Gene therapy and stem cells unite
By James Gallagher,
BBC News
| 10. 13. 2011
Two of the holy grails of medicine - stem cell technology and precision gene therapy - have been united for the first time in humans, say scientists.
It means patients with a genetic disease could, one day, be treated with their own cells.
A study in Nature corrected a mutation in stem cells made from a patient with a liver disease.
Researchers said this was a "critical step" towards devising treatments, but safety tests were still needed.
At the moment, stem cells created from a patient with a genetic illness cannot be used to cure the disease as those cells would also contain the corrupted genetic code.
Scientists, at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge, were working on cirrhotic liver disease.
It is caused by a change to a single pair of letters, out of the six billion which make up the genetic code.
As a result, a protein which protects the body from damage, antitrypsin, cannot escape from the liver where it is made.
The illness is one of the most common genetic diseases, affecting...
Related Articles
By Carl Zimmer, The New York Times | 06.04.2026
Scientists at Columbia University have edited the DNA of early human embryos with unprecedented accuracy, an achievement that could open the way to babies engineered with particular characteristics.
The prospect has fueled controversy for years. On the one hand, the...
By Alexandre Piquard, Le Monde [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 05.22.2026
"If proven to be safe, we believe preventive gene editing could be one of the most important health technologies of the century." This is how Lucas Harrington explained the goal of his company Preventive: to create genetically modified babies. Trying...
Faster, Higher, Stronger was the Olympic motto from 1874 until 2001, when “ – Together” was added, to stress the “moral and educational perspective” of the Games. The folks who paid for or participated in the Enhanced Games – the name itself a nod to the Olympics – held in Las Vegas on Sunday, May 24, apparently use a different edit:
Faster, Higher, Stronger with Chemistry
High-level sport draws huge crowds. Coming very soon, the soccer World Cup, featuring...
By Jenny Kleeman, The Guardian | 05.30.2026
On a Friday evening in late April, Cathy Tie, the Canadian serial entrepreneur and self-styled “Biotech Barbie”, is centre stage at New York City’s famous Carnegie Hall, performing Saint-Saens’ Piano Concerto No 2 on a gleaming Steinway grand piano, accompanied...
