Word: stemness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...achievement, described in the journal Stem Cells and Development, comes just 11 years after the first human-embryonic-stem-cell line was created - an eyeblink in scientific terms - in the lab of James Thomson at the University of Wisconsin. (See the top 10 scientific discoveries...
Although the development once again raises the specter of creating humans in a petri dish or custom-designing egg and sperm cells for reproduction, lead author Karim Nayernia says that was not his team's intention. Rather, the experiment was a proof of concept that stem cells can generate any cell in the body - not only the dozens of tissues that make up the human body but also those egg and sperm cells that may give rise to altogether new bodies. "Other cell types don't generate the next generation," says Nayernia, a professor of stem-cell biology at Newcastle...
...This area has potential powerful clinical applications mixed with people's concerns over embryo research," says Insoo Hyun, a bioethicist at Case Western Reserve University who specializes in stem-cell-related ethical issues. "All the ingredients are there for a really, really lively ethical debate...
That's how long it took Nayernia's team to nurture sperm from embryonic stem cells, using a special cocktail of growth factors, nutrients and retinoic acid, a derivative of vitamin A. It is worth noting that researchers could generate IVD sperm only from male embryos; when they tried using stem cells from a female embryo, they were unable to get sperm to mature past the spermatogonial stage. That suggests that genes located on the Y chromosome, which female cells do not contain, may be essential for triggering the maturation of the primitive sperm cell...
That might seem more like science fiction than reality, but given the pace of stem-cell research, it may not be that far off. "We have the potential therapeutic use of a technology that pushes the boundaries of what people feel comfortable with ethically," says Hyun. With more advances like this one likely to come in months if not weeks, that comfort level will have to catch up quickly...