---------- Forwarded Message ----------
From: STem Cell Action Network
April 27, 2007Volume 07, Issue 04-04
Dear SCAN Members,
I find myself yearning to be writing about new scientific
discoveries, planned human clinical trials, and general excitement
and anticipation as to what secrets the paths of exploration are
revealing. I am tired of politics, especially the brand practiced in
Washington. I am watching the uneven progress in the states,
anticipating endless legal challenges should funds be allocated, and
getting a little impatient. Impatient, not for discoveries and cures,
but impatient for the floodgates of funding to finally flow
unrestricted. Next year it will be thirty years since I was first
diagnosed with M.S. so I am entitled to be impatient.
What is exciting is the reports of stem cell research beginning to
move beyond the very basic stage (How do we work with these cells?,
etc.) to the next step of applied research ("Let's see what they can
do?"). Animal models come before human interventions and we are
still a (long?) way off from results that are ready for patients. The
annual meeting program of the International Society for Stem Cell
Research to be held in June in Australia provides a glimpse of what
the scientists are doing.
A conference in Boston, scheduled for the end of May, sponored by the
drug company Serono is titled, "Stem Cells and CNS Regeneration".
Some of the featured sessions are:
- "Stem Cells, Precursors and Remeyelination"
- "Dopaminergic Differentiation from Human Embryonic Stem Cells"
- "Embryonic, Adut and Cancer Stem Cells"
- Cell-Based Strategies Exhibiting Preclinical Efficacy"
For most of us, the unfamiliar terminology obscures the nature of the
step-by-step process of exploration and discovery. Yet I find these
words very calming and reassuring: the essential pathways of
exploration are being plumbed. Despite contoversy, legal challenges
and spotty public funding the work advances. Questions are being
asked and answers are emerging; pieces of the puzzle fit into place.
Not fast enough, not soon enough of course, but this is the real deal.
Idelle Datlof, Executive Director
Stem Cell Action Network
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