geekosystem

While there's maybe no medical technology today with more potential, stem cell treatments are not without their own problems. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) -- those created in a laboratory after being devolved from other adult cells -- are getting easier to make every day, but are still expensive to manufacture and run the risk of causing health problems of their own, possibly even becoming cancerous. Embryonic stem cells (ESCs), meanwhile, have been shown to be effective and largely safe for patients, but their use in medicine remains controversial. A team of researchers working at the Salk Institute and the University of California San Diego has taken a step toward understanding what makes both sorts of cells tick, though. They've discovered a unique molecular signature that indicates when a stem cell has been created in a lab rather than harvested from an unimplanted embryo.

Ready for a story in which the part about stem cell research is the least complicated thing happening? The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia today upheld a lower court's decision to toss out a lawsuit that would have prevented the federal government from funding research on embryonic stem cells. The long and the short of that? Federal research dollars from the National Institutes of Health can fund research on embyronic stell cells.

Adding to the ever growing list of what stem cells can do, researchers as Kyoto University in Japan have created fully functional sperm from mouse embryonic stem cells, that resulted in the birth of viable offspring. Researchers used the sperm they created to fertilize mouse eggs in the laboratory, that were then implanted as embryos into surrogate mothers. This is the first time an animal has been born from sperm that was made from stem cells. For years, scientists have been trying to make viable sperm and eggs cells from embryonic stem cells because it could be a ground breaking treatment for infertility. However, until now all attempts at making sperm from embryonic stem cells had failed to result in offspring. Since 2009, the team from Kyoto University has been working on this problem, and devised a special method for making the cells viable.