“Latest Stem Cells News”

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As former House speaker Newt Gingrich courts evangelical voters in advance of Tuesday’s Florida primary, he is drawing an increasingly hard line against the use of embryonic stem-cell research — a position that contrasts not only with that of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, but also with statements that Gingrich himself has made on the subject in the past.

Speaking at a Baptist church in Winter Park on Saturday, the former speaker received a standing ovation when he declared that embryonic stem-cell research amounts to “the use of science to desensitize society over the killing of babies.”

And in a news conference Sunday, he said he would ban all embryonic stem-cell research, including that done on discarded embryos created by in vitro fertilization.

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The U.S. government approved the first 13 batches of human embryonic stem cells on Wednesday, enabling researchers using them to get millions of dollars in federal funding as promised by President Barack Obama in March.

“Today we are announcing the approval of the first 13 stem cell lines,” Collins told reporters in a telephone briefing.

In March, Obama lifted restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research imposed by his predecessor, George W. Bush.

He could not lift a restriction set by Congress, called the Dickey-Wicker amendment, that forbids the use of federal money to make the stem cells, which require destruction of a human embryo. But the decision made it possible for researchers to use federal funds to work with cells that others have made.

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The South Korean bioethics committee has lifted a ban on human stem cell research. The decision will now allow for work on human embryonic stem cells to resume after being interrupted three years ago following the scandal involving Hwang Woo-suk, the false “pioneer of human cloning”. The veterinarian, a national hero at the time, fell from grace after the international scientific community and the University of Seoul uncovered that results from his research on embryonic stem cells were falsified in the laboratory to give the impression that his group was successful in cloning healthy cells from cells affected by incurable diseases.

The lifting of the research ban, explained the bioethics committee, involves a hospital in Seoul (Cha General Hospital), which will resume research under four conditions: written approval from women donating eggs (only those from aborted fetuses will be used); the use of laboratory animals to reduce the use of these eggs to a minimum; instituting a surveillance committee to avoid abuses; the names of the studies must not refer to words or meanings that could “feed false hopes”, including mentioning “cure for Parkinson’s”. The decision to lift the ban must receive authorization from the Health Ministry, and in all likelihood, it will not be rejected.

South Korea seems to be following the policy decisions regarding bioethics of the American administration. Among the steps taken by US President Barack Obama, is also the decision to resume financing for human stem cell research with an initial allocation of one billion dollars. “The decision will restart research,” said Chung Hyung-Min, who pointed out that such studies “have been performed by English scientists and other countries” but until now “there have not scored any successes”.

Embryonic stem cell research has sparked a heated worldwide debate involving ethics, science, and the right to life. The position of the Catholic Church has always been that it considers embryos as human lives. In May of 2008, bishops confirmed strongly condemned the revisions of the law on bioethics approved by Parliament, which allow for those who accept to participate in cloning experiments to be eligible for “reimbursements of their expenses”.

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Sierra Fedelem may look like any other 20-month-old, but her parents are doing everything they can to make sure her life is just like that of any other healthy human being.
Stem cell research has stirred quite the controversy in the United States, and though the current administration’s recent policy reversal on the issue could open the markets to treatments and commercialization, it’s still an option unavailable for American patients, like Sierra, unless they’re willing to travel across the world.

“The first time the neurologist said, ‘No, you don’t realize it, she’s never going to be able to walk, talk and see, and she’s always going to be at the mental level of a 4-month-old’,” Rosetta Fedelem said. “We were just shocked.”
The Fedelems hadn’t realized the extent of the brain damage Sierra suffered during birth.

“We said ‘We’re not going to stop, we’re going to start doing as much as you can for her’,” Rosetta said. “So we started praying and researching.”
Their research landed them in China, where Sierra received several treatments of adult stem cells extracted from somebody else’s umbilical cord. Adult stem cells differ from embryonic stem cells, in that they can be retrieved from adult organs or tissue.

While leading U.S. experts say the possibilities are far-reaching, the quality of overseas studies remains uncertain.
“It’s very hard to tell which is a good place, and which is not,” Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine Institute for Regenerative Medicine Director Dr. Darwin Prockup said. “But of course, patients get to be desperate, and you can’t blame them for trying.”

Dr. Prockup said better adult stem cell treatments in the United States are coming. In March, President Barack Obama signed an executive order, reversing Bush administration policy, to allow scientists to continue stem cell research on ongoing projects. The results of the research will determine when the United States will open its doors to treatment.
“Of course there’s always danger with any therapy, so you have to be very careful, there’s always a risk-benefit you have to weigh carefully,” Prockup said. “That’s done in good medical centers. That’s why we’re a little slower.”

The Fedelems said they did weigh the pros and cons.
“I don’t accept new things easily, but when there’s enough evidence of results, I’m willing to try them,” Jason said. “And that’s exactly what happened here.”

