In Search For Cures, Scientists Create Embryos That Are Both Animal And Human

NPR Rob Stein All Things Considered May 18th, 2016

A handful of scientists around the United States are trying to do something that some people find disturbing: make embryos that are part human, part animal.

The researchers hope these embryos, known as chimeras, could eventually help save the lives of people with a wide range of diseases.

One way would be to use chimera embryos to create better animal models to study how human diseases …

Scientists are Conducting Experiments on Living Unborn Human Beings and Bragging About It

LifeSite News  BIOETHICS  Wesely Smith May 6, 2016

During the great embryonic stem cell research debate, promoters of an unlimited license to experiment promised that using nascent human life as research subjects would be limited to the first 14 days.

Until then, we were told, human embryos aren’t really human, just a “ball of cells”–pure junk biology. Well, if one wants to become truly reductionist, so are all of us.

During that era, I and …

Welcome to the CRISPR Zoo!

Nature  Sara Reardon 3/09/2016

Timothy Doran’s 11-year-old daughter is allergic to eggs. And like about 2% of children worldwide who share the condition, she is unable to receive many routine vaccinations because they are produced using chicken eggs.

Doran, a molecular biologist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Geelong, Australia, thinks that he could solve this problem using the powerful gene-editing tool CRISPR–Cas9. Most egg allergies are caused by one of …

CRISPR: The New Tool in the Gene Editing Revolution Explained

ABC Science By Bernie Hobbs Updated 11 Apr 2016, 11:03pm

A powerful new gene-editing technology called CRISPR has enormous potential to treat human diseases but the ability to tinker with genes can also be controversial. Here we explain what CRISPR is and how it works.

Since gene technology first emerged over 40 years ago we’ve seen a wealth of genetic advances — not least of all the decoding of the human genome in 2001.

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Ethicists Approve ‘3 Parent’ Embryos to Stop Diseases, but Congressional Ban Remains

The Washington Post Feb 3, 2016  by Joel Achenbach

An elite panel of scientists and bioethicists offered guarded approval Wednesday of a novel form of genetic engineering that could prevent congenital diseases but would result in babies with genetic material from three parents.

The committee, which was convened last year at the request of the Food and Drug Administration, concluded that it is ethically permissible to “go forward, but with caution” with mitochondrial replacement techniques …

Insulin-producing pancreatic cells created from human skin cells New cells prevented the onset of diabetes in an animal model of the disease

Science Daily   Jan 6, 2016   Gladstone Institute

Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have successfully converted human skin cells into fully-functional pancreatic cells. The new cells produced insulin in response to changes in glucose levels, and, when transplanted into mice, the cells protected the animals from developing diabetes in a mouse model of the disease.

Functioning human pancreatic cells after they’ve been transplanted into a mouse are shown. …

Sylvester Stem-Cell Patients Celebrate Their Transformed Lives

Miami Herald  Jan 14, 2016  By Glenn Garvin

Keith Oliver, patient 500 to receive a stem-cell transplant for Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the University of Miami’s Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. Oliver was one of many patients celebrating their new lives Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016, at a reunion of stem-cell transplant patients. PEDRO PORTAL pportal@elnuevoherald.com

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MS Patient Became First Scot To Successfully Have Radical Stem Cell Treatment Hailed by Medical Experts

Daily Record  Jan 25, 2016  By David Taylor

Multiple  sclerosis patient Lucy Clarke is the first Scot to successfully have the radical stem cell treatment that’s being hailed as “miraculous” by experts. Medics are now hopeful that it could eradicate the degenerative neurological condition.

Lucy, from Inverness, had to raise £40,000 for treatment in Moscow as she didn’t qualify for a trial in the UK. But now she’s able to live a more pain-free life …

Sheffield Medics Help Paralysed Patients Walk Again

The Star  Jan 19, 2016

Paralysed multiple sclerosis sufferers are walking again thanks to life-changing treatment in Sheffield.

A trial at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital has seen 20 patients receive bone marrow transplants using their own stem cells in a bid to ‘re-boot’ their immune systems, which has helped some people walk again.

The trial is also being run in the US, Sweden and Brazil.

Professor Basil Sharrack, from the Royal Hallamshire Hospital, said: “To …

International Gene Editing Conference Declines to Ban Eventual Use in Humans

LA Times Dec 3, 2015  Melissa Healy

An international conference on gene editing on Thursday left the door open to future use, in humans, of new techniques that alter an organism’s genetic architecture in ways that carry forward to future generations.

With questions of safety, need and ethics still unanswered, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine; the United Kingdom’s Royal Society; and the Chinese Academy of Science agreed that “it would be …