University of California, San Francisco, pediatric surgeons treated a fetus diagnosed with a lethal form of thalassemia, alpha thalassemia major, with stem cells from her mother's bone marrow. Born in February, the baby was the first patient enrolled in the world's first clinical trial using stems cell prior to birth. Every fetus has the perfect donor: mom. Although it is too early to say how effective the...
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Using a new bioengineering process they developed and call “self-condensation,” researchers in the US and Japan are moving medical science closer to one day growing human organ tissues from tissue-engineered cells for regenerative medicine. The scientists tissue-engineered human pancreatic islets that develop a circulatory system, secrete hormones like insulin, and successfully treat sudden-onset type 1 diabetes in transplanted mice. Annually, there are 79,000 new diagnoses of type...
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