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Legal complexities may underlie the delay in fulfilling election pledge. Diana DeGette wants an executive order now.R. Edmonds/AP Photo Colorado congresswoman Diana DeGette had one message for President Barack Obama when she shook his hand on 17 February, moments after he signed the massive US economic stimulus bill into law. "I just looked at him and said: 'Mr President, just to reiterate my hope that you will sign an executive order reversing President Bush's ban on [human] embryonic stem-cell research'," says DeGette (Democrat). "He said: 'We're gonna do it soon.'" Those words, and others like them from Obama, are doing...

Medical Advancement: It's the supporters of embryonic stem cell research who have politicized science. The desperation of a family and the pressure to produce results may have produced a medical tragedy instead.In the 2006 election, actor Michael J. Fox, who suffers from Parkinson's, made a commercial for Democrats in which he urged voters to support Senate candidates who supported federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. As we noted then and do again, ESCR was not the "most promising" avenue of stem cell research. And no, that's not because of a lack of federal funds, but rather with the difficulties...

Neural stem cells in culture: use them carefully.R. CASSIANI-INGONI/SPL A report claiming that unregulated transplants of human fetal neural stem cells led to tumours in a boy's brain and spinal cord is being hotly discussed by stem-cell researchers. Although the procedure took place well outside the scientific mainstream, it underscores the need for caution as clinical trials involving stem-cell transplantation move forward."This is the first documented case of tumours resulting from fetal-cell transplant," says Wise Young, a neurosurgeon at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey.The paper, appearing in PLoS Medicine, describes a boy who received injections of fetal neural stem...

AP Science Writer A U.S. biotech company says it plans to start this summer the world's first study of a treatment based on human embryonic stem cells - a long-awaited project aimed at spinal cord injury. --snip-- Each patient will receive a low dose of anti-rejection drugs for about two months, because after that time the medications shouldn't be needed, Okarma said. The study will follow each patient for at least a year...

Stroke patients to be treated with tailor-made brain cells. Stem cells will be grafted into the brains of patients during the new trial.ALAMY UK researchers have been given the go-ahead for a clinical trial to assess the use of stem-cell transplants for stroke. Twelve people will take part in the preliminary safety study, the first time that brain-derived stem cells have been used to treat stroke patients.The trial, due to start later this year, will see different doses of cultured human neural stem cells grafted into the brains of patients who have had a stroke — often caused by a...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- In just a matter of weeks, Barack Obama may force Americans to spend millions for unproven embryonic stem cell research. Yet, scientists admit they are having significant problems overcoming one of the major hurdles that may prevent the cells from every helping human patients. While adult stem cells have helped patients with a wide range of dozens of diseases and conditions, embryonic stem cells have yet to help one patient and have had problems in animals. One major problem is that they tend to form cancerous cells or tumors after they are injected -- and scientists...

One of the current handicaps of cancer treatments is the difficulty of aiming these treatments at destroying malignant cells without killing healthy cells in the process. But a new study by McMaster University researchers has provided insight into how scientists might develop therapies and drugs that more carefully target cancer, while sparing normal healthy cells Mick Bhatia, scientific director of the McMaster Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, and his team of investigators have demonstrated – for the first time – the difference between normal stem cells and cancer stem cells in...

Proclamation on biomedical science and reproductive medicine revised. The Vatican has said that researchers should not work with stem cells derived from embryos.Punchstock The Roman Catholic Church has reaffirmed its opposition to embryonic stem cell research in a document that updates its 20-year-old position on biomedical research and reproductive medicine. The instruction Dignitas Personae not only condemns embryonic stem cell research, and in vitro fertilization (IVF) but also formalizes its many previous positions including banning human cloning to produce embryonic stem cells, and human–animal cloned chimaeras. For Catholic researchers, the biggest impact of the new text is that for the...

When people envision using human embryonic stem cells for “regenerative medicine,” they often talk about making neurons to treat Parkinson’s disease, cardiac cells to... --snip-- The idea faces other challenges beyond the huge volume of cells needed. The red cells produced from embryonic stem cells so far tend to resemble embryonic or fetal red cells more than adult ones. They tend to be larger and often contain nuclei, which could impede their passage through the body. And they have a different form of the globin molecule, which carries oxygen. --snip-- “The real test is in vivo,” said Dr. Thalia Papayannopoulou,...

