Scientists have for the first time produced liver cells specific to different ethnic groups that could revolutionise the development of drugs to treat diseases.

How are the millions of different cells in our bodies produced from just one fertilised egg cell? Scientists from the Institut Pasteur in Paris and the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh have shed new light on this process, and their investigations have revealed a new kind of stem cellⁱ.

 

 

Scientists have uncovered a vital link in the chain of events that gives stem cells their remarkable properties. Researchers from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell Research at the University of Cambridge have pinpointed the final step in a complex process that gives embryonic stem cellsⁱ their unique ability to develop into any of the different types of cells in the body (from liver cells to skin cells).

Scientists have developed an improved method for growing human brain cancer cells in the laboratory. The technique provides a powerful tool for studying how tumours form in the brain, and how treatments might be developed in the future.

Scientists have paved the way for stem cells made from skin cells to be safely transplanted into humans – by overcoming one of the main health risks associated with previous techniques.

Austin Smith and his research team at the Centre for Stem Cellⁱ Research in Cambridge have just published in the journal Development (http://dev.biologists.org/) a new and safer way of generating pluripotentⁱ stem cells – the stem cells that can give rise to every tissue of the body.

 

 

 

The second ESTOOLS ethics workshop took place over two days, October 2-3, 2008 in Lund, Sweden.  The theme of this international and interdisciplinary workshop was "Ethical aspects of research on interspecies embryos and IPS cellsⁱ".  

 

 

 

Scientists have shown for the first time that embryonic stem (ES) cells are able to self-renewⁱ without the natural chemicals that scientists have so far used to maintain them and grow stem cellⁱ lines. This discovery contradicts previously held views and could have wide-ranging implications for stem cell research. It is hoped the findings, from the Cambridge team lead by Medical Research Council Professor Austin Smith and published in Nature, will lead to a better biological understanding of ES cells and more straightforward translation to the human system of detailed work done only in mouse ES cells to date.

In the March 2008 issue of Nature Biotechnology EuroStemCell scientist Elena Cattaneo (University of Milano), with Mauro Toselli (University of Pavia), Elisabetta Cerbai (University of Florence) and Ferdinando Rossi (University of Torino), have challenged findings published in the same journal last year that amniotic fluid-derived stem cells can produce cells of the nervous system.