“Latest Stem Cells News”

OKLAHOMA CITY — The debate over stem cell research stirs up deeply held religious, moral and ethical views.
But some aren’t sure what a possible ban or veto will mean for Oklahoma.
Cells tinier than a pin head have some asking larger-than-life questions.

House Bill 1326 would criminalize research that would destroy or cause substantial risk to a human embryo.
The Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation reports this type of research isn’t even happening in the state right now.

The foundation is doing research on adult stem cells but not embryonic.
But its workers say no one knows what the medical landscape will look like in five or 10 years. And they don’t believe research should be cut off if it could lead to life-saving innovations in the future.

Italy’s Constitutional Court relaxed parts of a law on artificial procreation that had imposed strict rules for fertility treatments.
The judges struck down as unconstitutional one of the most contested sections of the 2004 law, which said only three embryos could be created at one time, and all had to be implanted in the patient’s womb, a court spokesman said.

The judges also introduced stronger wording to ensure that embryos are implanted only if it doesn’t endanger the woman’s health, said spokesman Giovanni Gattarino.
The issue had been put before the constitutional judges by lower administrative and civil courts, which have been considering cases brought against the law by several couples, Gattarino said.

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British regulators have given Moorfields approval to begin trials using retinal cells derived from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs).

Twelve patients with Stargardt’s disease will have the cells injected into the eye. You can read more about the trial here.
Although there is great excitement about the trial, Julia knows that the initial phase will simply check safety (…)

“It would be marvellous if I could get some of my sight-loss reversed”, said Julia. “Even if it simply halts the deterioration, that would be great. And the real benefit would be for children. It could mean they don’t need to lose any sight and have normal vision.”

But doctors are urging caution. They are aware that there has been a lot of hype surrounding human embryonic stem cells, because of their potential to turn into any of the 200 or so cell types in the body (…)

It is always worth pointing out that other forms of stem cell treatments have been used successfully for many years.
Bone marrow transplantation is a well-established and proven technology.
More recently, stem cells from a patient’s own bone marrow have been used to help create them a new windpipe.

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Scientists may be growing impatient, but President Obama has been rightly taking his time in addressing a campaign promise to lift the ban on federal funding for research using new lines of stem cells to be taken from human embryos. Even for strong backers of embryonic stem cell research, the decision is no longer as self-evident as it was, because there is markedly diminished need for expanding these cell lines for either patient therapy or basic research. In fact, during the first six weeks of Obama’s term, several events reinforced the notion that embryonic stem cells, once thought to hold the cure for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and diabetes, are obsolete. The most sobering: a report from Israel published in PLoS Medicine in late February that shows embryonic stem cells injected into patients can cause disabling if not deadly tumors.

The report describes a young boy with a fatal neuromuscular disease called ataxia telangiectasia, who was treated with embryonic stem cells. Within four years, he developed headaches and was found to have multiple tumors in his brain and spinal cord that genetically matched the female embryos used in his therapy.

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Adult stem cell research has produced treatments for 73 different conditions, while embryonic stem cell research has not produced a single therapy or helped a single patient. But those facts were conveniently omitted from a recent column advocating increased taxpayer funding of embryonic stem cell research (“Stem cell opportunity,” Commentary, Feb. 20).
The column also neglected to mention the biggest advance in stem cell research in the last decade – the creation of induced pluripotent stem cells.
That development allows researchers to reprogram adult stem cells to behave like embryonic stem cells without destroying human embryos. It was hailed by the journal Science as the scientific breakthrough of 2008 and trumpeted on a recent Time magazine cover.

According to Science magazine, reprogrammed adult stem cells that regress to an embryonic state and have the same ability to transform into all the different tissues in the human body just like embryonic stem cells are the most important discovery of 2008. The prestigious magazine awarded the so-called ethical stem cells for their possible efficiency in curing degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and muscular dystrophy without the ethical implications associated with embryonic stem cell use. The direct observation of extrasolar planets and the development of new superconductors were also in the ranking.

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