Nice visual conceptualization of the pluripotency of stem cells.

See http://atomsound.blogspot.com for all links! Presenting... the National Institute of Health to explain to you where stem cells come from! (http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/faqs.asp) Where do stem cells come from? Pluripotent stem cells are isolated from human embryos that are a few days old. Cells from these embryos can be used to create pluripotent stem cell "lines" —cell cultures that can be grown indefinitely in the laboratory. Pluripotent stem cell lines have also been developed from fetal tissue obtained from fetal tissue (older than 8 weeks of development). Stem Cell Research is on the move (thanks to non-murderous practices such as harvesting useable, proven stem cells from umbilical cord blood and placental tissue)! However, there is a very "dark side" to that industry. Read "fetal farming" - . ...if you care about the rights of defenseless human beings. These prominent scientists, medical doctors and lawyers say VOTE NO - it's cloning! If only Michael J. Fox would listen to James Kelly! Himself a paralytic from a car accident, James Kelly, director of Cures1st Foundation, weighs in heavily AGAINST amending the constitution for tax-grabbing big businesses who want to DELAY PROMISING RESEARCH in lieu of getting paid to disect 2-day old fetuses. Vote NO MO CLONING! (vlog87) (17 megs, 4.5 minutes)

Good afternoon, my name is Elise Prudhomme. We are here in Casteddu / Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia. Casteddu/Cagliari is situated halfway between Africa and Europe. Here, in the 18th century University Library, Bernd Sebastian Kamps will shortly announce the winners of this year's Amedeo Prize. More than 1600 subscribers to the Amedeo Literature Service participated in the selection process. Patricia Bourcillier who co-sponsored the Amedeo Prize with 5,000 Euro. Ester Gessa, the director of the University Library. (...) Bernd Sebastian Kamps will be here within moments. For those of you who are not familiar with the Amedeo Prize, let me briefly explain the selection procedure. In December and January, 1453 articles were nominated for the Amedeo Prize. All articles published in 2007 and listed in PubMed were elegible for nomination. In February and March, during the first voting round, 156 articles were selected for the second voting round in April which in turn selected 21 articles for the final voting round in June. For each voting round, voters had three votes for three articles, worth four points, two points and one point. (...) I now present you Dr. Kamps, founder and president of Amedeo... (...) Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon, I am pleased to share with you the results of the Amedeo Prize 2008. The Prize is for the first authors of the three most popular medical articles published in 2007. Awarding the Prize to first rather than last authors was a deliberate choice aimed at motivating young researchers and clinicians. The voters of the Amedeo Medical Literature Service have awarded the 2008 Amedeo Prize to the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium, United Kingdom, for its article "Genome-wide association study of 14,000 cases of seven common diseases and 3,000 shared controls". The paper was published in Nature. The 2nd winner is Jennifer Baker from the Institute of Preventive Medicine, Center for Health and Society, Copenhagen, Denmark. Her article "Childhood body-mass index and the risk of coronary heart disease in adulthood" was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The 3rd winner is Kazutoshi Takahashi from the Department of Stem Cell Biology, Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences, Kyoto University, Japan. His article "Induction of Pluripotent Stem Cells from Adult Human Fibroblasts by Defined Factors" was published in Cell. Let me express my gratitude to 1665 colleagues from all over the world who participated in the poll. Without their expertise the Prize could not have been awarded. They are the hidden stars of the Amedeo Prize. Thank you. (...) Habemus Papam. The medical article of the Year 2007 is the "Genome-wide association study of 14,000 cases of seven common diseases and 3,000 shared controls" by the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium. According to the Rules of the Amedeo Prize, the prize money will be divided among the three winners as follows: 12,000 Euro to the Consortium, 5,000 Euro to Dr. Baker and 5,000 Euro to Dr. Takahashi. With these last images from Casteddu I say goodbye to you. We will meet here again next year for the Amedeo Prize 2009. The nomination phase is scheduled to open in October. Elise Prudhomme, the Amedeo Medical Literature Service. Reporting live from Casteddu.

Read what the NIH said: "Human embryonic stem cells are thought to have much greater developmental potential than adult stem cells. This means that embryonic stem cells may be pluripotent—that is, able to give rise to cells found in all tissues of the embryo except for germ cells rather than being merely multipotent—restricted to specific subpopulations of cell types, as adult stem cells are thought to be."

From Boston - The use of Induced Pluripotent Stem cells, a technique using differentiated skin cells as a source of stem cells, has been used to treat sickle cells disease. The technique, hailed as a significant breakthrough only weeks ago, was used to treat mice with sickle cell anemia. In mice with the disease, a type of blood disorder that is seen in 10% of African-Americans, normal red cells were produced following the procedure. From Maryland - The FDA is warning that seizures may be a side effect of the bedwetting drug desmopressin. The medicine, commonly marketed as DDAVP, lowers the amount of water that is excreted in the urine. However, it can also cause dangerously low levels of sodium in the body. The medicine has been linked to 61 cases of seizures and should no longer be used to treat bedwetting in children. And finally, from Toronto - YouTube may contain biased and medically inaccurate information. Over half of videos tagged with the words "immunization" and "vaccination" portrayed routine childhood HPV and flu vaccines in a negative manner. In addition, the videos frequently undermined recommended vaccination guidelines. For Insidermedicine in 60, I'm Dr. Petra Joller.

How some 'outside the box' thinkers made embryonic-like stem cells by changing the DNA! And cloning Joanne sounds like fun.

Part 2 of 2...Watch Dr. Fred Ferrari explain the benefits and clear misconceptions about stem cell research. Dr. Ferrari of New Jersey founded WWW.STEMCELLINFO.ORG to better communicate with his audience.

