Obstacles to Regnerative Stem Cell Medicine

A recent article named "Blazing the trail from stem cell research to regenerative medicine", by Jane Bower of the ESRC Innogen Center and her colleagues discuss a few of the more recent advances and applications of stem cell science. They believe that while stem cells hold a lot of promise there are still a lot of ethical and technical issues that must be surmounted.

Stem cells are immature cells that can be derived from a variety of sources. They have the ability to be built into a variety of different tissues from basically any organ. While human embryonic stem cells are a main source for obtaining stem cells, they are also the most controversial. Here's the excerpt from the paper.

Stem cell research holds promise for applications in regenerative medicine. However many questions remain. For example, will it be possible to patent therapeutic products in this area? Will the necessary investment be forthcoming? In addition there are still many technical problems to be solved. Technical solutions may involve the use of human embryos and this has created barriers to the use of the technology in a number of countries. There is already a need for the progressive development of appropriate legal and regulatory frameworks to allow both the scientific and clinical research to move forward. Some countries are actively encouraging the developments, for example, the UK. In the USA, although the present government is opposed, State and charitable funding is flowing into this area. In this paper we briefly review the issues surrounding stem cell developments and discuss the possible implications of the trends in media coverage.