It's Stem & Us

A new breakthrough in stem cell research means that the future is looking far brighter for some suffers of certain conditions and diseases such as Parkinson's and Multiple Sclerosis. There is good evidence that both these illnesses could be treatable with therapy using stem cells to replace the damaged or degenerating tissues. Unfortunately, research in this area of medical science has been hindered by ethical problems, because the only ready source of stem cells for this purpose has been from human embryo tissue.


The 'magic' property of stem cells is that, because all cells in the body stem from this type of cell, they can be manipulated into becoming and replacing any kind of tissue... and now a team, led by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University, has managed to turn fibroblasts, common cells in our skins, back into their embryonic state so that the cells then behave like stem cells! The above image belongs to The New York Times.

This early research has so far been conducted with skin samples from mice, but there is no reason why this technique cannot be adapted to human cells of this type. Of course, there will need to be much more refinement and development before this technique could be tested safely in human subjects. However, this progress should help to speed up stem cell research and make it much more acceptable to those who have previously objected on moral grounds...

read more here:

bbc science news

and here:

Science Daily report