Stem cell research marches on.While the ethical and political debates rage over stem cells stem cells, unspecialized human or animal cells that can produce mature specialized body cells and at the same time replicate themselves. Embryonic stem cells are derived from a blastocyst (the blastula typical of placental mammals; see embryo), which is very young from human embryos, scientists continue to discover how those cells work and what they can do. About 2 weeks before President Bush made his decision to fund certain kinds of stem cell research (SN: 8/18/01, p. 105), investigators from Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University, mainly at Baltimore, Md. Johns Hopkins in 1867 had a group of his associates incorporated as the trustees of a university and a hospital, endowing each with $3.5 million. Daniel C. in Baltimore reported at a meeting that injections of human embryonic stem cells restored some mobility to paralyzed par·a·lyze tr.v. par·a·lyzed, par·a·lyz·ing, par·a·lyz·es 1. To affect with paralysis; cause to be paralytic. 2. To make unable to move or act: paralyzed by fear. rodents. The damage to the spinal cord, which the researchers cause by injecting a virus into the animals, mimics amyotrophic lateral sclerosis amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) (ā'mīətrōf`ik, sklĭrō`sĭs) or motor neuron disease, , also known as Lou Gehrig's disease Lou Geh·rig's disease n. See amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. . Although the research has not been published in a scientific journal, several lawmakers on Capitol Hill viewed videotape of once-paralyzed rodents walking after the treatment. Congress is now considering how to regulate stem cell research. Meanwhile, an Israeli research team has further demonstrated the flexibility of human embryonic stem cells by converting them into two potentially valuable types of cells. Under the proper conditions, the lab-grown stem cells transform into insulin-secreting cells that could help treat people with diabetes, Joseph Itskovitz-Eldor of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and his colleagues report in the August DIABETES. Some of the same scientists report in the August JOURNAL OF CLINICAL INVESTIGATION The Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI or J Clin Invest) is a leading biomedical journal, which is radically different from many of its peers in having a high impact factor (in 2006, 15.754) and offering all its contents entirely free. that they have converted human embryonic stem cells into cardiomyocytes, the muscle cells that drive the beating of the heart. |
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