Scientists in the US have published details of two human embryonic stem cell(ES cell)lines grown without the use of animal products. WiCell, a biotechnology company, worked to develop the new culture medium with scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UWM). The work is reported in the journal Nature Biotechnology...
A UK fertility expert has said that within ten years, a significant proportion of young British women will be cryopreserving their eggs in order to stave off infertility while delaying motherhood. Dr Simon Fishel, director of the Centre for Assisted Reproduction (CARE) in Nottingham, said at a media briefing at...
An investigation into the work of South Korean stem cell scientist Woo Suk Hwang and his team has concluded that they did not create any cloned embryo stem (ES) cell-lines genetically-matched to patients, as reported in their much-feted Science paper of last year. The revelations have sent shockwaves through the...
Two teams of scientists, working in Vancouver and Melbourne, have reported a breakthrough that may allow whole breasts to be grown from individual breast stem cells. The scientists have successfully grown replacement breasts in mice, in work that offers hope for developing new therapies to treat breast cancer and, in...
US researchers have discovered why a high fat diet could increase the risk of type 2 diabetes. The team, based at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), has shown that mice missing a gene that makes a crucial pancreas protein have high blood sugar levels, and eventually develop diabetes...
An independent committee that reviewed the laws on cloning and human embryonic stem cell(ES cell)research in Australia has recommended that they should be relaxed. Australia currently has two pieces of federal legislation that strictly govern cloning and ES cell research. The Research Involving Human Embryos Act and the Prohibition...
Professor Ian Wilmut, the scientist who cloned Dolly the sheep, has said that terminally ill patients could be used to test stem cell therapies. Wilmut, who was appointed last month as the first director of the new Centre for Regenerative Medicine at Edinburgh University, Scotland, claimed that using human volunteers...
New European rules on the use and storage of human tissue could deny young British women undergoing cancer treatment the chance to preserve their fertility, according to a report in the Times newspaper. The requirements of the new EU Tissues and Cells Directive make it prohibitively expensive for many centres...
Scientists at the UK's Birmingham University have developed a fertility test kit that can be bought over-the-counter at chemists and used by couples at home. The Fertell test, which will cost about £80, takes less than an hour to work and is said to give accurate results in nearly all...
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What does the future hold for embryo stem cell science?
by Dr Jess Buxton
For those aiming to develop new, stem-cell based therapies for conditions such as spinal cord injury and diabetes, 2005 will be remembered as the year in which hopes were first raised beyond everyone's expectations - only to be dashed, when apparently groundbreaking research was revealed to be an audacious hoax. The...