“Latest Stem Cells News”

Any legislation that slows human embryonic stem cell research is likely to also seriously harm the study of induced pluripotent stem cells, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine, the Mayo Clinic and the University of Michigan.

The finding strongly refutes the idea that embryonic stem cell research can be abandoned in favor of the less-controversial iPS cells, which are derived from adult human tissue.

“If federal funding stops for human embryonic stem cell research, it would have a serious negative impact on iPS cell research,” said Stanford bioethicist Christopher Scott, citing a “false dichotomy” between the cell types. “We may never be able to choose between iPS and ES cell research because we don’t know which type of cell will be best for eventual therapies.”

Scott, who directs Stanford’s Stem Cells in Society Program, is the first author of the study, which compared the patterns of scientific publication on human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells. The study was published in the June 10 issue of Cell.

The researchers also concluded that human embryonic stem cell research does not siphon federal funding away from studies of iPS cells, as has been claimed by the two plaintiffs in an ongoing Washington, D.C., district court case under consideration by Judge Royce Lamberth. Instead, studies of the two types of stem cells are likely to occur in tandem as established embryonic stem cell researchers rush to buffer themselves against a possible loss of federal funding.

“We’re finding that scientific decisions are being made not because of science, but in response to other constraints, such as which cell types qualify for federal funding, how many lines are available and which can be obtained quickly and easily,” said Scott.

As a result, the fields have become so tightly intertwined as to be inseparable; any loss of funding for these researchers will negatively impact all the work in their labs, including iPS cell research, Scott and his colleagues conclude.

Unlike embryonic stem cells, which are derived from human embryos, iPS cells can be created from adult tissue such as skin cells. They look and act like embryonic stem cells, but recent research has suggested that there are significant differences between the two cell types that may affect how they can be used for research and eventual human therapies.

Incoming search terms:

A research breakthrough has proven that it is possible to reprogram mature cells from human skin directly into brain cells, without passing through the stem cell stage. The unexpectedly simple technique involves activating three genes in the skin cells; genes which are already known to be active in the formation of brain cells at the foetal stage.

The new technique avoids many of the ethical dilemmas that stem cell research has faced.

For the first time, a research group at Lund University in Sweden has succeeded in creating specific types of nerve cells from human skin. By reprogramming connective tissue cells, called fibroblasts, directly into nerve cells, a new field has been opened up with the potential to take research on cell transplants to the next level. The discovery represents a fundamental change in the view of the function and capacity of mature cells. By taking mature cells as their starting point instead of stem cells, the Lund researchers also avoid the ethical issues linked to research on embryonic stem cells.

Head of the research group Malin Parmar was surprised at how receptive the fibroblasts were to new instructions.

Incoming search terms:

Each one of us receives approximately 60 new mutations in our genome from our parents.

This striking value is reported in the first-ever direct measure of new mutations coming from mother and father in whole human genomes published today.

For the first time, researchers have been able to answer the questions: how many new mutations does a child have and did most of them come from mum or dad? The researchers measured directly the numbers of mutations in two families, using whole genome sequences from the 1000 Genomes Project. The results also reveal that human genomes, like all genomes, are changed by the forces of mutation: our DNA is altered by differences in its code from that of our parents. Mutations that occur in sperm or egg cells will be ‘new’ mutations not seen in our parents.

Although most of our variety comes from reshuffling of genes from our parents, new mutations are the ultimate source from which new variation is drawn. Finding new mutations is extremely technically challenging as, on average, only 1 in every 100 million letters of DNA is altered each generation.

Previous measures of the mutation rate in humans has either averaged across both sexes or measured over several generations. There has been no measure of the new mutations passed from a specific parent to a child among multiple individuals or families.

Incoming search terms:

Image via Wikipedia

Madison, Wisconsin – Soon, some treatments for blinding eye diseases might be developed and tested using retina-like tissues produced from the patient’s own skin, thanks to a series of discoveries reported by a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison stem cell researchers.

The team, led by stem cell scientist and ophthalmologist Dr. David Gamm of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health and former UW scientist Dr. Jason Meyer, used human embryonic stem (ES) cells and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to generate three-dimensional structures that are similar to those present at the earliest stages of retinal development.

The Gamm laboratory, based at UW-Madison’s Waisman Center, isolated these early retinal structures from other cell groups and grew them in batches in the laboratory, where they produced major retinal cell types, including photoreceptors and retinal pigment epithelium (RPE).

Importantly, cells from these structures matured and responded appropriately to signals involved in normal retinal function, making them potentially valuable not only for studying how the human retina develops, but also how to keep it working in the face of disease.

Incoming search terms: