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Harvard

"Adult stem cell research is important and must go forward," Eggan said. But embryonic stem cell research, while at an earlier stage of development, shows a potential for scientific and clinical breakthroughs that adult stem cell research lacks.

"Embryonic stem cells have great theoretical potential, but there have been problems in the laboratory. The cells are finicky, they're difficult to grow, it's difficult to get a pure culture, and there is a potential for tumor formation," he said.

On the other hand, he said that there have been promising developments in the use of adult stem cells in clinical applications, including tissue repair for stroke, spinal cord injuries, and heart damage. Prentice said that there have been 58 medical conditions in which the therapeutic benefit of adult stem cell treatment has been established, while no clinical benefits have been achieved so far as a result of embryonic stem cell research.



UC-Irvine

An article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences carries news of the use of adult human neural stem cells to successfully regenerate damaged spinal cord tissue in mice. The researchers, from the University of California Irvine Research Center, said that the treatment could hold great potential for new therapies to help those with spinal cord injuries. This study differs from others that have used human embryonic stem cells because the human neural stem cells that were used were not "coaxed" into becoming specific cell types before transplantation.



Overview on Adult Stem Cell Research from National Review

The pattern in the media reportage about stem cells is growing very wearisome. When a research advance occurs with embryonic stem cells, the media usually give the story the brass-band treatment. However, when researchers announce even greater success using adult stem cells, the media reportage is generally about as intense and excited as a stifled yawn.

As a consequence, many people in this country continue to believe that embryonic stem cells offer the greatest promise for developing new medical treatments using the body's cells — known as regenerative medicine — while in actuality, adult and alternative sources of stem cells have demonstrated much brighter prospects. This misperception has societal consequences, distorting the political debate over human cloning and embryonic-stem-cell research (ESCR) and perhaps even affecting levels of public and private research funding of embryonic and adult stem-cell therapies.



Sure, the potential is there for embryonic stem cell research, but it hasn't panned out at this point.