SCIENCE IN THE NEWS WEEKLY
A Toddler Gets an Artificial Arm Bone
In what they called a medical first, surgeons implanted an artificial bone in the arm of a 3-year-old to replace his humerus, which was lost during cancer treatment. Nearly a year later, the boy is thriving and cancer-free.
Clinical success has also been reported in one type of gene therapy, a field that hasn't always lived up to its promise. Pennsylvania researchers have improved vision in 12 patients with a rare inherited visual defect.
Scientists are also making progress in the lab harnessing molecular systems gone awry to fight disease—in mice, anyway. They are retooling autoimmune responses that attack an animal's own tissue and turning them into weapons against cancer.
And in another potential step forward at the laboratory bench, scientists have turned human stem cells into early-stage sperm and eggs, an accomplishment that could provide insight into the causes of infertility.
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