SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY

Researchers Team Up for Stem Cell Work

from the San Francisco Chronicle

Stem cell researchers at the Gladstone Institute in San Francisco and Stanford Medical School have joined a new national consortium linking teams of scientists who normally work independently with other groups that seek to discover new therapies for varied human disorders.

The government-funded venture will encourage the scientists working toward varied goals to share their research and collaborate with others using different approaches. The Gladstone-Stanford team is seeking to develop pluripotent stem cells, which are artificially derived from ordinary human tissue specifically for the purpose of repairing cells in damaged heart muscle.

Other Stanford scientists have teamed up with researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore to learn how to reprogram the genes of adult stem cells into lines of specialized cells that could treat disorders of the blood and blood vessels.