Stem Cell Research
Seventeen teams of stem cell researchers have won $170 million in federal grants to back their work. Scientists at Stanford will collect up to $40 million of that. Story
Patients' stem cells were used to create new liver cells at the Medical College of Wisconsin, pointing the way to new therapies for the liver. "This is a crucial step forward towards developing therapies that can potentially replace the need for scarce liver transplants, currently the only treatment for most advanced liver disease," Dr. Stephen Duncan. Report
Researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute used a compound they call RepSox to replace two of the four genes used to reprogram adult stem cells into iPS cells, taking another step in the direction of safely pushing adult stem cells to transform into ESC building blocks for new tissue. Story
A rare genetic disease caused 15-year-old Brad Guilkey to be born without cheek bones. But surgeons implanted cadaver bone in his face and then injected his stem cells into the bone to complete a successful procedure. Report
Genetics
Kaiser Permanente has won a $25 million grant to conduct a genotyping experiment on 100,000 enrollees in Northern California. "Kaiser Permanente is proud to be part of what President Obama called the ‘single largest boost to biomedical research in history.' It's our mission to find answers to medicine's complex questions so that everyone can have better care," said Raymond Baxter, Kaiser's senior vice president of community benefit, research and health policy. Report
A study of three polymorphisms of the interleukin-1 gene complex (IL-1) and one of the tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNFα) has led researchers to conclude that IL-1 may directly contribute to alcoholism among Spanish Caucasian males. Results will be published in the December issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research. Release
A team of scientists from Harvard and MIT have deciphered a three-dimensional structure of the human genome. Story
Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies report that they have identified the first genetic mechanism that determines the regional identity of progenitors tasked with generating the cerebral cortex. Release
Cancer Research
A team of scientists at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda says that studying pet dogs with cancer could yield valuable information on how to diagnose and treat human cancers. Release
Although a wide spectrum of human papillomavirus is seen across the population of India, HPV-16 and HPV-18 are the most common types and a vaccination targeting these types could eliminate 75 percent of the cervical cancers in the region, according to data presented at the American Association for Cancer Research Frontiers in Basic Cancer Research Meeting. Release