Stem Cells

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.

The government issued final rules Monday expanding taxpayer-funded research using embryonic stem cells, easing scientists' fears that some of the oldest batches might not qualify and promising a master list of all that do.

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.

Borrowing a biological cut-and-paste trick from bacteria, scientists have created the first personalized stem cells for patients that are free of the cancer-causing viruses and genes needed to make them, according to a study published today in the journal Cell. The stem cells, derived from skin samples provided by five patients with Parkinson's disease, were first transformed back to the undecided state of cells in an early embryo.

Expectant parents must make several important medical decisions. Among them: whether to have prenatal genetic testing, request pain medication during labor, strive for a natural birth or circumcise a male baby? Perhaps one of the most overlooked parts of childbirth preparation is whether to save or donate the infant's umbilical cord blood. Umbilical cords are usually discarded as medical waste.

News that Chinese researchers have succeeded in growing healthy living mice from mouse skin cells takes scientists a significant step closer to human cloning, experts say, and is thus likely to reopen debate about the ethics of such reproductive techniques. The new feat -- in which animals were grown from cells that had been reverted back to their embryonic state -- is technically different from cloning. But the outcome is the same in both cases: a genetically identical copy of the donor animal.

Taking the next step in a series of breakthrough stem cell experiments, scientists have cured sickle cell anemia in mice by rewinding their skin cells to an embryonic state and manipulating them to create healthy, genetically matched replacement tissue.

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.

In the annals of wrongheaded things done with the best intentions, the California stem cell program has always been in a category of its own. The $6-billion program was enacted by voters in 2004 as Proposition 71 after a campaign of exceptional intellectual dishonesty, featuring vignettes of sufferers from diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other heartbreaking diseases for which it seemed to promise imminent cures through research into embryonic stem cells.

On the cusp of a new era in stem cell science, Democratic heavyweights are pushing to install the outgoing California Democratic Party chief in a leadership post at the state's $3-billion research program. Art Torres, who served two decades as a state lawmaker before assuming the party chairmanship a dozen years ago, is being backed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer of California and Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, among others.