After three contentious stem cell patents were upheld in the US earlier this year, the debate over one of the patents continues this week in Europe.

The Board of Appeal at the European Patent Office heard a dispute on Tuesday (June 24) on awarding a patent to the US stem cell technology.

The technology in question is covered by one of the three patents held by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF). It includes methods to culture and maintain primate embryonic stem cells derived... Click to continue

New Jersey officials have pulled funds for the construction of a state stem cell institute which broke ground eight months ago.

Governor Jon Corzine told The Star Ledger only that the plans are on an indefinite hold and state leaders are reevaluating the project.

The New Jersey Stem Cell Institute is a $150 million project intended to be an... Click to continue

The NIH is a step closer to getting a $150 million boost by September. Last night (June 19) the House of Representatives passed a supplementary 2008 appropriations bill that includes a hefty chunk to the agency.

Of $400 million that the Senate snuck into a bill last month intended to support the Iraq war and disaster relief, $150 million will now go to the NIH, The Chronicle of Higher Education... Click to continue

The technical challenges of using retroviruses to reprogram cells to a pluripotent state could be worked out within the year, researchers said today in a press conference at the annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research in Philadelphia. However, they stressed, human embryonic stem cells are still, and will continue to be, the gold standard for research on pluripotency and differentiation.

The speakers, including ... Click to continue

New compounds that target leukemia stem cells are moving into the clinic this summer. But researchers have yet to pin down exactly how some of these compounds do their job.

Today at the International Society for Stem Cell Research's (ISSCR) annual meeting, Craig Jordan from the University of Rochester presented his group's recent work on a compound TDZD-8, which was originally developed to inhibit GSK-3, and potentially treat... Click to continue

You can now have your say about regulations on bringing stem cell therapies to the clinic.

A special task force set up to create guidelines for bringing stem cell therapies from bench to bedside will be accepting public commentary on the guidelines, continuing until this fall, the group announced today at the annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) here in Philadelphia.

The task force's primary goals are to create guidelines that will help basic researchers... Click to continue

The Food and Drug Administration has disqualified seven investigators so far this year for misconduct, according to an FDA document. The ruling bars the doctors from conducting clinical trials of any kind.

The FDA, for reasons including submitting false information to the trial's sponsor or the FDA, or not complying with regulatory requirements, has disqualified more than 100 investigators from clinical trials over the past 40... Click to continue

The NIH's $1 billion plan to improve peer review also includes compensation for reviewers: Grant reviewers will be compensated $250,000 for six years of service, if they qualify, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported. This surpasses the current $200 per day compensation.

"In the end, peer review is only as good as the quality of the people doing it,"... Click to continue

In a world where most companies seem to be cutting jobs, one company is looking to up their ranks by 25%.

MedImmune announced today that they are looking to fill more than 800 positions in research and development and the clinic.

AstraZeneca acquired MedImmune in 2007, and since then the latter company is doubling their pipeline in order to represent a quarter of Astra's projects.

The recent acquisition may be a boon to MedImmune employees: AstraZeneca ranked at number two of best large... Click to continue

A new funding guideline for the National Institutes of Health is making its way through Congress.

Yesterday the Senate approved a budget resolution that includes $59.7 billion for health categories, including the NIH. This represents nearly 6% more than President Bush requested for 2009, and it's 12% more than the current funding level. The resolution will act as a guideline for Congressional planners when they set appropriations for 2009, beginning this October.

The House is expected to... Click to continue

A new study confirms a seemingly obvious assumption about human embryonic stem cell research: Countries with fewer restrictions on research outperform countries with more restrictions. But the picture may be more complex than that, according to some experts.

The article, published online today (June 4) in Cell Stem Cell by Aaron Levine at the Georgia Institute of... Click to continue

Jacob Robbins, an NIH thyroid researcher and co-discoverer of the active form of thyroid hormone, died on May 12 in Bethesda, Md, of heart failure. He was 85 years old.

In the 1950s Robbins and colleague Joseph Rall, both then at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, hypothesized that levels of the thyroid hormone, thyroxine, might fluctuate in the bloodstream and found that the hormone could not be bound to any other proteins in the blood in order to be active.

"It was extremely important... Click to continue