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Wed, 18 Jun 2008
Maryland Joins Sprint to Lead in Biotechnology
Gov. Martin O'Malley Monday unveiled a proposal to invest $1.1 billion over the next decade to cement Maryland's status as a pre-eminent hub for biotechnology research, including stem-cell studies aimed at finding breakthrough medical advances. The funding, which would build on existing tax credits and grant programs, would be used to create a biotechnology center, finance capital projects and make equity investments in start-up companies. O'Malley, a Democrat, said the money could transform Maryland—where the human genome was mapped in 2001—into a global leader in personalized medicine, or the use of genetics to tailor treatments.
Tue, 17 Jun 2008
Research Illuminates How Stem Cells May Work
UC Berkeley scientists are a step closer to understanding how a series of molecular switches can turn on or off the regenerative power of stem cells that normally build new muscle tissue after it has been damaged. The research, conducted on laboratory mice, is years away from practical therapies for human beings. Nevertheless, this latest work, published online Sunday by the journal Nature, provides insight into how scientists are dissecting, step-by-step, the processes that govern how stem cells work. A goal of such research is to find ways to intervene and control these molecular switches—to improve healing and perhaps slow the effects of aging.
Fri, 13 Jun 2008
Stem Cell Guidelines On the Way
You can now have your say about regulations on bringing stem cell therapies to the clinic. A special task force set up to create guidelines for bringing stem cell therapies from bench to bedside will be accepting public commentary on the guidelines, continuing until this fall, the group announced [Thursday] at the annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) in Philadelphia. The task force's primary goals are to create guidelines that will help basic researchers address the regulatory challenges of stem cell therapies. In particular, the task force of more than 30 members from 13 countries will address issues of standardizing stem cell populations...
Fri, 30 May 2008
U.S. Experts Bemoan Nation's Loss of Stature in the World of Science
NEW YORK -- Some of the nation's leading scientists, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's top science adviser, [Wednesday] sharply criticized the diminished role of science in the United States and the shortage of federal funding for research, even as science becomes increasingly important to combating problems such as climate change and the global food shortage. Speaking at a science summit that opens this week's first World Science Festival, the expert panel of scientists, and audience members, agreed that the United States is losing stature because of a perceived high-level disdain for science. They cited U.S. officials and others questioning scientific evidence of climate change, the reluctance to federally fund stem cell research, and some U.S. officials casting doubt on evolution as examples that have damaged America's international standing.
Tue, 20 May 2008
Cells from 'Cytoplasmic Hybrids' Won't Make It into Humans
Parliament's decision to approve research using "admixed embryos" that contain human and animal material is not going to lead to immediate medical breakthroughs. Cells taken from "cytoplasmic hybrids" or "cybrids"—the main type of admixed embryos—are never likely to be transplanted into sick patients. Any insights that they might offer into diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, too, are probably years away. The outcome of last night's vote, however, is still a watershed for British science. First, it clears the way for experiments that could advance understanding of several devastating conditions, and the prospects of using all types of stem cell, embryonic and adult, in therapies.
Thu, 17 Apr 2008
Stemming the tumorous tide
Stem cells have a controversial reputation, but in truth they are what makes human life possible. Each tissue in the body grows from a particular sort of stem cell. When it divides, one of its daughters remains a stem cell while the other eventually turns into whatever tissue its mother was designed to produce—be it blood, muscle, nerve or whatever.
Mon, 7 Apr 2008
Stem Cells Made to Mimic Disease
Scientists have taken skin cells from patients with eight different diseases and turned them into stem cells. The advance means scientists are moving closer to using stem cells from the patient themselves to treat disease. This would mean they could circumvent the ethical and practical problems of using embryonic stem cells, which has sparked much opposition.
Wed, 2 Apr 2008
First British Human-Animal Hybrid Embryos Created by Scientists
Britain's first human-animal hybrid embryos have een created, forming a crucial first step, scientists believe, towards a supply of stem cells that could be used to investigate debilitating and so far untreatable conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's and motor neuron disease.
Thu, 28 Feb 2008
Stem Cell Breakthrough May Reduce Cancer Risk
The main obstacle to using "reprogrammed" human stem cells—the danger that they might turn cancerous—has been solved, claims a US company. PrimeGen, based in Irvine, California, says that its scientists have converted specialised adult human cells back to a seemingly embryonic state—using methods that are much less likely to trigger cancer than those deployed previously.
