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WASHINGTON: Scientists have found that a protein abundant in embryonic stem cells plays a major role in cancer, which they claim offers a possible new target for drug development. A team at the Stem Cell Program at Children's Hospital Boston, led by Indian-origin scientist Srinivas Viswanathan, has discovered that LIN28 protein can transform cells to a cancerous state, and that it is abundant in a variety of advanced human cancers like liver cancer and ovarian cancer. According to them, LIN28 and a related protein, LIN28B, may be involved in some 15% of human cancers. By blocking or suppressing LIN28, it...

Four patients have had holes in their bones patched up using their own stem cells in a pioneering treatment. Doctors carried out the treatment on patients suffering from bone cysts on their hips, who would normally have the spaces plugged with metal plates. Experts said some of those treated were now able to walk without pain. They say more work is needed to take the procedure to the mass market, but predicted that it could be in clinics within five years. It could eventually also be used for hip replacement revisions, the approximately one in 10 such operations which need...

Scientists have been able to reverse the symptoms of multiple sclerosis using stem cells from patients' own body fat. Some have been left free from seizures and better able to walk after the treatment. Researchers said that the results suggest that the "very simple" injection of their own cells can stimulate the regrowth of tissue damaged by the progression of the disease. The preliminary findings add to the growing evidence that stem cells could be used to treat the crippling neurological disease, which affects about 85,000 people in Britain. Last year experts suggested that stem cell therapy could be a...

British scientists are among the world leaders in stem cell research - and their latest discoveries could transform medicine forever We have been told for almost a decade that stem cells are the future of medicine: that these tiny clumps of tissue could become a biological "repair kit", able to regenerate or heal almost any part of the body. But amid all the prophecies of patches for damaged hearts, new nerve cells for spinal injuries or stroke victims, and insulin-producing cells for diabetics, few people predicted that it would be British-based scientists who would be leading the way in mapping...

Discovering Health and Technology in the Human Body June 7, 2009 — Why invent technology from scratch, when the body contains substances that point the way to high tech, and can heal almost like magic? Several articles show that harnessing the body’s own resources is the wave of the future...

Get the following stories, and much more by clicking the excerpt link below: 1. National Geographic News: “Lizards Rapidly Evolve After Introduction to Island” Rapid evolution—“evolving in ways that would normally take millions of years to play out,” says National Geographic News. How does it confirm the Bible? 2. AP: “Robots with Fins, Tails Demonstrate Evolution” Laboratory scientists designing robots, then making changes to improve the robots’ success—is that really evolution?3. BBC News: “Pigs Offer New Stem Cell Source”Week after week, scientists are reporting more sources and ways to produce embryonic-like stem cells out of adults cells. Now the stem...

Here's something that people with poor or no vision will be excited about: three patients had their sight restored in less than a month by contact lenses cultured with stem cells. All three patients were blind in one eye. The researchers extracted stem cells from their working eyes, cultured them in contact lenses for 10 days, and gave them to the patients. Within 10 to 14 days of use, the stem cells began recolonizing and repairing the cornea. Of the three patients, two were legally blind but can now read the big letters on an eye chart, while the third,...

Pigs offer new stem cell source Pig organs are similar to their human equivalents Chinese scientists have given cells from adult pigs the ability to turn into any tissue in the body, just like embryonic stem cells. They hope the breakthrough could aid research into human disease, and the breeding of animals for organ transplants for humans. It may also enable the development of pigs that are resistant to diseases such as swine flu. The study appears online in the Journal of Molecular Cell Biology. This breakthrough to produce pig stem cells potentially reinvigorates the quest to grow humanised pig...

Enlarge ImageOn track. Colonies of genetically corrected cells taken from Fanconi anemia patients show red and yellow, markers associated with pluripotency. Credit: Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte Two papers published this week appear to bring closer the day when embryonic-like stem cells can be used to treat human diseases. One study describes what scientists say is the safest method yet to produce these cells. The other reports success in using the cells to begin correcting a rare genetic disorder known as Fanconi anemia. Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells were first reported in 2006 by Shinya Yamanaka, a researcher at Kyoto...

Robert Lanza is now reporting that his research group has produced induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPS) that are safe for use in humans. The website, Red Orbit, has provided a link to the original (.pdf)article. See the Time magazine news article, here. Lanza gives credit to the pioneering work of Shinya Yamanaka: Dr. Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer at Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), reported today in the journal Cell that his team has created stem cells using human skin cells and four proteins. The innovation builds on the breakthrough discovery in 2006 by Shinya Yamanaka, who similarly coaxed human skin...

