March 17, 2017
(NPR) – Scientists have long hoped that stem cells might have the power to treat diseases. But it’s always been clear that they could be dangerous too, especially if they’re not used carefully. Now a pair of papers published Wednesday … Read More
March 16, 2017
(Science) – To the naked eye, the little globs of cells are undifferentiated masses, smaller than sesame seeds. Put them under a microscope, though, and these lab-grown miniature organs show striking complexity: the tiny tubules of a kidney, the delicate … Read More
March 16, 2017
(Scientific American) – They can also give rise, however, to potentially dangerous mutations, possibly including ones that lead to cancerous tumors. Thus, iPS cells are a double-edged sword—their great promise is tempered by risk. Another problem is the high cost … Read More
March 16, 2017
(Discovery) – All of that is more true today than then. Yet, despite exponential advances in biotechnology in the intervening years, the issue generally has faded from public discussion and concern. That needs to change. The stakes for our children’s … Read More
March 14, 2017
(SciDevNet) – The placenta — an organ responsible for carrying oxygen and nutrients from the mother to the foetus — is much more vulnerable to Zika infection in the first trimester of pregnancy, and this explains why the congenital damage … Read More
March 14, 2017
(PhysOrg) – Some heritable but unstable genetic mutations that are passed from parent to affected offspring may not be easy to investigate using current human-induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC) modeling techniques, according to research conducted at The Icahn School of … Read More
March 3, 2017
(NPR) – Brivanlou knows that some of his research makes some people uncomfortable. That’s one reason he has agreed to give me a look at what’s going on. His lab and one other discovered how to keep human embryos alive … Read More
March 2, 2017
(New Scientist) – Artificial mouse embryos grown from stem cells in a dish could help unlock secrets of early development and infertility that have until now evaded us. Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz at the University of Cambridge and her team made the … Read More
February 28, 2017
(Science Daily) – The skin cells of four adults with schizophrenia have provided an unprecedented “window” into how the disease began while they were still in the womb, according to a recent paper in Schizophrenia Research. The paper was published … Read More
February 28, 2017
(PhysOrg) – The mystery of what controls the range of developmental clocks in mammals—from 22 months for an elephant to 12 days for a opossum—may lie in the strict time-keeping of pluripotent stem cells for each unique species. Developmental clocks … Read More
February 27, 2017
(The Times of India) – Private banking of umbilical cord blood is a big business running parallel to childbirth in big hospitals, but is it worth the cost? While companies offering the facility for a few thousand rupees claim it … Read More
February 27, 2017
(News-Medical) – Sanford Research scientists recently published a review article in an issue of Stem Cells Translational Medicine focused on the study of and utility of adult-derived stem cells. Earlier this month, Sanford began enrolling participants in the Safety and … Read More
February 24, 2017
(MSN) – A girl of eight whose rare brain disorder is likely to lead to her death when she is in her teens is taking part in pioneering stem cell research in a bid to save others with same condition. … Read More
February 22, 2017
(News-Medical) – Autonomous driving, automatic speech recognition, and the game Go: Deep Learning is generating more and more public awareness. Scientists at the Helmholtz Zentrum München and their partners at ETH Zurich and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have … Read More
February 21, 2017
(BBC) – A multiple sclerosis treatment being tested in patients can stop the disease for at least five years, say doctors. The risky therapy involves wiping out the person’s immune system with strong cancer drugs and then rebooting it with … Read More
February 21, 2017
(The Conversation) – Most of the research behind new medical advances is carried out using either animal tissues or cancer cells. Both tools have their problems: results from animals and humans do not always match up and cancer cells grown … Read More
February 20, 2017
(Eurekalert) – Consider it one physician’s giant leap for mankind. Today, the latest rocket launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, included a payload of several samples of donated adult stem cells from a research laboratory at … Read More
February 10, 2017
(CNN) – In the not-so-distant future, research suggests, eggs and sperm may no longer be needed to make a baby — at least not in the traditional way. In 2016, scientists in Japan revealed the birth of mice from eggs … Read More
February 9, 2017
(News-Medical) – Despite its immense promise, adoption of iPSCs in biomedical research and medicine has been slowed by concerns that these cells are prone to increased numbers of genetic mutations. A new study by scientists at the National Human Genome … Read More
February 9, 2017
(UPI) – Researchers from Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea, or UNIST, have developed a method of repairing bone using a mix of stem cells and a carbon material with photocatalytic properties. Prior studies have used … Read More
February 8, 2017
(Nature) – Oliver Smithies had a habit of inventing ways to do the experiments he wanted to do, and crafted tools that are now used widely in biology. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2007 for … Read More
February 7, 2017
(The Scientist) – Researchers in Japan who have been developing a cell therapy for macular degeneration received support from health authorities this week (February 1) to begin a clinical trial using donor-derived induced pluripotent stem (IPS) cells converted to retinal … Read More
February 6, 2017
(New Atlas) – Glioblastoma is an aggressive form of brain cancer that kills most patients within two years of diagnosis. In tests on mice last year, a team at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill showed that adult … Read More
February 3, 2017
(The Conversation UK) – The chimeric pig foetuses produced by Juan Izpisua Belmonte, Jun Wu and their team at the Salk Institute were not allowed to develop to term, and contained human cells in multiple tissues. The actual proportion of … Read More
February 2, 2017
(New Scientist) – A CLINIC claims it has used stem cells to treat Down’s syndrome in up to 14 people. “As far as we know, it’s the first time that stem cells have been used to treat Down’s syndrome,” says … Read More