Wed, 20 Feb 2008
Stem Cell Jabs Reverse Damage After Strokes, Doctors Claim
Stroke patients could receive stem cell injections to help repair damage to their brains within the next five years, a team of American doctors claimed yesterday. Hopes that a therapy may be on the horizon were boosted by experiments which showed human embryonic stem cells could be turned into a variety of brain cells, which helped animals recover from strokes without causing dangerous side effects.
Wed, 28 Nov 2007
Human Embryonic Stem-Cell Work Must Go On, Says Researcher
A top scientist using stem cells from human embryos to cure disease and repair injuries will proceed with his work, he said in Tucson on Tuesday, despite a recent breakthrough showing the controversial embryos may no longer be need.... Scientists deeply involved in human embryonic stem-cell research are unlikely to scrap years of work, however controversial, to start over with the new skin-cell technology, said one noted for cutting-edge achievements in this field. "I do think a great deal of this work could be done with the skin-cell-derived stem cells. But we'd have to start completely over, from scratch, and we are not going to slow down to do that, not at this point," said Hans Keirstead, a neurobiologist and stem-cell researcher at the University of California-Irvine.
Tue, 27 Nov 2007
After Stem-Cell Breakthrough, the Work Begins
If stem cell researchers were oil prospectors, it could be said that they struck a gusher last week. But to realize the potential boundless riches they now must figure out how to build refineries, pipelines and gas stations. Biologists were electrified on Tuesday, when scientists in Japan and Wisconsin reported that they could turn human skin cells into cells that behave like embryonic stem cells, able to grow indefinitely and to potentially turn into any type of tissue in the body. The discovery, if it holds up, would decisively solve the raw material problem. It should provide an unlimited supply of stem cells without the ethically controversial embryo destruction and the restrictions on federal financing that have impeded work on human embryonic cells.
Fri, 23 Nov 2007
Hope for Safer Bone Marrow Transplants
Patients with common immune disorders such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis could one day be treated with bone marrow transplants, scientists claimed [Thursday]. Hopes for the new treatment follow the development of a more efficient transplant technique, which avoids the need for radio- or chemotherapy, both of which have potentially dangerous side effects. Traditional bone marrow transplants are used to treat only life-threatening conditions, such as leukemia or lymphoma. The treatment infuses healthy adult stem cells into the patient, which then form fresh blood and immune cells.
Wed, 21 Nov 2007
Researchers Report Stem Cell Breakthrough
Researchers in Wisconsin and Japan have turned ordinary human skin cells into what are effectively human embryonic stem cells without using embryos or women's eggs—the two hitherto essential ingredients that have embroiled the medically promising field in a long political and ethicaldebate. The unencumbered ability to turn adult cells into embryonic ones capable of morphing into virtually every kind of cell or tissue, described in two scientific journal articles to be released today, has been the ultimate goal of researchers for years... As news of the success by two different research teams spread by e-mail, scientists seemed almost giddy at the likelihood that their field, which for its entire life has been at the center of so much debate, may suddenly become like other areas of biomedical science: appreciated, eligible for federal funding and wide open for new waves of discovery.
Fri, 3 Aug 2007
Korean Cloned Human Cells Were Product of "Virgin Birth"
Researchers say they have confirmed suspicions that embryonic stem cells claimed to be extracted from the first cloned human embryo by discredited South Korean scientist Woo Suk Hwang actually owe their existence to parthenogenesis, a process in which egg cells give rise to embryos without being fertilized by sperm. A series of genetic markers sprinkled throughout the cells' chromosomes show the same pattern found in parthenogenetic mice as opposed to cloned mice, according to a report published online today in the journal Cell Stem Cell. The result suggests that, although Hwang deceived the world about achieving the first human cloning, his group was first to succeed in performing human parthenogenesis, which may offer a way of creating cells that are genetically matched to a woman for transplantation back into her body to treat degenerative diseases.
Every weekday, Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, selects a set of significant and interesting science-related news articles from the mainstream media. The news stories featured here are selected from Sigma Xi's daily Science in the News e-mail.
http://www.mediaresource.org/news.instruct.shtml
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