Poor little Jimmy, born with a rare nervous disorder, had no idea what his parents were getting him into. The moment the president said -- "Yeah, feed the little brat some embryonic stem cells" -- his life was forever changed.

As the National Institutes of Health is considering guidelines on federally funding embryonic stem cell research, the U.S. bishops say the proposal is not only "morally objectionable" but also increasingly "scientifically obsolete." Monsignor David Malloy, general secretary of the U.S. episcopal conference, submitted comments on the draft guidelines. The public comment period on the guidelines ends Tuesday. The bishops' have provided citizens an easy way to submit comments at their Web site. For his part, the monsignor affirmed the dignity of human life at every stage and the right to not be subjected to harmful experimentation without one's consent. The...

Comments Deadline: 11:00pm EST on May 26, 2009. snip Please enter your comments on the Draft NIH Human Stem Cell Guidelines, as announced in the April 23, 2009 Federal Register Notice. Please reference specific sections in the document, when applicable. Please note that comments will be publicly available, including those containing personally identifiable or confidential business information.

Genetically engineered stem cells from bone marrow showed promise as a potential new way to deliver a cancer-killing protein to tumors, British researchers said on Tuesday. Experiments in cell cultures and in mice showed the adult stem cells — a type known as mesenchymal stem cells — could home in on cancer cells and deliver a lethal protein that attacked only the cancer while sparing normal healthy tissue. “We’ve developed cells which specifically target cancer through the body and deliver an anti-cancer protein to where it is needed in a seek-and-destroy approach,” said Dr. Michael Loebinger of University College London,...

TUESDAY, (HealthDay News) -- Injecting bone marrow cells into the heart's muscular wall restored blood flow to hearts with blocked arteries for which conventional treatments had proven ineffective, Dutch physicians have reported. "I think this is very good news for patients who are at the end of the line and have no options left," said Dr. Douwe E. Atsma, an interventional cardiologist at Leiden University Medical Center and an author of the study, which appears in the May 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The 50 people in the study, 43 of them men, were experiencing...

...[T]he Administrators of Notre Dame surrendered their souls to the last temptation of Barack Hussein Obama on last Sunday and the name Notre Dame will forever be linked with the name Obama. They invited this icon of the world to speak to its graduates in its 2009 commencement address and in addition they conferred an honorary degree upon him.

miRNA-145 represses Klf-4, Oct4 and Sox2, and is repressed by Oct4How pluripotency is controlled is one of biology's major puzzles. New research led by Kenneth Kosik of the University of California, Santa Barbara reveals not only a new piece in the puzzle but also how some major pieces fit together.A set of transcription factors — Klf4, Oct4 and Sox2 — is sufficient to reprogram specialized cells to pluripotency. As pluripotent cells take on a differentiated fate, these transcription factors disappear. Kosik found that one microRNA (miRNA) is able to repress all three of these proteins.Although these small RNA molecules can...

Some research advocates and scientists are upset that techniques they support would get no federal money. Many scientists hoped President Obama would end what they saw as the politicization of embryonic stem cell research. They thought all Bush administration funding bans would vanish, easing the way for unimpeded research that could yield interventions for physicians to use in treating everything from Parkinson's disease to diabetes. But those hopes may be running into political reality.The National Institutes of Health in April proposed overturning some Bush-era restrictions on federal funding for stem cell research while leaving others in place. The rules would...

The growing blue state-red state gap over this research shows that science has serious economic and political muscle in America today. When Barack Obama removed George W. Bush's ban on federal funding for new embryonic stem cell research in March, the president cast his decision as part of a larger effort to remove politics from science. No longer would research, Obama said, be shackled by a "false choice between sound science and moral values." It turns out the president cannot separate politics and science so easily. No sooner had Obama issued his order than conservative lawmakers in state legislatures began...

div class="noticia_imagen_contenedor" style="width: 290px;"> Washington D.C., May 8, 2009 / 01:46 am (CNA).- The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) on Wednesday launched a campaign to oppose embryonic stem cell research and support ethical cures, encouraging citizens to contact Congress and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).After President Barack Obama’s March 9 executive order permitted federal funding for further embryonic stem cell research, the NIH proposed guidelines to fund research that will require stem cells harvested from the destruction of living human embryos.The draft guidelines are open for public comment through May 26.The USCCB campaign, titled "Oppose Destructive Stem Cell...

