Researchers have succeeded in reversing the symptoms of diabetes in mice by carrying out pancreas cell transplants. The team, from the University of Florida, published their results in this month's issue of Nature Medicine. The mice had the equivalent of Type 1 - or childhood-diabetes - which affects 100,000 children in the...
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...
Sir John Krebs, the government's chief advisor on food safety, has called for an international body to address public concern over genetically modified plants and animals. The new body should monitor the multinationals and advise governments on consumer safety and ethics, he told the Edinburgh conference on GM food safety...
Two patients in a gene therapy trial for haemophilia, a blood-clotting disorder, have shown a marked improvement in their condition. The US team, from Stanford University School of Medicine and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, admit they were surprised by the results, which are published in this month's Nature Genetics...
Biotech business is booming again, according to several newspaper reports last week. Bill Castell, head of Nycomed Amersham, said last week the company may float its life sciences business, in recognition of the increasing importance of the new 'gene economy'. The firm, which makes research products, is considering the partial...
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is telephoning every researcher who has ever registered a clinical gene therapy trial, in an effort to track down all previously unreported 'adverse events'. The move follows recent concern over hundreds of failed gene therapy experiments, including several deaths, which went unreported at...
Donna Maclean, a poet and casino waitress from Bristol, is trying to become the first person to patent herself. She has made her unique application to the patent office in an attempt to register her anger at the mass patenting of genes by scientists and biotech companies. 'There's a kind...
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We must open the door to all kinds of stem cell research
by Juliet Tizzard
Cloning is back in the news. Last week, the Royal Society, the UK's foremost scientific society, issued a paper on stem cell research, which laid particular emphasis on research and therapies using stem cells from adult tissues. According to the Royal Society report, the harvesting of adult stem cells may...