Word: skins
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...data is based on a nationwide survey of 1,500 shoppers. The improvement in consumer sentiment extends to more than just food. In May 2008, for example, 50% of shoppers said they were spending less on skin-care products. This past April, 38% were cutting back. People are also cutting back less on over-the- counter medication and clothes, which is particularly good news for the many apparel retailers that have been battered by the recession. Of the 13 remaining categories that WSL Strategic Retail tracked, not one showed a significant increase in the percentage of consumers cutting back...
...Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer at Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), reported today in the journal Cell that his team has created stem cells using human skin cells and four proteins. The innovation builds on the breakthrough discovery in 2006 by Shinya Yamanaka, who similarly coaxed human skin cells to revert to a pristine, embryonic state by introducing four key genes into the cells, piggybacked on viruses. However, some of those genes are known to cause cancer, which made Yamanaka's stem cells - known as induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells - unsuitable for human use. (See a graphic explaining...
...found a way around both: the researchers isolated the proteins made by the same genes Yamanaka used and "tagged" them with a message that allowed the proteins to slip easily into the cell. Yamanaka's method, on the other hand, relied on using viruses to ferry genes into the skin cell...
...relatively inefficient. "The ability to make cell lines from patients with any risk of genetic alteration is a significant step, but the efficiency of 0.001% of cells is low, and even that took two months to achieve," he says, referring to the fact that only a tiny percentage of skin cells in the study transformed into iPS cells over two months. "How readily or quickly this technology is applied, and whether the efficiency is improved, are things that we will have to wait and see." (Read "Stem-Cell Research: The Quest Resumes...
...stem cells are unlikely to prove useful as human treatments - for maladies like diabetes, Parkinson's or spinal-cord injuries - since they would not be tissue-matched to the individual patients who need them. The new method could allow scientists to create stem cells using a patient's own skin cells, eliminating the possibility of rejection...