Medical Potential Of IPS Stem Cells Exaggerated Says World Authority

IPS cells were named the breakthrough of 2008

From Times Online:

The medical potential of reprogrammed stem cells that do not require the destruction of embryos has been exaggerated, according to the head of one of the world’s leading regenerative medicine companies.

Thomas Okarma, the chief executive of Geron Corporation, told The Times that while so-called induced pluripotent stem (IPS) cells will be extremely useful in research, they are unlikely to be suitable for transplanting to patients to treat disease.

Read more ....

Pioneering Stem Cell Treatment Restores Sight

From The Telegraph:

A man blinded in one eye by a chemical attack as he intervened to stop a fight has had his sight restored thanks to pioneering new stem cell treatment.

Russell Turnbull, 38, lost most of the vision in his right eye when he had ammonia sprayed into it as he tried to break up a fight on a late night bus journey home.

The attack, which badly burned and scarred his cornea, left him with permanent blurred sight and pain whenever he blinked.

Read more ....

Stem Cells Can be Engineered into Genetic Vaccines Against HIV and More

Killer T-Cells The blue blobs are killer T-cells getting ready to attack a tumor via PNAS

From Popular Science:

While some viruses attack the lungs, and others the blood, HIV attacks the only system that could put up a fight: the immune system itself. The immune system mounts some defense, but after HIV launches its surprise attack, the body simply can't produce enough killer T blood cells to take out the virus.

Read more ....

U.S. Allows New Stem Cell Lines for Research

President Barack Obama looks through a microscope at brain cells with Dr Marston Linehan as he tours the National Institutes of Health (NIH) before making a major announcement regarding the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act at NIH in Bethesda, Maryland, September 30, 2009. The Obama administration on December 2, 2009 approved the first human embryonic stem cells for experiments by federally funded scientists. The new policy aims at expanding government support of the controversial biomedical research. Jim Watson / AFP / Getty

From Time Magazine:

Nobody likes a busy signal. And for U.S. stem cell researchers, none has been more frustrating than the one on the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Human Embryonic Stem Cell Registry home page. That's where the government agency lists all of the embryonic stem cell lines that scientists are allowed to study using taxpayer dollars. For months, the page has been depressingly static. "None are available at this time," it read. "Please check back later."

Read more ....

Stem Cell Study Leads To Breakthrough In Understanding Infertility

Understanding the details of how sperm and egg cells grow will help scientists develop treatments. Photograph: Corbis

From The Guardian:

Hidden stage of human development' is opened up by Stanford University scientists.

Scientists have turned human stem cells into early-stage sperm and eggs in research that promises to give doctors an unprecedented insight into the causes of infertility.

The work will allow researchers to study human reproductive cells from the moment they are created in embryos through to fully-mature sperm and eggs.

Understanding the details of how sperm and egg cells grow will help scientists develop treatments for people who are left infertile when the process goes wrong. The research may also lead to treatments that can correct growth defects before a child is born.

Read more ....

Vital Embryo Research Driven Out Of Britain

Professor Justin St John, who has left the UK for Australia (left); Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, of the MRC, which turned down one licence-holder (right). REX

From The Independent:

Scientists abandon plan to develop stem cells after funding dries up.

All research involving the controversial creation of animal-human "hybrid" embryos has been refused funding in Britain and one of the three scientists licensed to carry out the work has left the UK for a job in Australia.

Every one of the three projects to develop embryonic stem cells from cloned embryos created by fusing human cells with animal eggs has now been abandoned, after publicly-funded research councils refused to back the studies aimed at developing new treatments for incurable illnesses ranging from heart disease to Parkinson's.

Read more ....

China Cracks Down On Stem Cell Tourism

From New Scientist:

Chinese and European researchers have today published ethical guidelines aimed at discouraging Chinese doctors from offering patients unproven or sham treatments based on stem cells.

The authors hope the move will reinforce legal curbs on stem cell treatments introduced on 1 May by China's ministry of health.

The launch follows new allegations of fraud in stem cell research, and the arrest of individuals in Hungary allegedly offering bogus treatments.

Read more ....

Living, Breeding Mice Grown From Skin Cells

From Wired Science:

Cells from flakes of skin have grown into living, breeding mice, through a bit of biotechnological wizardry.

This feat helps confirm that reprogrammed adult cells, considered a potentially convenient source of stem cell therapies, share the shape-changing powers of embryonic stem cells.

The goal was to create an animal made entirely from reprogrammed cells, and to confirm that reprogrammed cells “are as good as embryonic stem cells,” said Beijing National Stem Cell Bank director Qi Zhou, co-author of the study published Thursday in Nature.

Read more ....

Human Sperm Created From Stem Cells In World First, Claims British University

From The Telegraph:

British scientists have created human sperm using stem cells in a medical first that could revolutionise fertility treatment, they claim.

Researchers at the pioneering Northeast England Stem Cell Institute say they have made the breakthrough using stem cells from an embryo.

They claim that with some minor changes the sperm could theoretically fertilise an egg to create a child.

