The microscopic hair cells found in the inner ear are so sensitive to vibration they can relay to the brain whether the air movement around them is from guitar licks by Eric Clapton or a piano chord from a Chopin Palinais, but too many loud Metallica concerts can damage them leading to hearing loss. Now, … Continue reading Hairs in a Dish Give Hope to Damaged Ears

By Geoff Lomax The NIH has accepted three new human embryonic stem cell lines, created by CIRM grantee Amander Clark at UCLA. According to the UCLA press release:“The addition of the three human embryonic stem cells lines to the registry brings the total number of lines available for federal funding to 64, NIH officials said. … Continue reading NIH accepts new human embryonic stem cell lines

In his blog, CIRM grantee Paul Knoepfler at UC Davis posted a response to the journal Stem Cells, which had published a list of the most pressing questions about iPS cells:“What I found most striking is that not one of their 10 questions had anything to do with safety or tumorigenicity, the question I rank … Continue reading Questions About iPS Cells

At the intersection of stem cell research and the world of Harry Potter you'll find new work by CIRM grantees at Stanford University School of Medicine that can speed the rate of bone healing by three times. It's not quite Skele-gro, but it's close, at least in mice.The research is based on a protein called … Continue reading Protein Aids Bone Healing

Stem cells in fat hold intrigue for scientists because most of us have excess to spare, and the cells seem to be quite versatile. Now a team at Stanford has found a way to transform them into induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells without using potentially dangerous viruses to carry the reprogramming genes into the cells.This … Continue reading Virus-free Technique Yields Pluripotent Stem Cells

Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells have created excitement and head scratching ever since they were first created a little over two years ago. The excitement arises from their creation through reprogramming adult cells by manipulating their gene function, which does not require a human embryo and could potentially give a patient personalized replacement cells. But … Continue reading Visual Function Rescued in Rats Using Cells derived from iPS Cells

A group at the University of California, Los Angeles AIDS Institute has manipulated human blood-forming stem cells to fight HIV infected cells. The technique could conceivably be used to help the body fight any number of viral infections, the authors say.The researchers started with blood-forming stem cells normally found in the bone marrow. These cells … Continue reading Engineered human stem cells destroy HIV infected cells

The 400th paper published with CIRM funding also marks the five-year anniversary of the first CIRM board meeting (the actual date was December 17, 2004). The paper, by researchers at the Gladstone Institute and the University of California, San Francisco, illustrates how far the field has come in the five years since the organization’s inception, … Continue reading 400th CIRM-funded paper clarifies link between gene variant and Alzheimer’s