A type of stem cell found in early embryos, which is capable of developing into all (totipotent) or a wide range of (pluripotent) different body tissues.
A team of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, has grown nerve cells in the laboratory and used them to repair damaged adult rat spinal cords. The scientists used embryo stem cells - cells that can grow into any type of body tissue - to obtain a supply of...
Dr Austin Smith, of the Centre for Genome Research, Edinburgh, has called for a change in the law, to allow couples to donate embryos for research into stem cell therapies. Dr Smith told the Guardian newspaper that attempts to find the Holy Grail of frontier medical research 'were being hampered...
A US Senate committee has heard the ethical and scientific arguments for and against government funding of embryo stem cell research, reported last week's Nature. Among those who testified were individuals who could benefit from such research, including US actor Christopher Reeve, who was paralysed following a horse-riding accident. Embryo...
Cloning is back in news. This time, press attention was sparked by leaked information that a government advisory panel is about to recommend human cloning for therapeutic purposes and by a report published by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics recommending the same. It seems that as more and more respected...
The Nuffield Council on Bioethics has published a discussion paper recommending changes in UK regulations, which would allow research into stem cells derived from embryos. It also recommended lifting the ban on research into therapeutic cloning - the potential treatment of human diseases using tissues derived from cloned early embryos. Embryo...
A team of researchers based at Monash University in Melbourne and the National University of Singapore has managed to grow primitive muscle and nerve cells from human embryo stem (ES) cells in the laboratory. 'We are the first to show you can do that in a controlled fashion' said Dr...
Researchers in Germany have called for a change in the regulations governing research on human embryo stem cells - cells that can grow into any type of tissue. Currently, German law permits research on human embryo stem cell lines produced commercially in other countries, but forbids scientists from creating their own...
The Royal Society has urged the British government to consider setting up a bank of frozen human stem cells, in a report submitted this week to the expert panel on therapeutic cloning. The panel, headed by Chief Medical Officer Liam Donaldson, is currently considering the scientific, ethical and legal issues...
Human embryo stem cell research is now a step closer to becoming legal in Japan. The Council for Science and Technology (CST), Japan's main science policy-making body, are expected to submit a proposal to the government in favour of research on human embryonic stem cells around the end of March...
Scientists at Geron BioMed, the company launched after a merger between the team that cloned Dolly the sheep at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh and a stem cell research company in the US, is now concentrating on therapeutic cloning techniques that do not require human egg cells. Cloning in the...
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