In the three weeks they’ve been back from China, Sierra can sit up on her own for a few seconds, do an army crawl, and stand up for more than twice the amount of time she could before. Plus, her parents say she’s more alert and vocal.
Rosetta and Jason say they want Sierra to be able to walk, talk and see.

“Now we don’t know exactly which of those goals she’ll reach,” Rosetta said. “Our goal is, as parents, to push her to achieve her greatest potential, whatever that is. We’ll love her no matter what.”
The Fedelems said they spent more than$23,000 on treatments in China, but they raised $45,000. The rest of the funds went to a hyperbaric chamber, and other treatments Sierra will receive in Florida in two weeks.

To learn more about Sierra and how you can donate to help the family with medical expenses visit SightForSierra.com.
Dr. Prockup said the institute will be working on four clinical trials. By the end of the year he expects they’ll begin one with adult stem cell research for treatment on knee cartilage repair. The institute also plans to conduct stem cell research on diabetes, heart disease and strokes.

from News 8 Austin

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I just had a birthday, and to honor such occasions, my sister always gives me silver. Not just any silver: It’s our parents’ simple wedding flatware pattern, which Margaret collects for me, one piece at a time. Over the years that the slender boxes have appeared, I’ve wondered if any of it is from the full service for 12 that I pulled in a suitcase through Manhattan’s Diamond District and sold one dreadful day 25 years ago.

It had been my assignment to sell it —- that, and a ring of Margaret’s, one of mine and, right off our mother’s finger, her engagement ring and platinum wedding band. The sum received was probably a quarter of their monetary worth, and nothing near their emotional value, but it financed two more weeks of home care for our mother, an Alzheimer’s patient. After five years of caring for her at home, we had run through the family savings.

It was a few years before the sale of the silver that I first wrote about us, in a 1983 magazine article that, impossible as it may seem now, introduced Alzheimer’s disease to millions of people who didn’t know what it was, including the seasoned magazine editor to whom I first pitched the story. Last Sunday, HBO began a three-night series, produced by California’s first lady, Maria Shriver, about a disease that now needs no introduction.

When I first wrote about Alzheimer’s, I searched out some of the best minds of the time, including Lewis Thomas, the great science writer, former dean of Yale Medical School and then-chancellor of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He called Alzheimer’s disease “the disease of the century” because, he said, “of all the health problems in the 20th century, this one is the worst.”

That quote got people’s attention, as did the words “angry, incompetent, hostile and incontinent,” which is how I described my mother. She was then 51, two years younger than I am now. I exposed her for who she had become in exchange for the attention I hoped the article might bring for her disease.

In years that followed, congressional hearings were held, state task forces were convened and city committees were formed. Research dollars were allotted as well. But those were the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was president, and despite the fact that embryonic stem cell research had been conducted in the U.S. since the middle of the 20th century, contributing to such wonders as vaccines for both rubella and polio, it was rebranded and became strongly associated with abortion. In the years that followed, despite the well-known fact that stem cell research was the most promising path to finding cures for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes, multiple sclerosis and other diseases, this country allowed the personal beliefs of the anti-abortion forces to become public policy. And that lasted a very long time.

read more on AJC

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Flip past the big photo on page 65 of beaming software magnate Bill Gates and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and there, on page 67, beside a picture of U.S. president Barack Obama, is a microscope image of a cell.

That induced embryonic stem cell has vaulted Toronto scientist Andras Nagy into this high-flying company in Scientific Magazine’s inaugural Top 10 awards for work in science-related endeavours.

“It’s an enormous honour and a recognition of the science we do in the lab, and what we do in Mount Sinai, and what we do in Toronto and what we do in Canada,” says Nagy, an investigator at Mount Sinai Hospital who nabbed his award for a genetic coup, announced in February, that may well change the face of stem-cell biology.

Nagy’s team at Mount Sinai’s Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute won a global race to find a safe way to transform adult skin cells into embryonic-like stem cells.

While it had been shown before that this reprogramming could be achieved, past methods had dangerously contaminated the resulting stem cell, Nagy explains.

He says under previous methods, the new stem cells, which like the real embryonic version can transform into any tissue type, still contained the reprogramming material and the DNA of the viruses used to transport it into the adult cell’s nucleus.

His method, however, enables scientists to introduce the reprogramming material without a viral transporter and then draw it back out again after it has accomplished the transformation.

“In effect, Nagy and his colleagues had, for the first time, created the equivalent of embryonic stem cells that were uncontroversially ethical, safe and efficient,” the magazine wrote in the June issue, released today.

Using patients’ own transformed cells for organ repair would allow them to avoid the immune system rejection that plagues all person-to person transplantation.

Nagy, for one, sees a legitimate fit to his prestigious Obama pairing.

“The heavy science that we do at Mount Sinai for humanity is there beside (Obama’s) massive, massive message that science is important for society and the economy,” Nagy said.

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