Mar 8 2005
A team at Harvard Medical School and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, looking for ways to make safer stem cells for use in medical therapies, say they have grown human cells without the use of contaminating animal cells.
Dr Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology, whose company conducted the study along with them says the science now exists to produce new lines that will be safe.
The work, conducted outside US federal restraints, could bypass problems of contamination by animal products with existing stem cell batches, which renders the cells unsuitable for use in people. The new lines produced will be much safer, said Lanza.
Stem cells, taken from human embryos, can potentialially become any type of cell or tissue in the body and are possible treatments for a range of diseases or injuries.
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