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A team of researchers in the United States and United Kingdom say they have created the world’s first synthetic human embryo-like structures from stem cells, bypassing the need for eggs and sperm. These embryo-like structures are at the very earliest stages of human development: They don’t have a beating heart or a brain, for example. But scientists say they could one day help advance the understanding of genetic diseases or the causes of miscarriages. The research raises critical legal and ethical questions, and many countries, including the US, don’t have laws governing the creation or treatment of synthetic embryos. The...

What if technology could eliminate the need for anyone to go through pregnancy and childbirth to have a baby? This article is an installment of Future Explored, a weekly guide to world-changing technology. You can get stories like this one straight to your inbox every Thursday morning by subscribing here. It takes nine months for a fertilized egg to develop into a roughly 7-pound baby, and during that time, the person carrying the baby gets to feel the miracle of life growing inside them. They can also expect to experience a slew of unpleasant side effects, from nausea and vomiting...

Published, peer-reviewed clinical trials have shown stem cells have reversed stroke damage years after the injury, helped spinal-cord-injury victims regain lost movement, helped heart attack patients recover, cured sickle cell anemia and reversed a wide range of diseases, including multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes and lupus erythematosus. Advances with ethically sourced adult stem cells have already helped more than 1 million patients, according to a recently published review paper by David Prentice, a research director for the Charlotte Lozier Institute and a former professor of medical and molecular genetics at Indiana University School of Medicine. He calls adult stem cells...

An autologous stem cell therapy for Parkinson’s disease (PD), with a potential to alter disease progression, received a boost when the programme received a seed funding totalling $6.5m from a group of venture capitalist firms. The funding is likely to help the company in advancing the programme to different stages of clinical development. Aspen Neuroscience aims to tackle the disease by using the patient’s own cells obtained via a skin biopsy and turning that into pluripotent stem cells that are then differentiated into dopamine-releasing neurons, which can be introduced back into the patient with the objective of replacing neurons that...

Currently there are no treatments for Advanced Dry AMD, also known as GA, which can lead to significant central vision loss.The National Eye Institute (NEI), one of the federally funded National Institutes of Health, is launching the first clinical trial in the US for induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), stem cells that are derived from mature human cells. The iPSC in the landmark study are being derived from the patient’s own blood and developed into retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells for the treatment of geographic atrophy (GA), the advanced form of dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which causes progressive central...

Researchers at the University of Houston are pioneering a unique method for developing biological pacemakers: converting stem cells found in fat to biologic pacemaker cells.Pharmacologist and UH associate professor Bradley McConnell, BS, PhD, is leading the effort and published his team’s latest results in the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology. The results build on colleague and co-author Robert J. Schwartz’s 2012 finding that adipogenic mesenchymal stem cells in fat tissue could be reprogrammed into cardiac progenitor cells.Those same progenitor cells are now being programmed by McConnell et al. to act as biologic pacemaker cells—cells responsible for keeping hearts...

If this human breakthrough had occurred with embryonic stem cells, the front page stories would have screamed around the world. But it was adult stem cells and so the reporting was muted. You see, the media still–after all these years–tend to judge the newsworthiness of a story based on whether a breakthrough is embryonic. The story is sensational, nonetheless. Adult stem cells have cured blindness and may provide a splendid treatment for cataracts. From the Telegraph story: Cataracts can be cured by using a patient’s own stem cells to regrow a ‘living lens’ in their eye, restoring sight in just...

UNITED KINGDOM, January 20, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – British sufferers from multiple sclerosis are reporting remarkable improvements in their condition after injection with adult stem cells taken from their own bodies. The treatment is part of a clinical trial of techniques pioneered at America's Northwestern University by Dr. Richard Burt. The adult stem cell treatment for MS is just one of many being applied around the world for more than 100 medical conditions, many to do with diseases of the auto-immune system. Sheffield patient Holly Drewry, a 25-year-old mother of one, went into that city's Royal Hallamshire Hospital in a wheelchair...

With a unanimous show of support, U.S. Rep. Chris Smith’s legislation, the Stem Cell Therapeutic and Research Reauthorization Act (H.R. 2820), cleared its final hurdle and is on its way to the President for signature and enactment. Smith and lead co-sponsor Rep. Doris Matsui shepherded the bill through the House last summer with the support of Reps. David Jolly (R-FL) and Chaka Fattah (D-PA), and worked with Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Jack Reed (R-RI), Richard Burr (R-NC) and Al Franken (D-MN) who championed the bill in the Senate, making helpful modifications and sending it back to the House for one...

It’s time for scientists and bioethicists to establish a Embryonic Stem Cell Truth and Reconciliation Commission.It all seems so long ago now. But from 2002 to 2008 they barnstormed, fibbed, exaggerated, hyped, and caricatured to get government funding so that they could play God with human embryos. It was a brutal battle in which truth came second. "People need a fairy tale," said Ronald D.G. McKay, a leading stem cell scientist, in 2004.The claims made for the near-miraculous potential of human embryonic stem cells were extraordinary. Celebrities and scientists spoke with the breathless enthusiasm normally associated with crystal medicine or ayurvedic...

