Speaking before major donors to the Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital Foundation, Dr. Tom Lane showed a film of partially paralyzed rats walking eight days after they were injected with antibodies made from stem cells. Lane and fellow researcher Hans Keirstead found that the injections halted the spread of an MS-like disease or a spinal injury by allowing the central nervous system to heal itself.

NOW THAT A STATE JUDGE HAS RULED in no uncertain terms that California's stem cell institute, approved overwhelmingly in the 2004 election, is perfectly legal, voters might expect that the scientific research will finally begin. They would be mistaken.

CALGARY, Alberta -- Stem Cell Therapeutics said Tuesday the Food and Drug Administration has OK'd its phase 2a trial protocol for its stroke drug. The goal of the phase 2a trial, which will be conducted at the University of California at Irvine, is to examine whether its drug NTx-265 is safe.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich awarded $10 million in state grants Monday to encourage stem-cell research and said he will look for ways to continue funding even if lawmakers refuse to support it. The Democratic governor, who was criticized by Republicans for slipping the $10 million unnoticed into this year's state budget, wouldn't say how he might get around opponents again.

Hayward, Ca. -- A state judge ruled California's $3 billion embryonic stem cell research program constitutional on Friday (April 21), rejecting claims that the publicly funded initiative is illegal.

UC Irvine has received about one-third of the $2 million it was promised from the state this past September to train students in the basic biology of human embryonic stem cells, an area of research that's scheduled for significant expansion.

Biologists Hans Keirstead and Peter Donovan will explain, in layman's terms, the basic nature and long term goals of embryonic stem-cell research. Then they will take questions from the public. I will serve as moderator and will make sure you get a chance to talk - as long as your question is civil.

Israel's prominence in stem cell research has been confirmed by a German study, conducted by the Central Library of the Research Center Julich, which shows that it is the leading publisher of stem cell research per capita in the world.

Concerned that the world's patchwork of laws and ethics rules governing human embryonic stem cell research is sowing confusion and stymieing international collaborations, scientists, ethicists and others have mounted a major effort to devise a set of universal principles that would guide the research everywhere.

A drug that appears to block the progression of Alzheimer's disease has been identified by scientists. In tests on mice, the drug, AF267B, reversed the symptoms of memory loss and problems with learning associated with Alzheimer's. Further analysis showed it also reduced levels of protein clumps and tangles often found in Alzheimer's patients. The study, by the University of California, Irvine, is published in the journal Neuron.

If paralyzed people are ever going to walk again, it might be because of the scientist in this story. His name is Dr. Hans Keirstead and he has made great strides using human embryonic stem cells. He is among the best and the brightest in his field — a field that shows enormous promise, but has been restricted by a ban on federal funding for research because it involves the destruction of human embryos.

Human embryonic stem (hES) cells offer great hope for the treatment of some devastating diseases, but finding a way to keep enough of these cells usable and healthy for transplantation in patients has been an ongoing problem. Now, scientists at UC Irvine have discovered a way to keep large quantities of these cells alive, a finding that could potentially lead to mass production of hES cells for therapeutic use at lower cost.

UC Irvine has recruited a "rising star" in embryonic stem-cell research as part of a long-term plan to become a mecca for the cloning, creation and study of young cells that hold promise for the treatment of disease and spinal cord injuries.

One of the members of the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee and a leading international researcher in limb regeneration is Susan Bryant, who is both a professor of developmental and cell biology and dean of the UC Irvine School of Biological Sciences. She also -- contrary to the recently expressed views of the president of Harvard -- believes strongly in the full participation of women in science and has worked diligently to bring that about.

Rather than transplanting whole organs, researchers sometimes transplant cells. One of those scientists is Dr. Hans Keirstead of the Reeve-Irvine Research Center at the University of California, Irvine. Keirstead and his team developed a method to differentiate human embryonic stem cells into a type of nerve cell called oligodendrocytes.

UC Irvine neurobiologist Hans Keirstead, who uses human embryonic stem cells in studies devoted to finding treatments for spinal cord injuries, is about to greatly expand his work. Keirstead will soon receive newly created stem cells from Harvard researcher Doug Melton, who used private financing to produce 17 lines of cells for himself and scientists around the world.

