Archive by category | Stem cells/cloning

Firm launches two stem cell trials against blindness

Crossposted from Nature’s news blog on behalf of Meredith Wadman Geron made medical history last October, when it treated subject number one in the first-ever trial of a human embryonic stem cell (hESC) therapy, for spinal cord injury. Now, the second and third hESC trials have been launched. On July 12, in an operating room at the University of California, Los Angeles, the first subject in each of the trials — one for a rare form of blindness that usually begins in childhood, the other for a common cause of blindness in the elderly — was treated with retinal pigment  … Read more

The running of the stem cells: Shinya Yamanaka wins Spain’s top biomedical honor

The running of the stem cells: Shinya Yamanaka wins Spain’s top biomedical honor

Posted on behalf of Carolina Pola MADRID — Adding another notch to his belt of international accolades, stem cell pioneer Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University was named the third annual winner of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine. At the award ceremony, held here last month at the Palace of the Marqués de Salamanca, a who’s who of Spanish and international scientific and political elite drank sangria and ate tapas to toast the winners in the eight different categories celebrated by the foundation. At the event, Yamanaka, who will take home €400,000 ($570,000) for the award, explained  … Read more

Bond king elected as new CIRM chief

Bond king elected as new CIRM chief

The board members of California’s stem cell agency last night elected bond financier Jonathan Thomas, a founding partner in the Santa Monica investment group Saybrook Capital, as their new leader. Ending months of wrangling to find a suitable successor to outgoing chairman Bob Klein, in a 14–11 split decision the board opted for the lawyer/banker over the cardiologist/entrepreneur Frank Litvack, the other nominee in the race.  Read more

One hundred and counting: NIH registry passes important milestone

At the International Society for Stem Cell Research meeting in Toronto last week, the who’s who of the field gathered to discuss the latest advances, but they probably missed a milestone: On 9 June, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) added the hundredth embryonic stem (ES) cell line to its registry of those that are eligible for taxpayer-backed funding.  Read more

Q&A: Scotland gets new stem cell chieftain

Q&A: Scotland gets new stem cell chieftain

Scotland first grabbed headlines in the stem cell world fifteen years ago with the cloning of Dolly the sheep. But Scotland’s stem cell successes didn’t end there. In 2003, scientific highlanders at the University of Edinburgh discovered Nanog, a critical pluripotency gene expressed in embryonic stem cells. And last year, doctors at Glasgow’s Southern General Hospital treated a patient in the first-ever regulated human trial for a stem cell stroke treatment. Yet stem cell medicine in Scotland has also faced some quagmires in the moors. Five years ago, for example, embryonic stem cell pioneer Austin Smith moved to the University  … Read more

California’s stem cell agency to choose between investment banker and cardiologist — UPDATED

California's stem cell agency to choose between investment banker and cardiologist -- UPDATED

CIRM nominees: Jonathan Thomas (left) and Frank Litvack (right) Six months after a bungled attempt to find a new leader, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) yesterday announced two candidates to succeed Bob Klein, the architect and founding chairman of the $3 billion state stem cell agency. And with the option of electing either a bond financier or a cardiologist, the CIRM board now faces a stark choice over who will lead the San Francisco-based institute as it enters into its next phase. Klein, a real estate magnate and lawyer who led the charge to put CIRM on the  … Read more

US appeals court overthrows stem cell injunction

Cross posted from Nature’s The Great Beyond blog. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit minutes ago vacated a lower court’s preliminary injunction blocking the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from funding human embryonic stem cell research. In this 2-1 decision in Sherley et al v. Sebelius, the majority wrote that the judge Royce Lamberth of the US District Court for the District of Colmbia “abused [the court’s] discretion” when he issued this preliminary injunction that shut down NIH funding of stem cell research for 17 days last summer. Read the rest of the post on  … Read more

European ban on stem cell patents could hit researchers hard, experts warn

Posted on behalf of Meera Swami LONDON — A group of leading stem cell biologists is raising alarm bells about how a landmark intellectual property decision that would make it illegal for European researchers to patent procedures involving human embryonic stem (ES) cell lines could do irreparable damage to European stem cell research. The proposed prohibition “represents a blow to years of effort to derive biomedical applications from embryonic stem cells in areas such as drug development and cell-replacement therapy,” the 13 scientists write in today’s issue of Nature. On 10 March, the court’s advocate-general concluded that “inventions relating to  … Read more

Nuclear leak reinforces need for drugs to combat radiation

Nuclear leak reinforces need for drugs to combat radiation

By Cassandra Willyard In the aftermath of Japan’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami, evacuation centers surrounding the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station stockpiled nearly a quarter-million doses of potassium iodide as a preventative measure against radiation poisoning. These pills protect people from the long-term risks of thyroid cancer associated with chronic radiation exposure, but they do little to guard against the ill effects of high-dose radiation toxicity. Unfortunately, no drugs are currently approved to treat the extreme radiation sickness that plant workers or emergency personnel may experience. Yet, thanks to investment from the US government, several candidate compounds might  … Read more