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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,...

Enlarge ImageDowns in a dish. Down syndrome is caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21 (circled). This is one of the diseases whose development researchers will now be able to study in the lab.Credit: I. Park et al., Disease-Specific Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells, Cell (2008) First a drop, then the deluge. Last week, scientists at Harvard University and Columbia University announced that they had proved the viability of a new way to study a disease--amyotrophic lateral sclerosis--by reprogramming cells from a patient to become pluripotent stem cells, which can then become any type of cell or tissue. Yesterday,...

Reprogrammed cells may offer insight into neurodegenerative disease. Skin cells from an elderly patient with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) have been ‘reprogrammed’ to generate motor neurons, the type of nerve cells that die as the disease progresses. It is the first time that an induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell line has been created from a patient with a genetic illness (J. T. Dimos et al. Science doi:10.1126/science.1158799; 2008). Like embryonic stem cells, iPS cells have the potential to develop into almost any of the body’s cell types and offer new disease insights. Patient-specific motor neurons, with a transcription factor called...

Until about a decade ago, there was only one way to make an embryo—the old-fashioned technique of combining an egg with a sperm. Then came Dolly the cloned sheep in 1996. Scottish scientists created her by injecting the nucleus of a breast cell from one sheep into the enucleated egg of another sheep. Dolly was essentially genetically identical to the donor of the breast cell nucleus. Since then researchers have used reproductive cloning to produce mice, cats, dogs, horses, cows, goats, pigs, and other mammals. As valuable as reproductive cloning is for producing livestock and research animals, most researchers were...

In what could signal a further shift in the global stem cell debate, lawmakers in an Australia state have rejected legislation allow the cloning of human embryos for research purposes. This week's vote in the Western Australia capital, Perth, is believed to be one of the first times the embryonic cloning issue has been considered by a legislature anywhere in the world since reports of a major research breakthrough last November prompted new questions about the need to use embryos at all. The issue will be under discussion on Capitol Hill again on Thursday, when a health subcommittee of the...

A study recently conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) showed for the first time that artificially created stem cells can be used to treat Parkinson’s disease. In another research project conducted at the Imperial College in London, scientists identified the source of nerve cells in the embryo. The findings of these research projects have led scientists to believe stem cells can be used in new therapies for Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson's disease (PD) is a degenerative neurological disorder that occurs when nerve cells (neurons) in an area of the brain that controls muscle movement die or become impaired. Currently,...

Fully mature, differentiated B cells can be reprogrammed to an embryonic-stem-cell-like state, without the use of an egg according to a study published in the April 18 issue of Cell. In previous research, induced pluripotent stem (IPS) cells have been created from fibroblasts, a specific type of skin cells that may differentiate into other types of skin cells. Because there is no way to tell if the fibroblasts were fully differentiated, the cells used in earlier experiments may have been less differentiated and therefore easier to convert to the embryonic-stem-cell-like state of IPS cells. B cells are immune cells that...

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. Researcher Dr Willy Lensch, of Harvard Medical School, said the technique had "incredible potential". He said it could help scientists understand the earliest stages of human genetic disease. We're looking at the perfect human brick - ethical, flexible and not rejected by the...

Nanotubes (above) were used to introduce a complex of proteins into testicular cells (stained, below).UNIDYMA Californian biotech company claims that it has used carbon nanotubes to ‘reprogramme’ adult human cells to an embryonic-like state — a breakthrough that removes the elevated risk of cancer that blights other techniques. But uncertainties about the cells, which have yet to be reported in a peer-reviewed journal, have left many sceptical. PRIMEGEN Last year, researchers led by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University demonstrated that by using just four genes it was possible to reprogramme adult human skin cells to a stem-cell-like pluripotent state —...

Scientists have succeeded in using cells virtually identical to embryonic stem cells to "correct" sickle cell anemia in mice. The breakthrough was made possible by another advance announced barely two weeks ago that scientists had created "induced pluripotent stem" (iPS) cells from human skin cells. These iPS cells are very similar, although not exactly identical, to embryonic stem cells. The process bypasses the need to use embryos, and thus circumvents many of the ethical complications surrounding this type of research. The first research announcement had left open the question of whether iPS cells could actually be used for therapeutic purposes....

Corrected. Blood from mice treated with iPS cells (above) does not show the sickle-shaped cells present in untreated mice (top).Credit: J. Hanna et al., Science Skin cells reprogrammed to act like embryonic stem cells--a breakthrough first reported in human cells 2 weeks ago--are already showing promise as a therapeutic agent. In today's online edition of Science, researchers describe using induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to alleviate symptoms of sickle cell anemia in mice. The technique is not yet safe to try in people, but scientists say it is proof of principle that iPS cells could someday treat human disease. Induced...

Adult skin cells turned to pluripotent stem cells without a cancer-causing agent. Cell reprogramming taken one step further.National Institutes of Health Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan has followed the announcement last week of his startling success in turning human skin cells to embryo-like stem cells, by reporting that he has done the same without the cancer-causing agent used in his original recipe.The work brings scientists perhaps one step closer to the goal of being to use patient-matched stem cells for therapy.Yamanaka first demonstrated his method for 'reprogramming' cells in mice. Last year he showed that he could produce...

If the stem cell wars are indeed nearly over, no one will savor the peace more than James A. Thomson. Dr. Thomson’s laboratory at the University of Wisconsin was one of two that in 1998 plucked stem cells from human embryos for the first time, destroying the embryos in the process and touching off a divisive national debate.

November 21, 2007, 1:40 a.m. Brave New FutureWorking together with stem cells. An NRO Symposium On Tuesday, two scientific journals announced news of a breakthrough that could put an end to our dead-end political debates about stem-cell research. In response to the news, National Review Online asked a group of experts: How big is Tuesday’s new somatic-cell reprogramming news? Where does the stem-cell/cloning debate go from here? How should politics respond? Here’s what they had to say. William HurlbutThe news represents very hopeful progress toward a complete resolution to the stem-cell impasse. I think the president deserves a lot...

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....

The news embargo now seems to have been broken on what is likely to rank as the most important development in stem cell science since the first derivation of human embryonic stem cells in 1998. Two prominent scientific journals—Science and Cell—are each today publishing papers that demonstrate extraordinary success with a technique called “somatic cell reprogramming.” Working separately, and using slightly different methods, these two teams (one of which is led by James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin, the original innovator of human embryonic stem cells) have each successfully taken a regular human skin cell and transformed it into...

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