stem cells news stories on Newser

Canada OKs World's 1st Stem Cell Therapy

Neal Colgrass — Sat, 19 May 2012 13:59:05 CDT

Canada has approved the world's first stem cell treatment for a systemic disease, Reuters reports. This week, the nation's health regulators allowed doctors to use the drug Prochymal for children with graft-versus host disease (GvHD), a sometimes deadly side-effect from bone marrow transplants. GvHd kills up to 80% of afflicted...

Oklahoma Bill Would Ban Fetuses in Food

Kevin Spak — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 12:46:05 CST

Oklahoma Sen. Ralph Shortey is on a mission. He's introduced a bill banning any food products "which contains aborted human fetuses in the ingredients." Is this a going problem in Oklahoma, you ask? Well no, but Shortey read about it once on the Internet, he tells the AP , and the...

Stem Cells May Reverse Blindness in Women

Neal Colgrass — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:00:19 CST

A treatment made from embryonic stem cells is apparently restoring sight in two women who were slowly going blind, NPR reports. "I can't tell you how excited I am about this," says Steven Schwartz, a UCLA opthamologist leading the research. "For these patients, the impact is enormous." Scientists injected retinal...

Stem Cell 'Spare Parts' May Await Newborns

Neal Colgrass — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 13:49:00 CDT

Babies with congenital defects may soon have stem cell treatments waiting for them the moment they're born, New Scientist reports. Pending FDA approval, researchers say they're ready to extract cells from a mother's amniotic fluid, grow needed "spare parts," and patch up the baby when it pops out. "We're just...

Doctors Slam Perry for Fringe Health Procedure

Matt Cantor — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 08:23:06 CDT

Doctors are raising concerns over a back treatment undergone last month by Rick Perry that’s a bit “past the edge” of mainstream medicine. In the procedure, stem cells were removed from the Texas governor’s fat and developed in a lab for injection into his back and bloodstream. It’s a risky...

Scientists Turn Stem Cells Into Working Sperm

Matt Cantor — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 16:15:00 CDT

Researchers have managed to produce sperm cells from embryonic stem cells—and for the first time, the sperm worked, resulting in healthy baby mice. Researchers in Japan mixed the embryonic stem cells with certain proteins and hormones. They converted the resulting cells into germ cells, which they implanted in the...

Scientists: We Can Make Pigs Grow Human Organs

Kevin Spak — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 07:53:21 CDT

Japanese researchers have hit on a stem cell breakthrough that they say could essentially solve the organ shortages problem—but fair warning, it’s weird. By injecting stem cells from rats into the embryos of mice that had been genetically modified to be unable to grow their own organs, the researchers...

Court Overturns Stem Cell Ban

Kevin Spak — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 12:06:07 CDT

A federal appeals court overturned the ban on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research today in a 2-1 ruling. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that such funding did not violate a 1996 law forbidding the use of federal money for research...

Paralyzed Patient Undergoes Stem Cell Experiment

John Johnson — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 16:22:09 CDT

A 21-year-old nursing student in Alabama paralyzed from the chest down in a car accident says he's "doing well" after receiving an experimental drug made from embryonic stem cells, but that it's too early to gauge his prospects of being able to walk again. Timothy Atchison tells the Washington Post...