stem cell research 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...

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...

Judge Dismisses Suit Against Stem Cell Research

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 13:22:05 CDT

A lawsuit that had threatened to end the Obama administration's funding of embryonic stem cell research was thrown out today, allowing the US to continue supporting a search for cures to deadly diseases over protests that the work relies on destroyed human embryos. The lawsuit claimed that research funded by...

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...

Doctors Seek to Replicate This Man's 'HIV Cure'

Rob Quinn — Tue, 17 May 2011 02:40:00 CDT

Six months after his case attracted worldwide attention, "Berlin Patient" Timothy Ray Brown appears to still be the first person ever to have been cured of HIV. The virus was eliminated from Brown's body after he received a bone marrow stem cell transplant while being treated for leukemia. "I’m cured...

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...

US Approves 2nd Human Trial of Stem Cells

Matt Cantor — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 07:37:44 CST

The FDA has approved the second stem-cell trial on humans: Advanced Cell Technology will test the effects of stem-cell treatments on 12 patients with Stargardt’s macular dystrophy, a disease that causes progressive blindness, Reuters reports. The currently untreatable disease causes degeneration of eye tissue beginning as early as age 10....