NewsRoom

McClatchy Newspapers
May 18, 2008
Lab-grown body parts no longer the stuff of sci-fi

COLUMBIA, Mo. Your heart is failing critically. A transplant would save your life, but the waiting list is long and the odds are stacked against you.

So instead, doctors extract some of your bone marrow, heart and muscle cells, go back to their laboratory and return in four to six weeks with ... a freshly grown heart.

Engineering body parts - tissues and whole organs that are genetically compatible and available on demand - sounds like science fiction. But researchers at medical centers around the world are working to make it a reality.

Kansas City Business Journal
May 05, 2008
Court ruling leaves Stowers Institute unsure about expansion

A Missouri appellate court decision issued Friday was hailed as a victory by supporters of embryonic stem cell research. But a spokeswoman for the Stowers Institute for Medical Research said Monday that the ruling was insufficient to reverse the institute's 2007 decision to postpone significant expansion in the Kansas City area.

News.Scotsman.com
April 08, 2008
Stem cell research may not find wonder cures
By LINDSAY MOSS

STEM cell research, we have long been told, should pave the way for revolutionary new treatments to help millions of patients around the world.

Yet despite the years of study and debate about the potential, therapies have been slow to materialise.

Even the head of the UK National Stem Cell Network has now conceded that stem cell research may never deliver new treatments.

BBC News
April 07, 2008
Stem cells made to mimic disease

Scientists have taken skin cells from patients with eight different diseases and turned them into stem cells.

The advance means scientists are moving closer to using stem cells from the patient themselves to treat disease.

This would mean they could circumvent the ethical and practical problems of using embryonic stem cells, which has sparked much opposition.

Researcher Dr Willy Lensch, of Harvard Medical School, said the technique had "incredible potential".

He said it could help scientists understand the earliest stages of human genetic disease.

The stem cells were created by taking biopsies from patients with diseases such as Huntington's and muscular dystrophy.

However, scientists admit that many risks remain and therapies could still be well over a decade away.

Induced pluripotent stem (IPS) cells are adult stem cells which are made to act like embryonic ones - they gain the ability to become any cell in the human body.

But crucially, scientists do not have to destroy embryos to create a supply.

Agence France-Presse
April 02, 2008
British team creates first human-animal hybrid embryo

LONDON (AFP) - For the first time in Britain, researchers at Newcastle University have created human-animal hybrid embryos, amid an ongoing political row about a disputed embryo research bill which is due to be put to parliament next month.

The research, which was announced on Tuesday, has yet to be published or verified, with a spokesman for the university telling AFP that the institution "wouldn't claim it to be final at all". It was first presented at a lecture in Tel Aviv on March 25

The revelation comes as British MPs were locked in a fierce battle over the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which would allow for the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos for medical research.

The Associated Press
March 26, 2008
Missouri appeals court looks at stem cell ballot
By MARGARET STAFFORD

KANSAS CITY — The long-running controversy over human embryonic stem cell research in Missouri moved to the state appeals court Wednesday, where both sides argued over a ballot summary of a constitutional amendment that opponents of the research want to put before voters in November.

The ballot proposal would ban a specific kind of embryonic stem cell research that was protected under a constitutional amendment approved by Missouri voters in 2006.

The Pathway
March 11, 2008
Cloning battle shifts to appeals court
By Allen Palmeri, Associate Editor

JEFFERSON CITY—Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan crafted insufficient, unfair and biased ballot summary language that has resulted in yet another delay in the battle over whether a proposed constitutional amendment on preventing human cloning will go before the voters in 2008.

Carnahan’s rewrite of language submitted last fall by Cures Without Cloning (CWC) was struck down Feb. 20 by Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce under precedents established by previous judges as insufficient or unfair. Legally it means her work is “inadequate, especially lacking adequate power, capacity or competence. The word ‘unfair’ means to be marked by injustice, partiality, or deception.” In other words, according to legal precedent, she stated the consequences of the initiative “inadequately and with bias, prejudice, deception and/or favoritism.”

New England Journal of Medicine 358:964-966
February 28, 2008
A New Dawn for Stem-Cell Therapy
Douglas R. Higgs

NEJM commentary touting iPSC. Pays lip service to bone marrow treatment of sickle cell, mostly touts Jaenisch's use of iPSC in mouse model of sickle cell.

ALSO has a very interesting statement re: SCNT/cloning:

"The first approach to attempt this reprogramming was ingenious but complicated. It involved removing the nucleus from a somatic cell and using it to replace the nucleus of a fertilized egg (so-called somatic-cell nuclear transfer)...
Perhaps, not surprisingly, the technical difficulties and ethical complexities of this approach were always likely to render it impractical."

Baptist Press
Mo. judge sides with anti-cloning forces
By Michael Foust
Feb 22, 2008

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (BP)--Pro-lifers in Missouri won a major court victory Feb. 20 when a state judge rewrote the ballot language of a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban all types of human cloning.

Circuit Judge Patricia S. Joyce ruled that the ballot language submitted last fall by Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan was "insufficient and unfair." The lawsuit was brought by the pro-life group Cures Without Cloning, which sued Carnahan and argued that her proposed language was biased. The ballot language is the summary of the amendment that appears on the ballot.

Read More »

Temple Daily Telegram
February 13, 2008
Adult stem cells: Still a sense of wonder
by Janice Gibbs, Temple Daily Telegram

Dr. Darwin Prockop has been researching adult stem cells for 18 years and yet maintains a sense of wonder about his work.

