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LOS ANGELES -- The creation of California's stem cell agency in 2004 was greeted by scientists and patients as a turning point in a field mired in debates about the destruction of embryos and hampered by federal research restrictions. The taxpayer-funded institute wielded the extraordinary power to dole out $3 billion in bond proceeds to fund embryonic stem cell work with an eye toward treatments for a host of crippling diseases. Midway through its mission, with several high-tech labs constructed, but little to show on the medicine front beyond basic research, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine faces an uncertain...

Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital say they have extracted stem cells from human ovaries and made them generate egg cells. The advance, if confirmed, might provide a new source of eggs for treating infertility, though scientists say it is far too early to tell if the work holds such promise.

In addition to stopping funding for the Planned Parenthood abortion business, Komen for the Cure has also quietly stopped funding embryonic stem cell research centers, another concern for pro-life advocates.As LifeNews reported last July, Karen Malec of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer spent time examining KomenÂ’s 990 Forms for the IRS for 2010 and she found that Komen has active relationships with at least five research groups or educational facilities that engage in embryonic stem cell research, which requires the destruction of unborn children in their earliest days for stem cells that have yet to help any patients.The return showed...

Ian Wilmut, the scientist who achieved international notoriety for cloning the sheep Dolly, is now urging his fellow scientists and researchers to abandon embryonic stem cell research.His comments at a conference follow on the major news that Geron, a cloning company the Obama administration funded to undertake the first human clinical trials involving embryonic-like stem cells, abruptly canceled the trials and got out of the embryonic stem cell research business.Wilmut spoke to researchers at a late November event in California and said that embryonic stem cells are not likely going to show promise because they lead to the development of...

I am one of a growing number of Americans who find themselves increasingly frustrated with the low-tech surgical options available in this country for certain chronic medical conditions. To achieve an improved quality of life I’m willing to travel abroad for treatment, despite the fact that it’s not covered by health insurance providers. I’m in high-profile company: in early July Texas’ governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry traveled outside the United States to undergo spinal fusion surgery. The procedure included an injection of his own, adult (autologous) stem cells. Unfortunately for his fellow Americans whose lives would be greatly improved...

Gov. Jerry Brown, like his predecessors, ordered state agencies and departments this year to restrict employee travel, and after reviewing out-of-state travel requests, his office said most obeyed. Except, in Brown's view, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which proposed as "mission critical" about two dozen international trips, including to Paris, Amsterdam, Australia and Japan. Meeting with foreign scientists and government officials, said Robert Klein, then chairman of the stem cell research agency's independent oversight committee, was necessary to share research and pursue international funding agreements worth millions of dollars. "More than 20 million Californians live in families where a...

Researchers from Japan recently published a paper in PLoS One describing their successful growth and transplantation of new teeth created from the stem cells of mice. In order to create these teeth, Takashi Tsuji from Tokyo University of Science and his team removed two different stem cells from the molar teeth of mice. They took these stem cells to grow in the laboratory. In order to control how the teeth grew, as far as shape and length, the stem cells were placed in a mold to grow. Once the cells grew into full tooth units, the researchers then transplanted them...

Reporting from Sacramento— California's stem cell research agency says it needs billions more taxpayer dollars to deliver on promised cures to major diseases. Yet at a time when other departments are cutting back spending, the agency recently agreed to pay its new boss one of the highest salaries in state government. The 50-person grant-making body will pay a Los Angeles investment banker $400,000 to serve as its new part-time board chairman, pushing the combined salaries of its two top officials to nearly $1 million per year. Santa Monica-based Saybrook Capital founder Jonathan Thomas — chosen over a former cardiologist who...

Dr. Robin Smith, CEO of NeoStem, announces the joint venture at the Vatican on June 16, 2011 Vatican City, Jun 16, 2011 / 12:35 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican has signed its first ever commercial agreement with an outside company. The contract with U.S.-based bio-pharmaceutical firm NeoStem will advance ethical research into stem cells. “We would like to create a hotspot for scientists, benefactors, academics (and) Church leaders that will now join this group and would work together for the benefit of humanity,”Fr. Tomaz Trafny of the Vatican’s Council for Culture told CNA June 16. The deal was announced...

