“Latest Stem Cells News”

Sir John Gurdon

One of the most prestigious prizes in medicine is being awarded this year to scientists working on stem cells and leukemia — and to New York‘s mayor for his fight to cut tobacco use (…)

The Lasker Basic Medical Research Award goes to John Gurdon, 76, of Cambridge University and Shinya Yamanaka, 47, of Kyoto University and San Francisco‘s Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease. Their work has helped pave the way for the possibility of made-to-order stem cell treatments for individual patients

Gurdon began working with frog eggs in the 1950s and was the first to successfully clone a frog, in the 1960s. This led directly to the cloning of mammals in the 1990s.

Yamanaka’s ground-breaking announcement in 2006 that he had successfully reprogrammed a mouse skin cell to turn into stem cells holds promise for creating stem cells without destroying an embryo, up until now a major ethical and legal hurdle (…)

read more on http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-09-14-lasker-awards_N.htm

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A new technique has shown that allowing embryonic stem cell research and having laws that regulate and monitor this type of research does not prevent the development of less ethically controversial techniques, rather, it creates incentives for them. In Valencia, at the same clinic where the first Spanish embryonic stem cell lines were obtained, the same researcher who developed the lines has obtained embryonic stem cells without destroying the embryo.

The announcement was made by Carlos Simòn, making the Centro de Investigaciòn Prìncipe Felipe (CSPF) the third laboratory in the world to succeed with the technique. The first researcher successfully perform this technique was Robert Lanza from Advanced Cell Technology in Boston in 2007 and at the University of California in San Francisco one month later the technique was performed again. The technique used is similar to prenatal diagnosis, which removes a single cell from the embryo. Health Advisor, Manuel Cervera, while presenting these stem cell lines announced the need for this type of work and the willingness to obtain stem cells using this technique.

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Gerhard Bauer & Jan A. Nolta

A new experimental technique in the future will remove skin cells from HIV patients, manipulate the cells bringing them to a state similar to that of stem cells, and then re-implant them in the same patient to eliminate the virus. The technique is still in the experimental phase in mice, but according to Gerhard Bauer, presenting the initial results of his study today at the 50th American Society of Hematology Congress in San Francisco, it’s a possibility. Bauer has been working for more than 10 years on this technique together with colleague Joseph Anderson.

The objective is to identify anti-HIV genes and insert them into stem cells produced by the skin. His UC Davis-Sacramento research team will also be present at the conference, and together they will present their study, which will lead to clinical genetic experimentation to demonstrate the safety of their method. Bauer hopes to be able perform clinical experimentation on human beings within five years. “The transformed cells, called pluripotent stem cells, are able to differentiate into different types of cells, which include hematopoietic stem cells found in the bone marrow, which produce various types of immune cells. “The next step is a test on human beings,” said Bauer.

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