Towards Controlled Differentiation
A press release at Newswise details an important advance towards controlled differentiation of embryonic stem cells: "The Johns Hopkins Medical Institution laboratory of John Gearhart has taken another small step on the road toward replenishing damaged cardiac tissue with pre-cursor cardiac cells grown from human embryonic stem cells (ES cells). Gearhart and his colleague, Nicolas Christoforou, here reveal preliminary data demonstrating what they say is a highly reproducible system for deriving cardiac progenitor cells from ES cells through controlled differentiation." Scientists are much further down the path of controlling stem cells than even a year ago - and this is the key to developing regenerative therapies capable of fixing age-related damage to our organs and tissues.