Within 10 years, the scientists say the technique could also be used to allow infertile couples to have children that are genetically their own. It could even be possible to create sperm from female stem cells, they say, which would ultimately mean a woman having a baby without a man.

Read more ....

The Essential Guide to Stem Cells

Myelin Maker?: In July, scientists at Geron Corporation will kick start a clinical trial to heal injured spinal cords with stem cells, in the hope that new cells will create myelin, which insulates nerve fibers in the spinal cord

From Popsci.com:

Everything you need to know about the hottest topic in 
medicine, from big-league breakthroughs and new therapies to emerging health risks and the patients willing to take them.

For more than a decade, researchers have touted stem cells as the most promising advance in medicine since antibiotics. And this winter, when President Obama lifted the Bush administration's ban on federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research, talking heads buzzed that his decision could bring scientists that much closer to cures — not just treatments — for conditions like heart failure, spinal-cord injuries and Alzheimer's disease. Biologists around the world toasted their new prospects with champagne. "Lifting the ban will free us up to use additional cell lines," says Jack Kessler, director of the Feinberg Neuroscience Institute at Northwestern University. "It's very important for science."

Read more ....

Blind To Be Cured With Stem Cells

From Times Online:

BRITISH scientists have developed the world’s first stem cell therapy to cure the most common cause of blindness. Surgeons predict it will become a routine, one-hour procedure that will be generally available in six or seven years’ time.

The treatment involves replacing a layer of degenerated cells with new ones created from embryonic stem cells. It was pioneered by scientists and surgeons from the Institute of Ophthalmology at University College London and Moorfields eye hospital.

This week Pfizer, the world’s largest pharmaceutical research company, will announce its financial backing to bring the therapy to patients.

Read more ....

FDA Approves Test To Inject Embryonic Stem Cells Into Humans

Image from ProQuest

From Live Science:

The federal government has approved the first study by a company that will use human embryonic stem cells injected into a human.

The Geron corporation announce the approval today. The therapy used in the study is designed to treat spinal cord injuries by injecting stem cells — which are able to transform into the many different types of cells we need in our bodies — directly into the patients' spinal cords.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted clearance of the company's application for the clinical trial of GRNOPC1 in patients with acute spinal cord injury.

"This marks the beginning of what is potentially a new chapter in medical therapeutics - one that reaches beyond pills to a new level of healing: the restoration of organ and tissue function achieved by the injection of healthy replacement cells," said Geron's president and CEO. Dr. Thomas B. Okarma.

Read more ....

F.D.A. Approves A Stem Cell Trial

Photo: Geron’s trial with embryonic stem cells will involve people with severe spinal injuries, and will mostly test the therapy’s safety. Geron

From The New York Times:

In a research milestone, the federal government will allow the world’s first test in people of a therapy derived from human embryonic stem cells.

Federal drug regulators said that political considerations had no role in the decision. Nevertheless, the move coincided with the inauguration of President Obama, who has pledged to remove some of the financing restrictions placed on the field by President George W. Bush.

The clearance of the clinical trial — of a treatment for spinal cord injury — is to be announced Friday by Geron, the biotechnology company that first applied to the Food and Drug Administration to conduct the trial last March. The F.D.A. had first said no, asking for more data.

Thomas B. Okarma, Geron’s chief executive, said Thursday that he did not think that the Bush administration’s objections to embryonic stem cell research played a role in the F.D.A.’s delaying approval.

“We really have no evidence,” Dr. Okarma said, “that there was any political overhang.”

Read more ....

Stem Cells Are More Flexible Than Previously Thought, Research Suggests

Human embryonic stem cell growing on a layer of supporting cells (fibroblasts). Micrograph by Annie Cavanagh and Dave McCarthy. (Photo From UCSC)

From The Telegraph:

Thousands of patients could benefit from a new discovery that could widen the use of stem cells in groundbreaking medical treatments.

Research by British scientists has shown the body is more flexible in its production of stem cells than previously thought.

The discovery widens the possibilities for the use of such cells in surgical procedures for treating damaged tissue and organs.

Last week surgeons in Spain created the world's first tissue-engineered whole organ transplant using a windpipe made with the patient's own stem cells. The patient, 30-year-old mother-of-two Claudia Castillo, needed the transplant to save a lung after contracting tuberculosis. Scientists from Bristol had helped to grow the cells.

Read more ....

Scientists Report Advance in Stem Cell Alternative

Human embryonic stem cell (gold) growing on a layer of supporting cells (fibroblasts).

From the Washington Post:

Scientists reported yesterday that they have overcome a major obstacle to using a promising alternative to embryonic stem cells, bolstering prospects for bypassing the political and ethical tempest that has embroiled hopes for a new generation of medical treatments.

The researchers said they found a safe way to coax adult cells to regress into an embryonic state, alleviating what had been the most worrisome uncertainty about developing the cells into potential cures.

"We have removed a major roadblock for translating this into a clinical setting," said Konrad Hochedlinger, a Harvard University stem cell researcher whose research was published online yesterday by the journal Science. "I think it's an important advance."

Read more ....