NEW SKIN: A scientist at Advanced Tissue Sciences in La Jolla, California, holds up a section of artificial skin—human cells on a biocompatible scaffold—used for treating severe wounds. CORBIS, © GEORGE STEINMETZ
Since Ernest McCulloch and James Till first demonstrated the existence of self-renewing cells in the bone marrow of mice in 1963, stem cells have been hyped every which way: they will cure cancer; make diseased hearts whole; reverse Alzheimer’s. These breakthroughs have clearly not come to pass. But the effort to use cells to treat disease continues to chug along, and there may finally be light at the end of the tunnel.
Cell therapy—the therapeutic use of somatic cells, stem cells, and cells derived from stem cells to treat various conditions—is not new. The first successful human-to-human blood transfusion occurred in 1818, and the first bone-marrow transplant took place more than half a century ago. But finally, after a 200-year journey punctuated with more failures ...
