By Tom Watkins, CNN Researchers in Germany are reporting that they may have cured a man of HIV infection. If true, that would represent a scientific advance, but not necessarily a treatment advance, said researchers familiar with the work. In the study, published last week online in the journal Blood, researchers at Charite-University Medicine Berlin treated an HIV-infected man who also had acute myeloid leukemia — a cancer of the immune system — by wiping out his own immune system with high-dose chemotherapy and radiation and giving him a stem-cell transplant. Stem cells are immature...

By Thomas Grillo Genetic scientists at Harvard Medical School said they have partially reversed aging in lab mice — transforming gray-haired, feeble rodents from the mouse equivalent of “an 80-year-old person to a teenager” — an astonishing achievement that may someday make Ponce de Leon’s mythical “Fountain of Youth” a reality for humans. “This study teaches us for the first time that aging can be reversed,” said Ronald DePinho, co-author of the new research paper and a scientist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. The research team produced engineered mice that aged...

Another therapy derived from human embryonic stem cells is headed for clinical trials. Advanced Cell Technology Inc. said Monday that the Food and Drug Administration has cleared the way for its Phase I/II trial of retinal cells for patients with Stargardt’s macular dystrophy, a childhood version of macular degeneration. Get “Favorite Things” philosophy hope in a jar at Beauty.com! Up to 12 patients will be enrolled at several sites across the country, including the Casey Eye Institute in Portland, Ore., the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, and UMDNJ...

In a world first, a British man has had stem cells injected into his brain to repair the damage caused by stroke. Many newspapers reported this clinical trial, which is designed to test the safety of a new therapy for stroke damage. The main purpose of this early experimental trial is to test the safety of a new stem cell therapy for the treatment of ischaemic stroke. The stroke survivor reported in the newspapers is the first to receive the therapy in the trial and, should it pass review in a month’s time, another 11 stroke survivors will be given the treatment. The patients will be followed...

By Clay Dillow Rare earth minerals – those 17 valuable elements with myriad industrial, commercial, and military applications – have been the subject of a lot of hand wringing lately. They’re in short supply (at least in processed form), and with the exception of China no nation in the world can readily mine them from the Earth and process them in large quantities. But an old idea long considered somewhat fantastical is re-emerging as a serious option for harvesting rare-earths from a place not usually associated with mining: the ocean floor. China’s monopoly on the global supply of rare-earth...

By Dave Lee Suicide bombings have become the defining act of political violence of our time. From Afghanistan to Madrid, London to Sri Lanka, they are an all pervasive presence in our political landscape and a crucial tactic employed in modern day terrorism. As the inquest into the 7/7 London bombings tries to piece together the events of that day, little research has ever been done on the minds of suicide bombers themselves. Trying to discover exactly why a suicide bomber would kill themselves to further an apparent cause is, for obvious reasons, an impossible task. Read more…

By Laura Ungar, The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier Journal A year and a half ago, Michael Jones’ failing heart left him so weak he couldn’t even climb stairs. But today, after receiving an infusion of his own cardiac stem cells, the 67-year-old handles stairs with ease, works his southeastern Jefferson County land on his tractor, indulges his love of woodworking and is making plans to start jogging. “I feel really well,” Jones said. “It’s awesome. They’re using the body to actually heal itself.” Jones is one of several area patients suffering with heart...

Scientists predict that soot from commercial space flight will change global temperatures. Climate change caused by black carbon, also known as soot, emitted during a decade of commercial space flight would be comparable to that from current global aviation, researchers estimate. The findings, reported in a paper in press in Geophysical Research Letters1, suggest that emissions from 1,000 private rocket launches a year would persist high in the stratosphere, potentially altering global atmospheric circulation and distributions of ozone. The simulations show that the changes to Earth’s climate...

Direct conversion of cell types could offer safer, simpler treatments than stem cells. Human skin cells can be transformed into blood without first being sent through a primordial, stem-cell-like state, according to a ground-breaking study. The breakthrough, published online today in Nature1, follows work earlier this year showing that fibroblast cells from mouse skin, treated with the right cocktail of chemicals, can be transformed into neurons2 and heart muscle3. However, it is the first study to accomplish this feat with human cells, and the first to create progenitor cells — in this case...

New synthetic surface helps maintain pluripotence Human pluripotent stem cells, which can differentiate into any other kind of body cell, hold great potential to treat a wide range of ailments, including Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis. However, scientists who work with such cells have had trouble growing large enough quantities to perform experiments. And should a promising treatment be developed, researchers would have concerns about testing it, because most materials now used to support the growth of human stem cells include cells or proteins derived from mouse embryos. These...