In Brief Japanese researchers have successfully grown kidneys from stem cells that worked as they were supposed to after being transplanted into rats and pigs. The Breakthrough With all the parts, grown, the kidney was placed inside a rat, then the pathway was added, followed by the bladder they’d grown—the new bladder was then connected to the rat’s native bladder. After sewing up the rat, they found the whole system worked. The team then repeated what they had done with a much larger animal, one much closer in size to humans—a pig—and found the same results. The paper was published...

A woman has developed a nose-like growth eight years after a stem cell treatment to cure her paralysis failed. At the Hospital de Egas Moniz in Lisbon, Portugal, the unnamed woman, a U.S. citizen, had tissue from her nose implanted in her spine. Doctors hoped the cells would develop into neural cells and help repair the nerve damage to the woman's spine. But the treatment failed. However, last year, eight years after the stem cell operation, the woman, then 28, complained of increasing pain in the area. Doctors discovered a three-centimetre-long growth, which was found to be mainly nasal tissue,...

Adult Stem Cells Imitate Human Brain, Are Hope for Neurological Disorders Charlotte Lozier Institute on September 3, 2013 in Science & Medicine - No comments By Nora SullivanA study published last week has shown that adult stem cells derived from ethical sources can be used to create living tissues that imitate the developing human brain.  In their findings, published in the science journal Nature, researchers asserted that, by using human stem cells derived from skin cells, they were able to assemble brain-like pieces of living tissue.  These stem cells could prove to be an invaluable resource for the study and...

Throughout its long history, the Federal Food and Drug Administration has insisted that its mission is “protecting and promoting your health.” Take that your seriously. In area after area, the record suggests that the paternalist FDA fails you in its announced purpose. Far from protecting “your health,” the FDA prevents you from making the informed decisions to preserve and promote your own health. All too often, the FDA lacks both the judgment and technical expertise to decide which treatments ordinary people may choose to undergo and which they must turn aside. To take one example, the FDA’s critics have bemoaned...

Scientists are reporting a significant milestone for cancer research after charting 21 major mutations behind the vast majority of tumours. The disruptive changes to the genetic code, reported in Nature, accounted for 97% of the 30 most common cancers. Finding out what causes the mutations could lead to new treatments. Some causes, such as smoking are known, but more than half are still a mystery. Cancer Research UK said it was a fascinating and important study. A tumour starts when one of the building blocks of bodies, a cell, goes wrong. Over the course of a lifetime cells pick up...

Francois Lenoir/Reuters Meet the new meat. Tiny pieces of muscle tissue grown in the lab will make up the patty of the first test-tube burger to be unveiled in London on Monday. If you take some scientists' word for it, the biggest agricultural revolution since the domestication of livestock is starting on Monday—in an arts center in London. At a carefully orchestrated media event, Dutch stem cell researcher Mark Post is planning to present the world's first test-tube hamburger. Its patty is made from meat that Post has laboriously grown from bovine stem cells in his lab at an estimated...

Scientists have grown rudimentary teeth out of the most unlikely of sources, human urine. The results, published in Cell Regeneration Journal, showed that urine could be used as a source of stem cells that in turn could be grown into tiny tooth-like structures. The team from China hopes the technique could be developed into a way of replacing lost teeth. Other stem cell researchers caution that that goal faces many challenges. Teams of researchers around the world are looking for ways of growing new teeth to replace those lost with age and poor dental hygiene. Stem cells - the master...

A multinational team of scientists led by Prof Benjamin Blencowe from the University of Toronto has identified proteins that play a key role in controlling pluripotency, which may mean a potential breakthrough in producing the so-called induced pluripotent stem cells.Colonies of the induced pluripotent stem cells (Boston University Center for Regenerative Medicine) Induced pluripotent stem cells can be of great value for medical research because they can flexibly develop into many different types of cells. However, producing these cells is challenging because the proteins that control their generation are largely unknown.The team discovered the proteins using the splicing code developed...

Initiative aims to clarify description of mesenchymal cells. Pamela Robey is used to being sent samples by scientists who are anxious to know whether the mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) they have extracted from fat can be coaxed to turn into either bone or cartilage. Robey, who directs the Stem Cell Unit at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), is also used to delivering bad news to many of those who seek her help. “They usually are not happy,” she says, when her attempts to differentiate the cells produce little more than fatty globules. To Robey, that disappointment reflects a...

Patient-specific cells could be made without genetic manipulation. Scientists have demonstrated a new way to reprogram adult tissue to become cells as versatile as embryonic stem cells — without the addition of extra genes that could increase the risk of dangerous mutations or cancer. Researchers have been striving to achieve this since 2006, when the creation of so-called induced pluripotent (iPS) cells was first reported. Previously, they had managed to reduce the number of genes needed using small-molecule chemical compounds, but those attempts always required at least one gene, Oct42, 3. Now, writing in Science, researchers report success in creating...