia. We previously generated an induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) line from an AD patient carrying an A79V mutation in PSEN1 as an in vitro disease model. Here we generated a gene-corrected version from this hiPSC line by substituting the point mutation with the wild-type sequence. The reported A79V-GC-iPSCs line is a very useful resource in combination with the A79V-iPSC line in order to study pathological cellular phenotypes related to this particular mutation.

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Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are a type of adult stem cell that contains multi-differentiation and proliferative properties and that shows high treatment implications for many clinical problems. The outcome of stem cell transplantation is still limited due to many factors, especially their survival and their interaction with the microenvironment after transplantation. Molecular imaging is a challenging technique that has been used to overcome this limitation and is based on the concept of labeling cells with tractable, visible, and non-toxic materials to track the cells after transplantation. In this study, magnetic polymeric nanoparticles (MPNPs) were used to directly label Wharton's jelly-derived MSCs (WJ-MSCs). After labeling, the growth rate and the viability of the MSCs as well as the time of exposure were determined. The 3D images of WJ-MSCs labeled with MPNPs for 24 h were created using confocal microscopy. The results showed that, after incubation with fluorescent MPNPs for over 8 h, the growth rate and cell viability of the WJ-MSCs was similar to those of the control. Three-dimensional imaging revealed that the fluorescent MPNPs could infiltrate into the cells and spread into the cytoplasm, which suggests that the synthesized fluorescent MPNPs could possibly label MSCs for cell tracking study and be further developed for in vivo applications.