Stem Cells from Blood Render Embryonic Sources Obsolete by Brian Thomas, M.S.* On the heels of President Barack Obama’s March 9 order to use public monies to support embryonic stem cell research,[1] another source of stem cells has become available—blood. Blood would be an ideal supplier for stem cells because it is a renewable tissue and harvesting blood components does not end life. These reengineered cells would also be patient-specific and avoid immune system difficulties, unlike embryonic sources which are derived from another person entirely. A recent study discovered a way in which blood could generate stem cells.[2] The researchers...

Consensus Science: The Rise of a Scientific Elite by Randy J. Guliuzza, P.E., M.D.* In battle, one clever military tactic is to focus enemy troops' attention on a spectacular frontal assault so they will overlook a deadly side attack. This approach works in other arenas, as well. On March 9, President Barack Obama ordered that federal tax money be used to promote medical research through harvesting the stem cells of, and thus destroying, human embryos. There has been much discussion about the medical ethics of this order and the government's increased power to destroy human life for "scientific" progress,[1] but...

Obama Pushes for Expansion of Science and Technology by Randy J. Guliuzza, P.E., M.D.* --snip-- Interestingly, the long list of useful items that the president mentioned lacks even a single reference to any benefits derived from or used for evolutionary theory, which is touted by some as the unifying theme of all the biological studies. Was this a tremendous oversight by Mr. Obama? Not likely, since his speech aggressively promoted the practical application of science to the benefit of humanity. Evolutionary theory is totally irrelevant to achieving that goal, as one evolutionist acknowledged: “Most [biologists] can conduct their work quite...

Stem-cell scientists are caught up in fictional friend network — but no-one knows why.In September 2008, Forbes science editor Matthew Herper and former Washington Post reporter Rick Weiss appeared together on a panel at the World Stem Cell Summit in Madison, Wisconsin. In late February, Herper received an invitation to 'friend' Weiss on the Internet social-networking site Facebook. On the basis of their acquaintance, Herper accepted, noticing that a number of other people involved with stem cells were listed as friends on Weiss's profile. However, that profile — and many of those it was linked to — was a fake....

Researchers have announced a breakthrough that could end the ethical debate surrounding stem-cell research. The groundbreaking technique would allow the conversion of adult cells into an embryonic-like state. Researchers have been competing in recent years to reach just such a discovery, which would allow them to perform their work without using the controversial embryonic stem cell lines. Scientists at the the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego believe the key to their success is converting the cells by using recombinant proteins, which eliminates subsequent genetic alterations that typically occur during later stages. "Instead of inserting the four genes into the...

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.

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. The treatment will tackle age-related...

Read these stories and much more by clicking the excerpt link below: 1. Wall Street Journal: “Hong Kong Christens an Ark of Biblical Proportions” 2. ScienceNOW: “Our Ancestors Were No Swingers” 3. National Geographic News: “First Tool Users Were Sea Scorpions?” 4. LiveScience: “Three Subgroups of Neanderthals Identified” 5. BBC News: “Stem Cells ‘Can Treat Diabetes’” (adult stem cells, that is...) 6. New Scientist: “Praying to God Is Like Talking to a Friend” And much much more at...

Doctors ... removed the stem cells from the patient's bone marrow in the leg, then separated or purified the stem cells and intravenously returned them to the patient within a few hours. Because they are the patient's own stem cells, rejection was not an issue as is the case with embryonic stem cells. "Research shows that stem cells have an instinctive guidance system and migrate to the area of injury. While the stem cells do not produce new brain cells for this patient, they enhance the repair process in the brain and reduce damage," the doctors said in a press...

ONDON, April 15 (Reuters) - A stem-cell repair technique that has already been used to fix hundreds of injured race horses is to be tested for the first time in people with damaged Achilles tendons. Privately owned British biotech firm MedCell Bioscience Ltd said on Wednesday it would start clinical tests within 12 months and planned to run a larger confirmatory study at several European hospitals in 2011. Patients will receive injections containing millions of their own stem cells, which have been extracted and multiplied up in a laboratory, and can regenerate new tissue to repair damaged regions.

Researchers have used injections of patients' own stem cells to reverse the course of type 1 diabetes, reports a research team from the University of São Paulo in Brazil and Northwestern University in Chicago. The findings, published in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, exemplify the remarkable gains made by diabetes researchers, who are battling a continuously spreading disease that now affects nearly 8% of adults and children. (See the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2008.) The research team, led by Dr. Julio Voltarelli of the University of Sao Paulo, is the first to successfully...

