amniotic stem cells

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Joe Carter reports
In a remarkable medical breakthrough, scientists from Harvard and Wake Forest report that they have discovered a new source of stems cells that have the ability to create muscle, bone, fat, blood vessel, nerve, and liver cells in the laboratory. These newly discovered stem cells, which they have named amniotic fluid-derived stem (AFS) cells, may represent an intermediate stage--“halfway houses”--between embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells. The research, which has been ongoing for the past seven years, was reported in yesterday’s Nature Biotechnology....


ESC: [embryonic] Requires destruction of a human embryo to obtain cells.
AFS: [amniotic] Obtaining cells is ethically unproblematic.

ESC: If genetic matches for transplantation could be obtained at all, it would come from the creation and destruction of cloned human embryos.
AFS: Genetic matches for transplantation can be obtained from discarded placentas.

ESC: Therapeutic uses impeded because they are tumorigenic.
AFS: Do not produce tumors.


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