Stem Cell

  What are the chances that the prestigious Institute of Medicine will get an objective and balanced view of California's stem-cell program when it takes public testimony about the program at a hearing Tuesday in San Francisco? About 418 million to one. That's the estimation of the California Stem Cell Report. The report's proprietor, David Jensen, toted up the value of the grants received from the program by Tuesday's witnesses or their employers. Total: $418 million.

In 2004, with President George W. Bush dead set against stem cell research, California just went ahead and did it. Voters made stem cell research a state constitutional right, and endorsed $3 billion in bond sales for 10 years to cement the deal. CIRM, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine created under Proposition 71, has become a world center for stem cell research, and its president is Australian Alan Trounson, a pioneer in in vitro fertilization. As Proposition 71 approaches its 10-year anniversary, Trounson offers a prognosis.

In 2004, with President George W. Bush dead set against stem cell research, California just went ahead and did it. Voters made stem cell research a state constitutional right, and endorsed $3 billion in bond sales for 10 years to cement the deal. CIRM, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine created under Proposition 71, has become a world center for stem cell research, and its president is Australian Alan Trounson, a pioneer in in vitro fertilization. As Proposition 71 approaches its 10-year anniversary, Trounson offers a prognosis.

Re "Stem cells are made by cloning method," May 16 Cloning a human serves no purpose, so the arguments against making stem cells using a cloning method are ludicrous. On the other hand, cloning organs makes sense - the rest is just jibber-jabber from Luddites. Mike Benbrook El Cajon ALSO: Letters: Dying but not wanting to know Letters: Addiction treatment that works Letters: Election billboard ads may backfire

Humans are on the cusp of discovering how the universe works on its biggest and smallest scales, Stephen Hawking said during a lecture Tuesday in Los Angeles. The renowned theoretical physicist made his name studying black holes, massive structures that anchor galaxies and whose gravity is so strong that not even light can escape. But on Tuesday, he delved into the world of microscopic cell biology to see first-hand how researchers at the Cedars-Sinai Regenerative Medicine Institute are using stem cells to develop treatments for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, the disease Hawking was diagnosed with in 1963.

A glimmer of hope among those with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes and other ailments that might be relieved with new treatments derived from embryonic stem cells was dimmed this week by a federal judge, whose injunction on federal funding for such research could not only jeopardize American medical science but the health of millions of patients worldwide. But the failure isn't just judicial — the ruling was based in part on a sound interpretation of an ill-considered law imposed by Congress.

With the stroke of a pen, President Obama cleared the way Monday for the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies to fund research using all kinds of human embryonic stem cells. "Scientists believe these tiny cells may have the potential to help us understand, and possibly cure, some of our most devastating diseases and conditions," Obama said at the signing ceremony. Obama's executive order removes funding restrictions put in place by President George W.

A specific type of stem cells transplanted into the leg muscles of injured young mice not only repaired the muscle damage but triggered changes in the muscle tissue that made it resistant to normal aging. The surprising finding, which was published Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine suggests that, under the proper conditions, stem cells might regenerate muscle tissue. Researchers led by Bradley Olwin of the University of Colorado, Boulder, took stem cells from the muscles of young donor mice and transplanted them into mice with muscle injuries.

Making good on a popular campaign pledge, President Obama will sign an executive order Monday rescinding restrictions on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research, administration officials said Friday -- instantly making hundreds of millions of new dollars available for the controversial science.

Ushering in a new era in medicine, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Friday that it had cleared the way for the world's first clinical trial of a therapy derived from human embryonic stem cells. By early summer, a handful of patients with severe spinal cord injuries will be eligible for injections of specialized nerve cells designed to enable electrical signals to travel between the brain and the rest of the body.

A breakthrough in stem cell research has again raised the specter of human cloning. The discovery by a team at Oregon Health and Science University moves the world incrementally closer to that result, but its more immediate effect will be to spur efforts to regenerate healthy tissue for the injured and the ailing. Although it's reasonable to worry about where such a discovery may lead, those concerns shouldn't stop researchers from exploring the restorative properties of stem cells. The promise of stem cells is that they can develop into many different kinds of tissues rather than being locked into a specific cellular fate.

For the first time, scientists have created human embryos that are genetic copies of living people and used them to make stem cells - a feat that paves the way for treating a range of diseases with personalized body tissues but also ignites fears of human cloning. If replicated in other labs, the methods detailed Wednesday in the journal Cell would allow researchers to fashion human embryonic stem cells that are custom-made for patients with Alzheimer's disease, diabetes and other health problems.

Humans are on the cusp of discovering how the universe works on its biggest and smallest scales, Stephen Hawking said during a lecture Tuesday in Los Angeles. The renowned theoretical physicist made his name studying black holes, massive structures that anchor galaxies and whose gravity is so strong that not even light can escape. But on Tuesday, he delved into the world of microscopic cell biology to see first-hand how researchers at the Cedars-Sinai Regenerative Medicine Institute are using stem cells to develop treatments for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, the disease Hawking was diagnosed with in 1963.

After years of resisting all criticisms of its operations, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine is finally listening - a little. It spent $700,000 for an outside, high-level review that complimented the stem cell agency for funding an excellent portfolio of research projects, but also raised serious objections to the agency's structure, which the review said was likely to lead to financial conflicts of interest. The criticisms were nothing new - many of the same points have been made since the agency was created by Proposition 71 in 2004 - but the positive response by the chairman of the agency's board was. The governing board is now making changes to address some of the long-standing issues.

Compromise, defined as the art of getting part of a loaf when the whole loaf is out of reach, comes in many forms. But surely the strangest of all is what comes of trying to compromise with yourself. That's what California's stem cell agency is attempting to do. And judging from its record of pioneering new ways of funding and managing scientific research, you can rest assured that the results will be fraught with interest. What's at issue is how the agency's board wrestles with recommendations for changes in its membership and its authority over the spending of its $3-billion endowment in state bond funds (that's $6 billion, including interest)

Changes may be on the way at California's stem cell funding agency.  The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, or CIRM, came under fire in December when an Institute of Medicine report concluded that the agency was plagued by conflicts of interest. (See story in related items at left.)   In response, CIRM's governing board on Wednesday endorsed a “framework” designed to address some of those concerns. Chief among the changes: Board members from universities and other research institutions who compete for CIRM funding would no longer vote on grants.

SCIENCE TOOK AN UNNECESSARY leap forward Wednesday. A Bay Area biotechnology company announced a breakthrough in stem cell research that could quell religious objections to such research and persuade the federal government to lift its restrictions on funding it.

In rejecting a challenge to President Obama's policy to continue embryonic stem cell research, the Supreme Court wisely chose Monday to further vital research over the interests of competing scientists and religious groups. The court did not issue a decision. Instead, it rejected a petition to hear arguments in an appeal of a 2011 ruling by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which decided the National Institutes of Health could continue embryonic stem cell research from lines derived from already destroyed embryos.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court has turned away a challenge to President Obama's policy of expanding government-funded research using embryonic stem cells that scientists say may offer hope for new treatments for spinal injuries and Parkinson's disease. The court's action brings a quiet end to a lawsuit that briefly threatened to derail all funding for such research.  A federal judge in Washington in 2010 ordered the National Institutes of Health to halt funding of the research, citing a long-standing congressional ban on spending for research in which “human embryos are destroyed.” But an appeals court overturned that order and ruled last year that the ban applied only to research which destroyed human embryos so as to obtain stem cells.