A team of researchers at Lund University in southern Sweden have managed to develop nerve cells from human skin cells without using stem cells - a development described as an ethical and medical breakthrough. "This fundamentally changes how we look at mature cells and their capacity. Previously a skin cell was thought to always remain a skin cell, but we have shown that it can be any cell," said Malin Parmar, the Lund University researcher leading the study, to The Local on Tuesday. The new technique works by reprogramming connective tissue cells, so-called human fibroblasts, directly into nerve cells, opening...

Here we report the dynamic, autonomous formation of the optic cup (retinal primordium) structure from a three-dimensional culture of mouse embryonic stem cell aggregates.

Live human heart grown in lab using stem cells in potential transplant breakthrough By David Derbyshire Last updated at 12:22 PM on 4th April 2011 Breakthrough: Scientists are hopeful their artificial heart will be beating within days Scientists are growing human hearts in laboratories, offering hope for millions of cardiac patients. American researchers believe the artificial organs could start beating within weeks. The experiment is a major step towards the first ‘grow-your-own’ heart, and could pave the way for livers, lungs or kidneys to be made to order. The organs were created by removing muscle cells from donor organs to...

A little girl who has been blind since birth has seen her mother and father for the first time - at the age of four. Izabelle Evans can now see up to three feet in front of her after groundbreaking stem cell treatment in China costing £50,000. Parents James Evans and Hollie McHugh said nothing could beat the feeling of the first time their daughter looked into their eyes and said: 'mummy' and 'daddy'.

Latest on Embryonic Stem Cell Research Battles Court to Hear Lawsuit on Obama's Embryonic Stem Cell Funds http://LifeNews.com/bio-3223 Bill to Expand Obama's Embryonic Stem Cell Funds Appears Dead http://LifeNews.com/bio-3222

A retired military service dog is getting a new lease on life in Washington, D.C., after undergoing a revolutionary stem cell treatment. ... The cutting-edge treatment helps dogs grow new cartilage by injecting stem cells from their own fat, normally from the abdomen, into the affected joint. The treatment takes about three days and has an 80 percent success rate, MyFoxDC.com reported.

NEW YORK — For only the second time, the U.S. government has approved a test in people of a treatment using embryonic stem cells — this time for a rare disease that causes serious vision loss. Advanced Cell Technology, a biotechnology company based in Santa Monica., California, said the research should begin early next year, following the green light from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Just last month another biotech company, Geron Corp., said it had begun preliminary testing in people for treating spinal cord injuries by injecting cells derived from embryonic stem cells. Scientists hope to use...

Famous Pro-Life Priest in a press conference in Vienna: the principle goal of the movement remains in any case, is to make abortion legally unallowable. Vienna (kath.net/KAP) An insight in the engagement of the US-American "Pro-Life" - movement was given by activist and President of "Priests for Life" - initiative, Frank Pavone this Thursday in Vienna. The principle goal of the movement remains in any case, to make abortion legally unallowable, said Pavone during an encounter with a journalist. The movement also has in any case to raise consciousness in the population: "We want to make abortion unthinkable." He could...

STEM cell researchers have found a way to turn a person's skin into blood, a process that could be used to treat cancer and other ailments, according to a Canadian study published today. The method uses cells from a patch of a person's skin and transforms it into blood that is a genetic match, without using human embryonic stem cells, said the study in the journal Nature. By avoiding the controversial and more complicated processes involved with using human embryonic stem cells to create blood, this approach simplifies the process, researchers said. "What we believe we can do in the...

In a letter sent Friday to the leadership of the House of Representatives and the Senate, the deans of American medical schools, chief executives of U.S. hospitals and heads of organizations with names like the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the American Society of Human Genetics said that federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research “is essential” if scientists are to succeed in turning the cells into usable treatments. “The therapeutic potential of human embryonic stem cells is remarkable and could well prove to be one of the most significant paradigm-shifting advances in the history of...

Appeals Court Allows Obama to Fund Embryonic Stem Cell Research Washington, DC -- A federal appeals court has lifted the injunction a federal judge put in place stopping President Barack Obama from forcing taxpayers to finance unproven embryonic stem cell research while scientists continue with their lawsuit against the funding. http://LifeNews.com/bio3185.html