Stem-Cell Gamble
From: Technology Review - July / August 2011
By: Antonio Regalado

After years of controversy, a therapy based on human embryonic stem cells is
finally being tested in humans. The treatment holds out hope to paralyzed
people, but at how great a risk? 

Geron has so far treated two patients: a 21-year-old nursing-school student
named T.J. Atchison, who was paralyzed at the chest in a car crash last
September, and a second person who has not been publicly identified. The hope
is that cells injected into their spinal cords could help mend damaged nerves
and restore at least a degree of mobility and sensation. Even if the
treatment fails, many researchers believe the test is a critical step toward
a time when bodies are healed and regenerated with living cells, not chemical
drugs. "Cell therapy is now here to stay," says Wise Young, a professor at
Rutgers University and an expert on spinal-cord injury. "I tell my students
that this will be the future—that they will be the first generation of
doctors to use cell therapy."  

Read the entire article at:
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/37787/

Listen to the entire article at:
http://www.audiodizer.com/technologyreview/biomedicine/37787.mp3

Links:
UCI behind world's first embryonic stem cell study in humans
http://www.uci.edu/features/2009/01/feature_geron_090123.php

Hans Keirstead
http://www.anatomy.uci.edu/keirstead.html

Geron
http://www.geron.com/