Next-Generation Stem Cells Cleared for Human Trial
By David Cyranoski,
Nature
| 09. 10. 2014
A Japanese patient with a debilitating eye disease is about to become the first person to be treated with induced pluripotent stem cells, which have generated enthusiastic expectations and earned their inventor a Nobel Prize. A health-ministry committee has vetted researchers' safety tests and cleared the team to begin the experimental procedure.
[Update 12 September: eye specialist Yasuo Kurimoto has now performed the procedure on the first patient, a 70-year-old woman. See 'Japanese woman is first recipient of next-generation stem cells'.]
Masayo Takahashi, an ophthalmologist at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology (CDB) in Kobe, has been using induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to prepare a treatment for age-related macular degeneration. Unlike embryonic stem cells, iPS cells are produced from adult cells, so they can be genetically tailored to each recipient. They are capable of becoming any cell type in the body, and have the potential to treat a wide range of diseases. The CDB trial will be the first opportunity for the technology to prove its clinical value.
In age-related macular degeneration, extra blood vessels form...
Related Articles
By Emily Glazer, Katherine Long, Amy Dockser Marcus, The Wall Street Journal | 11.08.2025
For months, a small company in San Francisco has been pursuing a secretive project: the birth of a genetically engineered baby.
Backed by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and his husband, along with Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong, the startup—called...
By Robyn Vinter, The Guardian | 11.09.2025
A man going by the name “Rod Kissme” claims to have “very strong sperm”. It may seem like an eccentric boast for a Facebook profile page, but then this is no mundane corner of the internet. The group where Rod...
By Nahlah Ayed, CBC Listen | 10.22.2025
Egg freezing is one of today’s fastest-growing reproductive technologies. It's seen as a kind of 'fertility insurance' for the future, but that doesn’t address today’s deeper feelings of uncertainty around parenthood, heterosexual relationships, and the reproductive path forward. In this...
By Emily Mullin, Wired | 10.30.2025
In 2018, Chinese scientist He Jiankui shocked the world when he revealed that he had created the first gene-edited babies. Using Crispr, he tweaked the genes of three human embryos in an attempt to make them immune to HIV and...
