IT HAS been a roller-coaster year for one of the most exciting areas in biology. Can stem cells really replace tissues lost to age or disease? There have been both ground-breaking discoveries and some major disappointments.
First the good news. The assumption was that no stem cell found in adults could be as versatile as embryonic stem cells (ESCs), which can give rise to every tissue in the body. But in January, Â鶹´«Ã½ revealed that Catherine Verfaillie’s group at the University of Minnesota had found stem cells with properties strikingly similar to those of ESCs in the bone marrow…