Washington, August 20 : UC Riverside researchers have devised a way to grow human embryonic stem cells in the lab without using animal derived materials, bringing the use of embryonic stem cells for medical purposes closer to reality. Noboru Sato, an assistant professor of biochemistry, that the new method may revolutionise cell therapy to treat diseases like Parkinson's and diabetes mellitus. This advancement attains significance because the majority of researchers presently culture the cells using animal-based materials that can transmit viruses other pathogens to the stem cells, making them unsuitable for medical use. Sato insists that his method is cleaner...

Barcelona, Spain: For the first time in the world scientists have succeeded in developing human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) from a single cell, or blastomere, of a 4-cell stage embryo, the 24th annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology heard today (Wednesday 9 July). Dr. Hilde Van de Velde, from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Brussels, Belgium, said that their research meant that it might be possible in the future to produce hESC lines at an earlier stage without destroying the embryo. Blastomeres are formed in the very early stages of embryonic development. About 24 hours...

Success in mice could be a breakthrough for disorders such as multiple sclerosis. Human donor cells (red) spread through the mouse brains and trigger their repair.Windrem et al./Cell Stem Cell 5 June 2008 Human stem cells have been used to correct abnormal brain development in mice with fatal brain disorders, offering hope for treating a range of neurological disorders including some deadly childhood genetic diseases. Those behind the new treatment hope that human clinical trials could be just a few years away. The treatment uses human glial progenitor cells — cells that can differentiate into the glial cells that, among...

LOS ANGELES — California has awarded $271 million in grants to build 12 stem cell research centers in the state, even as one of the political rationales for the building program might soon disappear. The awards, announced here Wednesday, represent the largest chunk of money awarded at one time by California’s taxpayer-backed stem cell program, which is slated to spend about $3 billion over about a decade. The universities and research institutes that are receiving the money have said they would spend an additional $560 million on the laboratory construction, money they are trying to raise from donations. The resulting...

Enlarge ImagePromising growth. (Clockwise from left) Three-, 5-, and 6-day-old cloned blastocysts. Credit: A. French et al., Stem Cells (17 January 2008) A California company reported today that it has, for the first time, cloned human embryos using DNA from adult skin cells. That's "an important first step" toward generating embryonic stem (ES) cell lines from such embryos, which can be used to study and treat diseases such as diabetes and Parkinson's, says stem cell researcher George Daley of Harvard Medical School in Boston. Scientists want to be able to clone early human embryos, using cells from patients with...

News Analysis WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 — It has been more than six years since President Bush, in the first major televised address of his presidency, drew a stark moral line against the destruction of human embryos in medical research. Since then, he has steadfastly maintained that scientists would come up with an alternative method of developing embryonic stem cells, one that did not involve killing embryos. Critics were skeptical. But now that scientists in Japan and Wisconsin have apparently achieved what Mr. Bush envisioned, the White House is saying, “I told you so.” Conservative Republican presidential hopefuls like former Gov....

In what has been described as a breakthrough, US scientists have found a new way to use human embryonic stem cells to produce precursor cells that can repair severely damaged blood vessels in mice and other laboratory animals. They hope this method will one day be used to repair extensive blood vessel damage in humans, for instance diabetics with damaged retinas, people with severe blood vessel damage in limbs (and thereby avoid amputation), and reducing deaths from heart attacks. The research is published in the journal Nature Methods and is available as an early online issue. In the study, scientists...

February 23, 2007, 8:00 a.m. Troubled Iowa DreamsCaring to clone. By Richard M. Doerflinger For years the political campaign to allow human cloning for research purposes has paid only grudging attention to anything resembling a fact. Recent events in Iowa suggest that it is now fashionable to follow this campaign into a complete fantasy land. At issue is a February 14 Associated Press story from Iowa titled “Senate bill eases limits on stem cell research.” The reporter helpfully notes that the Iowa Senate has narrowly approved a bill that “Democrats say would ease restrictions on embryonic stem cell research,”...

In an experiment that boosts hopes for regenerative medicine, scientists have used stem cells from human embryos to save the sight of lab rats going blind. The genetically engineered rodents suffered from an eye disease similar to macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss in people older than 55. But after receiving injections of retinal tissue generated from human embryonic stem cells, the rodents' vision did not deteriorate and, researchers say, proved to be 100 per cent better than untreated rats. The work not only represents a new possibility for treating an incurable condition on the rise, but also...