(Reuters) – A pioneering clinical trial to inject stem cells into the brains of patients disabled by stroke has been cleared to progress to the next stage after the treatment raised no safety concerns in the first three candidates. ReNeuron Group PLC, the British biotech behind the trial, said the independent Data Safety Monitoring Board had reviewed safety data from its ReN001 stem cell therapy and recommended the trial advance to the higher dose. “Data from the laboratory safety tests, neurological examinations and neurofunctional tests conducted thus far indicate that the ReN001...

Permits funding of research using human embryos The Obama administration can continue to fund research that uses human embryonic stem cells, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday, ending months of uncertainty for scientists. The ruling from the US Court of Appeals in Washington reverses a lower court’s injunction that had halted new federal funding for several weeks last year. “I am pretty excited about it,’’ said Dr. Leonard Zon, director of the stem cell program at Children’s Hospital Boston. Read more…

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...

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 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...

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...

By Daily Mail Reporter A blind British pensioner who flew to China for pioneering treatment has got her eyesight back – and has arrived home to see her great grandson for the first time. Dorothy Leach, 76 from Hardwicke, can make out faces, shapes and colours for the first time in more than a year after receiving stem-cell treatment in China. She raised £16,000 in fundraising for the operation and travelled to China in September. ‘When I got back to Heathrow Airport last Wednesday I could see such a lot. It was unbelievable,’ said Dorothy. ‘The other day I saw a crow on...

Skin cells can be easily converted, report says By Valerie Richardson A major breakthrough in stem cell development could help resolve the ongoing debate over the use of embryonic stem cells in medical research. A team of scientists led by Derrick J. Rossi of the Immune Disease Institute at Children’s Hospital Boston published a paper Thursday showing that they can quickly and efficiently transform skin cells into cells with all the properties of embryonic stem cells. Douglas Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, called the report, published in the journal Cell Stem Cell,...