*We get surprises every week,* Prockop said.

Prockop, director of the Center for Gene Therapy at the Tulane University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, will be relocating to Temple in August.

He will serve as inaugural holder of the Stearman Chair in Genomic Medicine, professor of molecular and cellular medicine in the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine and director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Scott & White.

Everyone has stem cells, which are *generic* cells that can make exact copies of themselves indefinitely. In addition, a stem cell has the ability to produce specialized cells for various tissues in the body - such as heart muscle, brain tissue.

Press Release
February 4, 2008
A GRASSROOTS ORGANIZATION?

Pro-Cloning Group Relies on “Paid Volunteers” to Work Polls on Election Day

ST. LOUS, MO – The Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures claims it is a broad-based grassroots organization, so why is it paying big bucks to hire workers to staff polling places on Election Day?
What happened to the organization’s grassroots volunteers?

Read More »

Being in the minority or being unfairly judged by society does not sway Chelsea Zimmerman from her conviction to act.

Information is her best defense - and offense - as Zimmerman dreams to right the degradation in America by returning to a “Culture of Life.”

She spends hours each day researching scientists' papers and statistics while also reading Web sites of other pro-life supporters in many areas, including adult stem cell research, anti-cloning and anti-abortion.

“Chelsea has a wonderful, positive outlook,” said Rose Mengwasser, who has worked with her on pro-life projects. “She is good at finding out information and happy to pass it on.”

Washington Post
January 18, 2008
Mature Human Embryos Created From Adult Skin Cells

Scientists at a California company reported yesterday that they had created the first mature cloned human embryos from single skin cells taken from adults, a significant advance toward the goal of growing personalized stem cells for patients suffering from various diseases.

NY Times
January 18, 2008
Cloning Said to Yield Human Embryos

Scientists at a small biotechnology company say they have used cloning to create human embryos from the skin cells of two men.
The work represents a step toward the promise of creating personalized embryonic stem cells that could be used for medical treatments. Although the embryos grew only to a very early stage, the work could also theoretically be seen as a step toward creating babies that are genetic copies of other people.
Scientists at the company, Stemagen, which is based in San Diego, said Thursday that they were the first to use human adult cells to create cloned embryos that advanced to the stage known as a blastocyst, from which embryonic stem cells typically are extracted.
However, the researchers did not derive embryonic stem cells. That left some experts skeptical.

Daily Mail UK
January 8, 2008
Anger as clinic offers women half price fertility treatment if they donate eggs for cloning research

Women are being given cut-price fertility treatment if they donate eggs for controversial cloning research.
Those taking part in the taxpayer-funded scheme receive half-price IVF treatment in return for giving half their eggs to scientists working on human cloning.
The scientists say the scheme, the first of its kind in the world, will advance research into treating incurable diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

MissouriNet
January 7, 2008
Court Rules Against Carnahan in Affirmative Action Ballot Language Dispute

The Missouri Civil Rights Initiative, the sponsor of an effort to eliminate race-based preferences in Missouri has won a legal challenge involving Secretary of State Robin Carnahan's summary language for the petition collection effort.

Chicago Tribune
December 16, 2007
Stem cells used to rebuild breasts after lumpectomies

Women who get lumpectomies for breast cancer may one day have a simple option involving stem cells for reconstructing the affected breast, researchers report.

Doctors in Japan used stem cells derived from liposuctioned fat to repair the craters left in 21 women's breasts when cancerous lumps were cut out.

Read More »

St. Louis Post Dispatch
November 29, 2007
Breakthrough signals a path to ethical cures

Christmas came early for scientists seeking a cease-fire in the stem cell wars. When research teams in the United States and Japan announced last week that they had produced human cells with the traits of embryonic stem cells without using human eggs or embryos, scientists responded with breathless enthusiasm.

Read More »

Wall Street Journal
November 23, 2007
Stem-Cell Breakthrough

By Maureen Condic and Markus Grompe

For almost a decade now, embryonic stem cells (ESCs) have been heralded as a panacea for a range of ailments -- from neurological disorders such as Parkinson's to failing organs in cancer patients. These remarkable cells do have the potential to bring medical advances: They can turn into every cell type of the body, and can provide a potentially unlimited supply of transplantable cells.

Read More »

San Jose Mercury News
November 23, 2007
Stem-cell science outruns political debate

Research teams at two prestigious universities announced a major feat of biological alchemy this week: They've taken ordinary human cells and turned them into cells with all the characteristics and promise of embryonic stem cells.

Read More »

Earlier this week a team in the U.S. led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov of the Oregon National Primate Research Center, announced they had created the first cloned monkey embryo and extracted stem cells from it.

Read More »

The Pathway
November 7, 2007
Five alleged violations of Missouri Constitution detailed

Count IV of the complaint filed Oct. 19 in Cole County Circuit Court by Cures Without Cloning alleges that Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan and Missouri State Auditor Susan Montee violated five sections of the Missouri Constitution in writing the ballot summary, fiscal note and fiscal note summary for an initiatiave proposal concerning embryonic stem cell research. Those alleged violations are in Article I, Sections 2, 3, 8 and 25, and in Article III, Section 49. Here is that portion of the complaint:

09-02-2007  Stem-cell transplants provide hope for family of blind girl

08-29-2007  In Case You Missed It

08-22-2007  Announcement for Cures without Cloning Initiative