Stem cells fuel bitter ethical divisions

Stem cells fuel bitter ethical divisions

Imagine you have spent many years trying to develop new techniques that could one day cure cardiac disease, cancer or Parkinson's disease, you finally arrive at the point where it appears logical to move up from mice to human cell cultures, only to find yourself accused of 'cannibalism' by an archbishop preaching one of the year's most important masses at Cologne cathedral. Unbelievable? It hap...

Hematopoietic Stem Cells Count and Remember Self-Renewal Divisions

The ability of cells to count and remember their divisions could underlie many alterations that occur during development, aging, and disease. We tracked the cumulative divisional history of slow-cycling hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) throughout adult life. This revealed a fraction of rarely dividing HSCs that contained all the long-term HSC (LT-HSC) activity within the aging HSC compartment. D...

Molecular mechanisms of asymmetric divisions in mammary stem cells.

Stem cells have the remarkable ability to undergo proliferative symmetric divisions and self-renewing asymmetric divisions. Balancing of the two modes of division sustains tissue morphogenesis and homeostasis. Asymmetric divisions of Drosophila neuroblasts (NBs) and sensory organ precursor (SOP) cells served as prototypes to learn what we consider now principles of asymmetric mitoses. They also...

Investigating the Ethical Challenges of Researches and Treatments Using Stem Cells

Background Nowadays using the stem cells has opened a new horizon in the medical science and is indeed a practical and non-invasive method for treating refractory diseases such as Leukemias , lymphomas, blood disorders and so on. Nonetheless, proper and sustainable uses of such powerful cells undoubtedly need to be as per certain ethical principles. of the existing challenges in using stem cel...

Stem cells: the ethical problems of using embryos for research.