Medical, Stem Cell | featured news

How can a cancer come back after it’s apparently been eradicated? Three new studies are bolstering a long-debated idea: that tumors contain their own pool of stem cells that can multiply and keep fueling the cancer, seeding regrowth.

For the first time doctors have successfully transplanted a vein grown with a patient's own stem cells, another example of scientists producing human body parts in the lab. In this case, the patient was a 10-year-old girl in Sweden who was suffering from a severe vein blockage to her liver. Last March, the girl's doctors decided to make her a new blood vessel to bypass the blocked vein instead of using one of her own or considering a liver transplant.

Cells grown in microgravity generate problematic proteins (absent in normal stem cells) that play a role in bone deterioration.

In a surprise result that can help in the understanding of both aging and cancer, researchers working with an engineered type of stem cell said they reversed the aging process in a rare genetic disease.