Posts Tagged ‘stem cell research’

Stem Cell Research Hits A Wall In Court

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth pulls the plug, citing a ban on federal funds being used to destroy embryos.

  • Lamberth’s ruling effectively ends Obama’s 2009 executive order to expand funding for embryonic stem cell research. The U.S. Justice Department plans to challenge the ruling.
  • Currently funded research projects will be allowed to continue until their grant money runs out – usually in the space of about a year.
  • Researchers are devastated. They fear the end of promising human developmental studies in the U.S., they fear a “brain drain” of scientists who relocate to other countries to continue their research, and they fear a new dependance on private funding.

Facts & Figures

165 research grants for stem cell research (worth about $149 million) will be frozen by the end of September.

Best Quote

“Stem cell research offers true potential for scientific discovery, and hope for families. This decision has just poured sand into that engine of discovery.” – Francis Collins, Director, National Institutes of Health

Scientists Stumble Upon Potential Key To Eternal Youth In Stem Cell Research

Friday, February 26th, 2010

An unprecedented breakthrough in stem cell research may hold the key to combating a terrible disease and unlocking the gate to immortality…

  • In the process of working with a new type of cell—induced pluripotent stem cells, a stem cell similar to embryonic stem cells but made from ordinary skin cells—a team of researchers at the Children’s Hospital Boston and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute were able to reverse the aging process of a rare genetic disease.
  • The disease, dyskeratosis congenita, is a blood marrow disorder that causes premature aging, warped fingernails (among other symptoms) and an increased risk of cancer. In the process of creating iPS cells from diseased patients’ skin cells, the scientists found that a gene in the cells multiplied three-fold, helping to restore telomeres (little caps on the ends of the chromosomes that carry DNA), which are integral in the process of aging and death in cells. Replenishing the telomeres could, in theory, help reverse the aging process.
  • About half of the people with the disease have bone marrow failure (meaning that their bone marrow stops making blood and immune cells properly), and of those people, many often die during bone marrow transplants. However, researchers think that bone marrow transplants from a patient’s own cells may be a gentler process.

Facts & Figures

  • Dyskeratosis congenita is a very rare disease and is usually diagnosed between the ages of 10 and 30.
  • In dyskeratosis congenita, the cells lose telomerase, an enzyme that helps maintain the telomeres. As telomeres deteriorate, cells age, and disease and death follow.
  • In cancer, telomerase apparently helps tumor cells become immortal and proliferate. Experimental cancer drugs target telomerase.
  • TERC helps rejuvenate telomeres, and researchers suspect that tumor cells employ TERC in order to achieve immortality.
  • Researchers speculate that replenishing TERC might help the sufferers of dsykeratosis congenita.

Best Quote

“We’re not saying we’ve found the fountain of youth, but the process of creating iPS cells recapitulates some of the biology that our species uses to rejuvenate itself in each generation.” – Suneet Agarwal, Researcher at Harvard Stem Cell Institute