I scanned an article in the May 20th issue of New Jersey's "The Star-Ledger" that a team of South Korean researchers at Seoul National University have created stem cell lines that efficiently carry the genetic fingerprint of diseased or injured human patients by devising a method to match DNA signature of patients and thereby overcome the obstacles introduced by the body's own immune system, which often rejects transplants. The team's technique, the somatic cell nuclear transfer, involves extracting the nuclei of skin cells from male and female patients ranging in age from 2 to 56 and transferring these nuclei to donated eggs whose nuclei had been removed and then chemically kickstarted to develop. The scientists successfully grew 31 blastocysts and, from these, developed 11 stem cell lines. A key factor in the team's success was its ability to use freshly harvested eggs from fertile, younger female donors.

In the May 30th issue of Time magazine there is an article called "Inside the Korean Cloning Lab" by Alice Park and Christine Gorman. I'll summarize its content by wholly quoting particular paragraphs.

"Woo Suk Hwang, the South Korean scientist who made headlines last week when he announced that his team, using Dolly-the-sheep techniques, had created 11 human stem-cell lines perfectly matched to the DNA of human patients--a giant leap...[in] creating custom stem cell treatments for everything from Alzheimer's disease to severed spinal cords.

The crux of the breakthrough is this: each of the newly created stem-cell lines is genetically identical to one of Hwang's patients. That means any new tissue derived from that patient's cell line can be injected into that individual without triggering an immune reaction. If researchers can figure out how to fix the original defect, they may someday be able to generate replacement tissue that is custom designed to treat the patient's condition.

Stem-cell research in Asia--not just in South Korea but in China, Japan, and Singapore as well--is rapidly outdistancing the work being done in the U.S., reflecting, in large part, real differences in government policy. South Korea, for example, recently banned the use of cloning techniques for the creation of babies but fully supports Hwang's work...[while] researchers in the U.S. who want to study human embryonic stem cells are restricted to a handful of federally approved stem-cell lines.

After DNA from a human patient is inserted into a hollowed-out egg, the fused cell is stimulated electrically and chemically to get it to start dividing...[Then.] growth factors and feeder cells [used] to sustain the growing egg...[are cultured in] a growth medium made of human-based nutrients, starting with human skin cells from one of the donor subjects...When the stem cells inside start growing out onto the underlying feeder cells, the researchers don't try to hurry the process.

Indeed, the most immediate benefit of Hwang's work, assuming it can be replicated, will be to better understand how diseases develop...[For example,] Hwang met last week with Scotland's Ian Wilmut, Dolly's cloner, who wants to work with the South Koreans on Lou Gehrig's disease."

There was additional information on Duke University's own findings.

"Researchers at Duke University Medical Center reported that infants born with a fatal nerve disorder have been helped--and perhaps even saved--by treatment with stem cells taken from the umbilical cords of healthy babies...[stem cells] taken not from embryos but from a cord or placenta blood.

Krabbe's disease, a devastating enzyme disorder that prevents the nerve fibers in babies' brains from developing the myelin insulation they need...[was] dosed with umbilical cord stem cells...[and in some babies] landed in the sickened brain tissue...restoring the enzyme that the babies lacked and causing affected nerve cells to regrow myelin insulation and healthy ones to keep what they had."

Re:This thread
Given that Woo Suk Hwang's results have now largely been discredited due to the discovery of delibrate falsifcation of data, & that Mr Hwang is likely to face jail time because of this, this is potentially a serious blow to Stem Cell Research...

No, it's a serious blow to research that was based on his findings.

Re:ScottN's Reply
Scott, considering that Woo Suk Hwang is currently now on trial in South Korea, on charges of Fraud, Embezzlement & Violation of South Korean Bioethics laws (the Bioethics charge concerns just how & where exactly he got the eggs used in his experiments...), for which if found guilty, he faces a 5 year jail term...
Coupled with the fact that the medical journal Science, withdrew 2 papers that he authored, on this subject, intended for publication in January 2006, because of these issues, implies that said research in this field has been set back....
(New Scientist has several articles on Theraputic Cloning in this week's issue, & I think you can access them from their website,
www.newscientist.com, but I'm not sure....).

Anyone else hear about this? Geez. That such a thing is possible raises some scary implications.

Btw, moderator, maybe this board should be changed to Genetic Engineering and Stem Cell Research, to be more inclusive?

Paging Dr. Moreau.

human dna in cows? is this to make people think twice before eating a hamburger?

Blind girl gains eyesight through stem cell surgery.

OK, QUESTION: Were EMBRYONIC stem cells used? Or were stem cells DONATED BY A LIVING-TODAY ADULT used?

I ask because the politically-active-Christian community objects to stem cell use/research ONLY when it kills human embryos. They have NO objection (as far as I know) with use/research of adult stem cells, since this is done without killing or harming the adult donors of human stem cells. Certain people like to misrepresent the entire issue.

Man with HIV and leukemia cured with stem cells.

Wow! And in Germany, no less!

But, will it "take"?

A spray gun for engineered skin cells for burn victims.

Although doctors have long been able to create grafts of skin for burn victims, the skin takes weeks to grow, and is very fragile. This gun for skin cells that are grown from the victim's healthy skin, solves both of those problems.

Warning: There are some fairly graphic shots of burns. For me, they were disturbing, though not unwatchable, and if you can be patient enough to get past them, seeing the video to the end is very rewarding, IMO.

Looks very promising.

I'd have to research to verify these conclusions, but reading between the lines on the video, this technique appears to be for second degree burns, where the upper layers of skin are killed by the heat and blister, sloughing off later, but there is some living skin underneath for the skin stem cells to attach to.

In third degree burns, where the skin has literally burned and turned to ashes, I suspect you will still need traditional grafts. Though I would wonder if using this technique on the graft as you grow it, and then again when you attach it, might not speed healing and reduce scarring.

Of course, some people will hear the phrase "stem cells" and get into a panic. These are not embryonic stem cells. No babies have been killed so that the fireman could have his arm back. They are skin cells from the patient himself. They are stem cells in that they have not yet differentiated into which layer of skin they belong to, and so they can adapt to any and all of the missing layers.

Researchers have grown a working human liver from stem cells.

Published in this week's Nature, the researchers write, "To our knowledge, this is the first report demonstrating the generation of a functional human organ from pluripotent stem cells."