NIH Releases Draft of Embryonic Stem Cell Guidelines- Overly Restrictive, Overly Permissive, or Just Right?
April 23, 2009
A requirement of President Obama’s Executive Order which removed limitations of NIH funding for human embryonic stem cell research was for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to provide guidelines describing what kinds of human embryonic stem cell research should and shouldn’t be funded. Just recently a draft version of these guidelines was released for public review. Though not yet finalized, this draft provides the framework for the public consultation process (now ongoing) which will ultimately direct the NIH regarding the types of embryonic stem cell research that are within its mandate to support.
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Don’t be a team player
April 17, 2009
For a number of years I have become increasingly aware, and increasingly annoyed, by the frequency in which people’s opinions are classified, or rather lumped, into discrete groupings. It is as if all the uniqueness of people’s feelings and opinions can somehow be disregarded since it is faster to talk about issues if there are only two possible viewpoints, and only two possible groups that might hold these divergent views.
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Are Human Females Born With All The Eggs They Will Ever Have?
April 14, 2009
Here’s something you’ve probably heard, or believe to be true: When human females are born, they already have the total number of eggs that they will ever have for the course of their lives. This idea is so pervasive and dogmatic in the general public that it verges on absolute fact. And one can appreciate why- a simple search of the internet finds many posts supporting this position. But is this true? Are women born with all the eggs they will ever have? The answer is, LIKELY NO!
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I’m curious. Are you?
April 5, 2009
Over the past decade there has been increasing pressure put on biomedical researchers to justify their projects by establishing short term timelines to produce technological or clinical applications. The drive for applicable or “translational” research is in many ways perfectly reasonable. For publically funded research there are limited amounts of tax dollars to go around, and the public is looking for a return on their investment. Also, new technological developments are an economic advantage for the country or region that discovers and brings them to market, so there is a huge financial incentive.
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Should we abandon Embryonic Stem Cell Research?
April 2, 2009
By Ryan Ward, Kevin Graham & Ian Clarke
Stem cells can be derived from many adult organs- for example the stem cells derived from the blood and the nervous system. These cells have tremendous capacity/potential to treat once incurable diseases. The best treatment for some forms of leukemia remains a bone marrow transplant from a healthy donor after completely erasing the patient’s bone marrow (and hopefully any leukemia cells). This technology has been around for many years, and is now being applied to other diseases such as multiple sclerosis and is based on using healthy adult stem cells to replenish the diseased blood of a patient. The same can be said for neural stem cells of the central or peripheral nervous system, though for clinical application these cells remain unproven. The idea here is that adult neural stem cells could be harvested from a patient, or donor, and used for the treatment of spinal cord injury, or neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s.
Rett Syndrome and induced Pluripotent Stem cells goes “Green”
June 17, 2009 by Aaron Cheung
Stem cell researchers at The Hospital for Sick Children have now devised a method, reported in the scientific journal Nature Methods, that will facilitate the generation of induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells. I have previously blogged about the promise of iPS cells (see related articles). iPS cells are cells which have been reprogrammed from a differentiated somatic cell (such as your skin cells) to a pluripotent stem cell (like an embryonic stem cell, only that you don’t need to use embryos!). The generation of iPS cells is inherently very rare which occurs at a frequency of about 0.01% meaning you can generate about one iPS cell line out of hundred thousand cells. Out of which, many lines fail to satisfy the different rigorous tests necessary to be given the prestigious name of “iPS cell”.
Continue reading Rett Syndrome and induced Pluripotent Stem cells goes “Green”
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