Anne L. Calof in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology and her colleagues have identified how a protein called GDF11 controls a key component of retinal-cell differentiation during development, which makes GDDF11 an attractive therapeutic target. "By manipulating the ability of this protein to control cell development, there is the potential for therapeutics to harness the power of the stem cells that already exist in the retina to replace any retinal cells that have been lost or injured," Calof said. "If so, we thereby may be able to cure visual disorders that result from loss of certain retinal cell types." In discovering a protein that helps organize the development of the retina, UC Irvine researchers have found a new molecular mechanism that may allow for stem cell-based therapies to treat eye disorders such as retinal degeneration.

Associate Professor Qun-Yong Zhou and graduate student Kwan L. Ng in the [UC Irvine] Department of Pharmacology have identified a protein that guides these new neurons to a particular brain region. The protein, a small peptide called prokineticin 2 (PK2), was found to play a key regulatory role for the proper functional integration of these new neurons in the brain. A few years ago, PK2 was shown by the same research group to be an important regulator of circadian rhythms.

The 29-member committee met Tuesday at UC Irvine to discuss how the research can continue with private funding until the lawsuits are resolved and the bond money is released.

ICOC will not identify those scientists whose grant proposals were not funded, for fear that public disclosure might humiliate junior researchers. These scientists may choose to abandon such research "if they get a public black eye," warned Susan V. Bryant, dean of the School of Biological Sciences at the University of California , Irvine . The governing board of the fledgling California stem cell research institute postponed a vote Tuesday on tougher conflict-of-interest rules for its members, despite pressure from the Legislature, which is seeking more public oversight of the $3 billion research institution.

"Animals that received OPCs 7 days after injury exhibited enhanced remyelination and substantially improved locomotor ability. In contrast, when OPCs were transplanted 10 months after injury, there was no enhanced remyelination or locomotor recovery," wrote H.S. Keirstead and colleagues at the University of California , Irvine . Embryonic stem cell-derived oligodendrocyte progenitor cell transplantation remyelinates and restores locomotion after spinal cord injury.

Anne L. Calof, Associate Professor in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology and her UCI colleagues have identified how a protein called GDF11 controls a key component of retinal-cell differentiation during development, which makes GDDF11 an attractive therapeutic target. In discovering a protein that helps organize the development of the retina, UC Irvine researchers have found a new molecular mechanism that may allow for stem cell-based therapies to treat eye disorders such as retinal degeneration.

But if there was a brain drain of stem cell investigators from the U.S. , the attraction of a $3 billion honeypot in California seems to be reversing the flow. "A number of leading scientists in our field have been interviewing in California for lead positions," says Melissa Carpenter, an American pioneer in the field who jumped two years ago to the Robarts Research Institute in Ontario , Canada . "UC Irvine is recruiting aggressively", Carpenter reports, "and so is Stanford." Carpenter herself just decided to return to the U.S. to head up stem cell research at CyThera, a startup in San Diego . The passage of Proposition 71 was not the only reason for her return, she says, but it was an important factor.

Qun-Yong Zhou, an associate professor at University of California , Irvine , and his graduate student Kwan L. Ng identified a protein that guides these new neurons to a particular brain region. (Originally published by Xinhua).

In discovering a protein that helps organize the development of the retina, UC Irvine researchers have found a new molecular mechanism that may allow for stem cell-based therapies to treat eye disorders such as retinal degeneration. Anne L. Calof in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology and her UCI colleagues have identified how a protein called GDF11 controls a key component of retinal-cell differentiation during development, which makes GDDF11 an attractive therapeutic target. Rather than removing adult stem cells and reintroducing cultured ones into the eye, Calof said, a drug therapy based on the GDF11 protein may be able to harness the power of these endogenous stem cells by directing the differentiation of these cells into specific retinal cell types.

In devoting their careers to stem-cell research and to developing therapies without the help of federal funds, scientists are not devaluing life but are recognizing the value of existing human lives and the potential of embryonic stem cells to transform the way that we treat not only battlefield injuries, but a host of other medical problems and genetic diseases as well. Unfortunately, unless the administration comes to its senses, those treatments may never be available to the maimed veterans in VA hospitals.