stem cells

NPR science correspondent Joe Palca looks at the facts and fictions behind stem-cell science. This is a really good introduction to the debate.

Executive Order signed to reverse Bush stem cell policy:

President Barack Obama has ended former President George W. Bush's limits on using federal dollars for embryonic stem cell research, sending a clear signal, according to advisers, that science — not political ideology — will guide his administration.

Great news out of Barcelona:

Hospital Clínic, Barcelona is exploring an innovative cellular therapy that uses stem cells to treat Crohn's disease, a chronic genetic disease that affects 1% of the population in Spain and which has considerable impact on the quality of life of the patients. The procedure is based on an autologous bone-marrow transplant (when patients receive a transplant of their own stem cells) and now constitutes a treatment option to cure an intestinal disease that sometimes does not successfully respond to drugs and requires highly complex surgery that does not provide a cure.

With this therapy, in an average follow-up period of 6 years, 80% of transplant patients are in a phase of total remission of the disease and the remaining 20% have shown considerable improvement following the transplant, and are now responding favorably to drugs.

That is an amazing success rate and bodes well for Chrohn's patients.

More interesting work going on with stem cells. This research involves the reprogramming of adult stem cells for the study of a variety of diseases in a petri dish. The new stem cell lines will be made available to scientists. The diseases include: Parkinson's, Huntington's, Down syndrome, Type 1, or juvenile, diabetes; two types of muscular dystrophy, Gaucher disease and a rare genetic disorder known as the "bubble boy disease.".

The title says it all.

In a watershed moment for one of the most contentious areas of science and American politics, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared the way for the first-ever human trial of a medical treatment derived from embryonic stem cells.

Geron Corp., a Menlo Park, Calif., biotechnology company, is expected to announce Friday that it received a green light from the agency to mount a study of its stem-cell treatment for spinal cord injuries in up to 10 patients. The announcement caps more than a decade of advances in the company's labs and comes on the cusp of a widely expected shift in U.S. policy toward support of embryonic stem-cell research after years of official opposition.

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I look forward to the limits on stem cell research being reversed first thing.