Scientists have discovered a new kind of stem cell. In the Dec. 10 issue of Nature, a group of international researchers led by Andras Nagy from Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto reprogrammed adult mouse cells to create F-cells, a new kind of stem cell that grows in fuzzy-looking colonies. The results came as part of Project Grandiose, an effort by Nagy and [...]
Many developments in stem cell research have been made since the promise of human embryonic stem cells was a staple of headlines in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The evidence now indicates that embryonic stem cells, classified as pluripotent because they have the capability of developing into any type of cell within the human body, have failed to keep up with [...]
The man who discovered induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) has received the 2012 Nobel Prize for medicine. Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, a researcher from Kyoto University, developed a new process in 2006 that used four genes to reprogram skin cells in mice to behave like embryonic stem cells, which are pluripotent and thus capable of developing into any cell of the human body. [...]
Toronto scientists at Mount Sinai Hospital have discovered problems in using reprogrammed stem cells for personalized organ repair. “It looks like the reprogramming process which creates (embryonic-like) stem cells from skin cells is creating damage or mutations,” said Andras Nagy, one of the lead authors of the study published in the journal Nature. These cells, known as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS [...]
From a pro-life perspective, President George W. Bush may have been less than perfect, but in comparison to his successor, he is looking ever better. Bush devotes an entire chapter of his compelling memoir Decision Points to the controversial decision he announced in a televised address on Aug. 9, 2001, to authorize federal funding for embryonic stem cell research using [...]
National Affairs correspondent Rory Leishman points out yet another shocking disregard for human life on the part of the Obama administration.
The very real possibility of an immanent ethical stem cell breakthrough has many researchers in the US and Canada excited.
The Interim editor Paul Tuns takes a look at Obama’s recent anti-life decisions regarding embryonic stem cell research.
A much-celebrated breakthrough that turns adult skin cells to embryonic-like stem cells is not the solution to the problem of destroying embryos for pluripotent stem cells. In November, Dr. Shinya Yamanaka and Dr. James Thomson published separate studies that were hailed as moral alternatives to embryonic stem cell research, both in the media and by some pro-lifers. Both studies involved introducing genes [...]
Researchers at the Institute of Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University in Salem, N.C. have discovered a type of cell that floats freely in the amniotic fluid of pregnant women and has many of the traits of embryonic stem cells, suggesting a potentially ethical source of pluripotent cells – cells that scientists believe can grow into any other human cell and thus [...]