Rarely will physicians use the word "miraculous" when discussing patient recoveries. But that's the very phrase orthopaedic physicians and scientists are using in upstate New York to describe their emerging stem cell research that could have a profound impact on the treatment of bone injuries. Results from preliminary work show patients confined to wheelchairs were able to walk or live independently again because their broken bones finally healed. At the heart of the research is the drug teriparatide, or Forteo, which was approved by the FDA in 2002 for the treatment of osteoporosis. Astute observations led a team of clinicians...

Ron Reagan is the direct namesake of the man whom many on the right consider to be “The Greatest American Hero.” Much to their dismay he has spent his broadcasting career taking aim at the very politicians who have sought to attach themselves to his father’s (the late President Ronald Reagan) conservative legacy in order to justify everything from extreme corporate deregulation to the war in Iraq. For decades Ron Reagan has forged a path that embraces left wing ideals and touts science and progression over alleged antiquated religious rhetoric, a position that infuriates the Republican Party and warms liberals...

Enlarge ImageMiraculous birth. A Chinese group isolated stem cells from mouse ovaries, transplanted them into sterilized mice, and got these normal babies. Credit: Kang Zou et al., Nature Cell Biology Advance Online Publication (12 April 2009) A new study challenges the long-held belief that female mammals start life with a limited number of eggs and cannot produce new ones after birth. For the first time, a Chinese group has found mouse cells that produce new eggs when transplanted into sterilized mice and give rise to normal offspring. The findings are already inflaming the debate over when and how female...

Korean Stem Cell Treatment Stimulates New Bone Growth An 18-year-old with a damaged jawbone has found new hope through a treatment using adult stem cells. When a tumor developed in his jawbone, one side of the bone along with most of his teeth had to be removed. However, clinical tests of forming bones using adult stem cells have restored the damaged jawbone and his appearance looks normal now. Adult stem cells are taken from the bone marrow of the patient then multiplied and specialized to form an osteoblast, a bone-forming cell. It may sound complicated, but the treatment itself...

A team of UCSF researchers has for the first time used tiny molecules called microRNAs to help turn adult mouse cells back to their embryonic state. These reprogrammed cells are pluripotent, meaning that, like embryonic stem cells, they have the capacity to become any cell type in the body. The findings suggest that scientists will soon be able to replace retroviruses and even genes currently used in laboratory experiments to induce pluripotency in adult cells. This would make potential stem cell-based therapies safer by eliminating the risks posed to humans by these DNA-based methods, including alteration of the genome and...

Barack Obama [was elected] with the help of a majority of Catholic voters, but it didn't mean that Catholics, who in recent years had mostly sided with the GOP because of social issues, had any illusions about Obama's stance on such sensitive matters. ... [I]t didn't come as a surprise to Catholics when, on the morning of March 9, the President signed an executive order allowing research on embryonic stem cells to go forward after an eight-year halt. Obama's forceful explanation for his decision, however, took them aback. The previous ban on research, Obama declared, was "a false choice between...

We thought we'd heard some wild diet tips floating around health-obsessed Hollywood. But this takes the cake. According to MomLogic.com, a woman
 named Chrissy Schilling had her first baby over the weekend. And she and her sister celebrated by cooking and serving up the placenta. They put it on pasta and into a panini sandwich and posted some photos of the meals on a Facebook page

. According to Chrissy's sister Kathy Schilling's recommendations and recipe,
 the placenta -- full of lingering blood, vitamins, hormones -- is nourishing for the baby during pregnancy, but the nutrients are also good for moms...

Chicago, Ill., Apr 8, 2009 / 01:08 pm (CNA).- Yesterday, Dr. Mehment Oz appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show to voice his support for adult stem cell research and to argue that “the stem cell debate is dead,” but instead of giving his statement a fair hearing, Oprah’s website buried and edited Oz’s comments. Actor Michael J. Fox, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, was invited on the show to  talk about his struggle with Parkinson’s and his foundation’s endorsement of embryonic stem cell research (ESCR).Fox told Oprah that he believes President Obama’s decision lifting President Bush's restrictions on ESCR was...

Here’s Josh Brahm explaining this “Oprah” spot, in which Dr. Oz comes out against embryonic stem-cell research on scientific grounds (Warning: In it he handles, pokes and slices a real human brain).  Catholics remember sadly that Michael J. Fox was a huge proponent of clone-and-kill stem-cell research. How ironic that President Obama, who claims to want to “follow science” is funding precisely the kind of research that the medical community is abandoning. See Josh Brahm’s essay “9 Things the Media Messed Up About the Obama Stem Cell Story.”On the “Oprah” show, Dr. Mehmet Oz handles the brain of a 50-year-old...

