This week’s news in brief

Our stem cell and regenerative medicine news picks from Monday 6th October

Dr Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest institute, has successfully completely replaced normal-functioning penile erectile tissue in rabbits. The team hope to move to clinical trials in the next few years with the aim of providing replacement penile erectile tissue for patients with congenital abnormalities, penile cancer, traumatic injury and some cases of erectile dysfunction.

Experts at Harvard University have used ESCs to create large enough quantities of insulin-producing beta cells for cell transplantation and pharmaceutical purposes. They are currently in animal trials.

A new technique based on physical characteristics allows scientists to accurately identify mesenchymal stem cells within bone marrow. This should make it easier to develop stem cell-based therapies, as previously cells that had begun differentiation could not easily be distinguished from MSCs owing to similar marker expression.

A barcoding tool for stem cells has called into question the origin of blood cells. The Nature article suggests it is not blood stem cells but a large number of long-lived descendants of stem cells called progenitor cells that are responsible for the normal daily supply of blood cells during most of adulthood.

StemCells, Inc. has announced initiation of Phase II clinical trial of human neural stem cells for cervical spinal cord injury, following earlier this year having revealed encouraging interim results of an open-label Phase I/II clinical trial in thoracic spinal cord injury.

The STAP saga has continued, with Haruko Obokata being given 1 year by Waseda University to correct flaws in her dissertation or be stripped of her doctorate.

Are any key news stories missing? Tell us in the comments below.