Stem Cell Lines Derived to Avoid Immune Rejection

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday December 20, 2007 @08:55PM from the making-miniscule-medical-marvels dept.

stemceller brings us a story about an experiment that was published online in the journal Cloning & Stem Cells. The paper demonstrated that embryonic stem cells can be used to develop therapeutic cells which will not provoke an immune response from a significant portion of the population. This comes alongside news that UC Irvine researchers have found a method of sorting stem cells that should be "quicker, easier and more cost-effective than current methods." The Cloning & Stem Cells publication states: "It is likely that treatment of large numbers of patients by cell therapy will only be possible if methods are found using any one cell line to treat very large numbers of patients. This very exciting paper represents a significant step forward towards the use of such cells in cell therapy."

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The most important thing ... by snoggeramus · 2007-12-21 00:23 · Score: 5, Interesting

... to remember when it comes to stem cells is that all the medical successes to date are from adult stem cells (from bone marrow etc) and not embryonic sources. Despite the spin presented to the media and politicians, there have been NO medical breakthroughs with embyonic stem cells.

Adult stem cells for treatment can be harvested in a timely manner from your own body and hence negate the issue of possible rejection. (And nobodys kid cops it, either!)