It's humbling to see medical dogma overturned, but that is exactly what happened when, contrary to deeply embedded thought, scientists led by Jonas Frisen from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm reported in Science today that the heart can grow new muscle cells, and does so regularly, albeit slowly, in the course of a lifetime. To cardiologists, this is a blockbuster discovery, since the heart has been pegged as a disadvantaged organ in terms of injury, healing, and repair. Susceptible to coronary blockages that can cut off blood and destroy major hunks of heart muscle at one time in a heart...

ATLANTA -- By a vote of 108 to 61, the Georgia House sent the nation's first ever embryo adoption bill, HB 388, to the desk of Governor Sonny Perdue for him to sign into law. "We are pleased that we are making headway in our goal of establishing personhood for the pre-born" says Daniel Becker, President of Georgia Right to Life. "Gone are the terms designating the human child at an embryonic stage as property ... devoid of rights." says Becker. The language of the bill stops short of declaring full personhood for the child but does introduce new terms...

The cold war helps settle a hot debate about how hearts grow.New cells in old hearts.Punchstock Fallout from nuclear bomb tests during the cold war has just yielded encouraging news for those searching for ways to reverse heart disease.A team led by Jonas Frisén from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm has shown that adult human hearts make new muscle cells, albeit very, very slowly1.Human heart cells that can generate cardiomyocytes in culture have been identified before. But how the heart regenerates naturally has been hotly contested, says Kenneth Chien of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Cambridge. "This study shows...

A team of scientists has advanced stem cell research by finding a way to endow human skin cells with embryonic stem cell-like properties without inserting potentially problematic new genes into their DNA. The team was led by James A. Thomson, V.M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and supported in part by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, a component of the National Institutes of Health. This is not the first time that scientists have endowed differentiated cells like skin cells with the capacity to develop into any of the roughly 220 types of cells in the body, a...

Democrats have spent years congratulating themselves on being smarter than conservatives. You can expect the media therefore to ignore appallingly stupid gaffes on the part of Ivy-educated leaders. Hillary's "smart power" diplomacy  is looking oxymoronic in the wake of her stupid question about who painted the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe on a visit to Mexico. The image, a miraculous apparition, is central to Mexican culture. Her host politely responded, "God" to her question. Now her husband Bill has revealed incredible ignorance of basic biology. In this CNN interview, he stoutly maintains the embryos are not fertilized. George W....

A STEM cell therapy offering “natural” breast enlargement is to be made available to British women for the first time. The treatment could boost cup size while reducing stomach fat. It involves extracting stem cells from spare fat on the stomach or thighs and growing them in a woman’s breasts. An increase of one cup size is likely, with the potential for larger gains as the technique improves. A trial has already started in Britain to use stem cells to repair the breasts of women who have had cancerous lumps removed. A separate project is understood to be the first...

Home » Features » Health and Fitness Health and Fitness UW researchers find safer way to reprogram cells By Mark Johnson of the Journal Sentinel Posted: Mar. 26, 2009 1:02 p.m. Having mastered the ability to roll back a cell's clock to its embryonic origin, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison cleared a major technical hurdle this week, raising hopes that the technique could usher in a new kind of medicine that exploits the body's own repair system. Stem cell pioneer James Thomson and his colleagues reported Thursday that they have developed a safer way of turning cells from the...

WASHINGTON, D.C., MARCH 24, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Given the new Presidential order allowing federal funds for research using human embryonic stem cells, it might be helpful for readers to become more familiar with the terminology used in any discussion of controversies surrounding embryonic stem cell research. What is a Stem Cell? A stem cell, whether of the adult or embryonic type, is an undifferentiated cell (i.e., a cell that has not yet specialized into a particular cell type, e.g., liver cell, pancreatic cell, or cardiac cell) with two unique capacities: the first, for rapid and prolonged self-multiplication into daughter cells identical...

UK scientists plan a major research project to see if synthetic human blood can be made from embryonic stem cells. Led by the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service, the three year trial could provide an unlimited supply of blood for emergency transfusions. The blood should be free of infections like the human form of mad cow disease. Teams will test human embryos left over from IVF treatment to find those destined to develop into the universal "O-negative" blood donor group.

"President Barack Obama says human cloning is ‘dangerous, profoundly wrong' and has no place in society." So claimed the President as he lifted the restriction on embryonic stem cell research. To be clear, the restriction imposed by former President Bush didn't ban embryonic stem cell research -- it banned the use of Federal dollars in such research. President Obama's statement that human cloning is "dangerous and wrong" is a non sequitur in its context, because there is no material difference between abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and cloning. They differ in appearance, they sometimes differ in ends, but they differ...