Scientists from Canada and the UK have found a new way to create stem cells without using viruses to introduce genetic material into the nuclei to make the cells pluripotent, instead they insert four genes that reprogram the cells then remove them later.

A newly published medical article by researchers in Israel describes the case of a boy who developed tumors in his brain and spine four years after receiving fetal stem cell therapy for a rare genetic disease.

Researchers in Texas and throughout America are eagerly waiting to hear that President Barack Obama has lifted restrictions on using human embryonic stem cells in research, an event the US media is expecting to happen later this week.

The US regulators have given the go ahead for a biotech company to carry out the world’s first trial of a treatment using embryonic stem cells, in this case to treat victims of spinal cord injury that leaves them unable to walk. Although heralded as an early sign of new US president Obama’s support for embryonic stem cell research, Dr Thomas Okarma, president and CEO of Geron Corp.