With the right coaxing, stem cells can turn into almost any kind of tissue, but first they must be grown into clusters called embryoid bodies. Taking care of those cells is a real hassle. They are usually grown in plastic plates with hundreds of deep wells, and the fluid in each one must be changed individually every day. (Wired)

Patients nearing death often experience distressing symptoms.1 2 Many patients and physicians are confronted with complex decisions about practices surrounding end of life care that can affect the mode of dying. As an option of last resort, sedating drugs can be used. Such drugs induce a state of decreased consciousness and take away the patient’s perception of symptoms. Sedation can be used intermittently or continuously until death, and the depth of the sedation can vary from a lowered state of consciousness to unconsciousness. All these varieties are covered by the term palliative sedation, but sedation to unconsciousness is also referred to as “terminal sedation.” Physicians, medical organisations, scientists, ethicists, legal experts, and politicians are debating its use, with discussions focusing on the most extreme use of sedation—that is, continuous deep sedation until death. An important aspect of the debate concern the conditions under which this practice is medically indicated3 4 5 6 7 8 and the way it is performed.8 9 10 11 On the basis of their expertise and an extensive literature review, an expert group recently recommended that to warrant sedation at the end of life, the patient’s condition should be irreversible and advanced, with death expected within at most one to two weeks.8 Further recommendations were that benzodiazepines should be the drug of first choice, that hydration should be offered to sedated patients only when the benefit will outweigh the harm, and that advice from palliative care specialists should be sought before sedation. (British Medical Journal)

The business has thrived for years in Egypt. The country has no laws and little oversight regarding most transplants. Statistics are unreliable. Medical groups estimate that as many as 500 unlicensed kidney transplants are performed each year, but a legislator investigating the practice indicated that the actual number is much higher. (Los Angeles Times)

In laboratory studies conducted at Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI), researchers discovered that nanocomposite particles carrying radioactive gold directly to tumors reduced cancer growth by 45% in just eight days. (Medical News Today)

Representatives of 21 stem-cell funding agencies from 19 countries — members of the International Stem Cell Forum — met in San Francisco at the end of February to discuss collaborations and how to coordinate cell banks and registries. Among them was Leszek Borysiewicz, head of the UK Medical Research Council (MRC), who spoke to Nature about the effort. (Nature News)

You may have noticed the recent heated debate concerning embryonic stem cell research has been completely phased out of the mainstream media, whereas a few months ago it was constantly disputed. Strangely enough, this hushed silence coincided with a remarkable breakthrough in the field of stem cell research. Namely, last November, Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto University and James Thompson at the University of Wisconsin, as well as a team at UCLA, all managed to manipulate human skin cells so that those cells would retrace their development to a “non-commitant” cell. In other words, those reprogrammed cells, called “induced pluripotent stem cells,” can then take on a variety of tissue types. Like embryonic and adult stem cells, these reprogrammed skin cells can be used to regenerate heart tissue, brain cells, and could even treat spinal injuries. (The Cowl)

Male and female sand dollars typically reproduce by releasing sperm and eggs into the water where they join and become baby larvae. Sand dollar larvae had previously been observed cloning themselves to accelerate a population boom when food is abundant. (New York Times)