IT HAS been an uplifting week for stem cell research. Not only is US president-elect Barack Obama poised to sweep away restrictions on stem cells when he takes office on 20 January, but a new treatment based on the drug Mozobil promises to harness an individual's stem cells to help them heal their own bodies.
A few days ago Sara Rankin and her colleagues at Imperial College London announced that Mozobil, in combination with natural growth factors, can free up specific types of stem cells from the bone marrows of mice and send them flooding into the bloodstream.
The discovery is important because it opens up the possibility of treatments tailored to the individual, who would for example take drugs to stimulate the growth and release of specific stem cells to repair cardiac tissue after a heart attack. Such treatments would be free of ...
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.