Scientists at Linden Labs in San Francisco, California have successfully created a human-bear-pig chimera, in other words a manbearpig. Somatic cells from human and bear tissue were first transfected with a bacterial chromosome containing the Nanog gene and a GFP-IRES-puromycin resistance gene cassette. After a puromyocin screen was performed, the remaining cells were treated with a retroviral induction of Oct3/4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-myc, thus creating induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS). Induced pluripotent stem cells were used because of the ethical concern surrounding embryonic stem cells. The cells were then injected into pig blastocysts and introduced into the uteri of pseudo-pregnant pigs. The discovery was published today in the advance online edition of Nature Gold.

CBS report followed by (not their) update & comments from leaders in embryonic stem cell research.

Nuclear Transfer is a form of cloning. The steps involve removing the DNA from an oocyte and while(unfertilized egg), and injecting the nucleus which contains the DNA to be cloned. In rare instances, the newly constructed cell will divide normally, replicating the new DNA while remaining in a pluripotent state. If the cloned cells are placed in the uterus of a female mammal, a cloned organism develops to term in rare instances. This is how Dolly the Sheep and many other species were cloned. Alternatively, if cells are extracted from the cloned cells during very early embryonic stages (blastocyst or morula), embryonic stem cells can be created. These cells can be grown in laboratories indefinitely and can theoretically be made into any of the 200+ cell types in the mammalian body, and thus are an extraordinary tool for biologists as well as a therapeutic agent with the potential to treat currently untreatable medical conditions.

This is the commercial they should make. It is only one idea in a series for Hot Rod Hybrids I've envisioned. I started Pluripotent Productions as an outlet for ideas. What you see here is a crude mock up of what an actual commercial would look like (the real one would have attractive actors/actresses and video of course). The song is off of a Disney CD. Honda are you listening?

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Watch Dr. Fred Ferrari explain the benefits and clear misconceptions about stem cell research. Dr. Ferrari of New Jersey founded WWW.STEMCELLINFO.ORG to better communicate with his audience.

This is the commercial they should make. I started Pluripotent Productions as an outlet for my ideas. This is a crude mock up of what the commercial would look like. This is one of just many ideas I had for it. The song is from a Disney CD. Toyota are you listening?

A crude mock up of what the commercial would look like. The real one having attractive young actors of course. Honda are you listening?

Royan Institute for Reproductive Biomedicine, Stem Cell Biology and Technology is a leading Iranian biomedical research center involved in stem cell technology and regenerative medicine. The institute was established in 1991. Its first director was Professor Saeid Kazemi Ashtiani. Since its establishment, the institute have had close collaborations with other leading Iranian research centers as Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics (IBB), NRCGEB, Bone Marrow Transplantation Center at Shariati hospital in Tehran. The Department of Stem Cells was established in 2002 to establish embryonic stem cell lines and to differentiate them to some different kinds of cells including: Cardiomyocytes, Beta Cells, and Neural Cells. Royan is a leading stem cell research center in Asia and middle east. Iran has some of the most liberal laws on stem cell research. Royan scientists have claimed to have successfully cloned a sheep and that the sheep is still alive. Foreign observers have been invited to verify the claim. [1] Scientists working at the Royan Institute have increased their output of publications (national and international) from two (in 1996) to 67 (in 2005).[2] However the number of international publications by Royan scientists is still too low compared to world-class institutions. For instance the number of international papers published till 2007 in the area of stem cell, is only 27 including the papers published in Yakhteh Journal, the institute's own journal. The impact factor of Yakhteh Journal has been estimated to be 0.208.[3] Cell published by Elsevier has an impact factor of 29.431. Yakhteh is a persian word and means "cell". United States is by far the worlds leader in the total number of stem cell articles published, alone accounting for 42% of all stem cell articles published world-wide between 2000 and 2004. That is four times the articles published by the second leading nation, Germany, which accounted for 10.2 % of all stem articles published worldwide. Germany, by the way, has the most restrictive policies governing hESCR in all Europe, and led other European nations in the number of articles published. A recent evaluation indicates that Israel is the first country in tems of number of stem cell articles published in scientific journals on a per capita basis. [4] Israel has since 1998 published articles on hESC research in peer-reviewed journals, with 42 publications, compared to 128 by scientists in the US, 30 in the UK, 27 in Korea, 16 in China, 15 in Singapore, 13 each in Australia and Sweden, nine in Canada, five in Japan, four in the Netherlands, three each in Germany and Belgium, two each in Denmark and Finland and one each in the Czech Republic, Iran, Spain, Romania, Switzerland and Turkey. All the remaining countries produced no published hESC research at all.[5] Royan Institute is the main stem cell research institute behind Iran's fast progress in this research field. In 2008, the institute declared that it succeeded in cloning its first ewe [6]. Iran also has become the first country in the Middle East and the fifth in the world to produce human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells(iPSC) wikipedia's link for above information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royan_Institute

It's now legal and tax-supported in the state of MO to grow humans, matrix-style, for medical research. It makes me sick. It's the worst thing that ever happened to Missouri. I wish the ballot didn't lie to us so boldly. Life begins at conception. Period.

read what the NIH said: "Human embryonic stem cells are thought to have much greater developmental potential than adult stem cells. This means that embryonic stem cells may be pluripotent—that is, able to give rise to cells found in all tissues of the embryo except for germ cells rather than being merely multipotent—restricted to specific subpopulations of cell types, as adult stem cells are thought to be." - I'd rather get medical advice from health professionals, not politicians!

The annual consortium meeting in pictures