Bioethics.net

February 16, 2015

Non-Embryonic Stem Cells and Malaria Treatment

A recent study from MIT (available here) has found that stem cells developed from blood and skin samples can be manufactured into liver like cells. The implications of this are exciting on two different levels: 1) this is another success for ethically derived stem cells; 2) this study is being used to develop treatment for malaria – a disease that has a lifelong impact on those it... // Read More »

September 11, 2014

Keeping up with Clinical Research with Human Embryonic Stem Cells

Unless one works daily in a specific area of biomedical research, it can be next to impossible to keep up with developments.  I have trouble keeping up with a reasonable amount of the progress in research for some cancers.  Trying to track stem cell research requires more bandwidth than I have.  Still, from time to time I do try to do at least a little... // Read More »

August 27, 2014

Direct cell reprogramming to grow a new organ and the ice bucket challenge

A recent article in The Guardian reports on an interview with Clare Blackburn of the Medical Research Council Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh where they have recently been able to induce a direct transformation of mouse skin fibroblasts into thymic epithelial cells. When these induced thymic epithelial cells were mixed with other thymus cell types and transplanted into mice they grew... // Read More »

July 24, 2014

The upcoming debate over “CIRM 2”–CORRECTION

(I made an error about a past video involving the late actor Christopher Reeve in my post yetsterday. I strongly implied, at least, that such a video was used in the 2004 campaign for passage of California Prop. 71.  That would not be correct.  The video in question, easily found on YouTube, was aired [it indicates there] by Nuveen Investments during the 2000 Super Bowl.... // Read More »

July 11, 2014

The Recent Stem Cell News

Last week’s edition of Nature includes developments in the world of stem cell research, also noted in the general press: First: A group from Portland, San Diego, and Stockholm published work (payment required to read article) seeking to define the “best” human pluripotent stem cells on cellular and molecular grounds.  They compared: Stem cells taken from an embryo, created in IVF and destroyed for the... // Read More »

June 12, 2014

Germline Alteration and Defining “Just Research”

Yesterday’s post by Steve Phillips raises a central question for us in the “biotech century”:  are there some sorts of experiments that fundamentally ought not be done because of the potential they will be grossly misapplied by bad actors?  Steve cited research by Lord Robert Winston seeking to create genetically altered pigs—that seem, from the description in the press, to be what scientists call “transgenic”... // Read More »

June 6, 2014

Getting An Earful

by Craig Klugman, Ph.D.

In the book (and film) Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, dinosaur DNA from in insects that bit the dinosaurs and are now preserved in amber.…

May 1, 2014

“Curb Your Enthusiasm” about Adult Stem Cells?

This week, Nature has an online news article and editorial about a new meta-analysis published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).  The BMJ article addresses discrepancies in published reports of clinical trials of adult stem cells to treat patients with heart disease/heart failure.  For some time now, this has appeared to many to be a particularly promising use of adult stem cells. Well, not so... // Read More »

April 24, 2014

Last Week’s Stem Cell Cloning News

Readers of this blog probably saw last week’s report, as the NPR headline put it, that “First Embryonic Stem Cells Cloned from a Man’s Skin.”  I was able to read the full text of the online publication, by Cell Stem Cell, here. The stated goal of the work is to use somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) to clone an embryo that can then be used... // Read More »

August 30, 2013

Faster Than the Speed of Thought

by Craig Klugman, Ph.D.

In the 1983 comedic film, The Man with Two Brains,”  Steve Martin’s character falls in love with a female brain preserved in a jar.…