And I focused my research on stem cells as a possible source for cell transplants.

These are a stem cell line.

This is a stem cell that we've developed here in Oxford, from an embryonic stem cell.

And at that time, stem cell research had gained momentum, following the isolation of the world's first human embryonic stem cells in the 1990s.

But thanks to recent advances in stem cell research... and the fine work of Doctors Krinski and Altschuler...

But where is stem cell therapy really going?

So each of these is an embryonic stem cell.

So that's what they call a stem cell line.

I put one stem cell in a culture dish all by itself and that stem cell divides every ten to twelve hours.

But because each of your cells contains your entire gene code, each cell can be reprogrammed, if we don't stop stem cell research and if we don't stop genomic research, to express different body functions.

So, remember I told you about my brother's stem cell transplant.

And it seemed that tumors actually begin from a stem cell.

Stem cell therapies may one day reduce the need for donor organs.

It has the capacity to produce thousands and thousands of stem cell lines.

Stem cell derived retinal transplants, now in a research phase, may one day restore vision, or part vision, to millions of patients with retinal diseases worldwide.

So you have this notion of when you to get an embryonic stem cell line, and when I say a stem cell line, I mean you take a couple of stem cells, or let's say you take one stem cell, and then you put it in a Petri dish, and then you allow it to just duplicate.

Last summer I worked at Stanford University, doing some research on cancer stem cells.

Tim can you tell me whether my brother's stem cell transplant worked or not?

Adult stem cells are throughout our body, including the blood forming stem cells in our bone marrow, which we've been using as a form of stem cell therapy for over 40 years.

They all came from one unique embryonic stem cell or what initially was a blastomere.

A couple of years ago, the Lasker Prize was awarded to the scientist Shinya Yamanaka for his research in which he took an adult skin cell, a fibroblast, and by manipulating just four genes, he induced that cell to revert to a pluripotential stem cell a cell potentially capable of becoming any cell in your body.

Fat derived stem cells are adult stem cells.

Or we can use cells alone, either your very own cells or different stem cell populations.

We can now reprogram your skin cells to actually act like a pluripotent embryonic stem cell and to utilize those potentially to treat multiple organs in that same patient making your own personalized stem cell lines.

In 1998, human embryonic stem cells were first identified, and just nine years later, a group of scientists in Japan were able to take skin cells and reprogram them with very powerful viruses to create a kind of pluripotent stem cell called an induced pluripotent stem cell, or what we refer to as an IPS cell.

But adult stem cells are not embryonic stem cells.

Short Stem Funnel

At some point in our lives, all of us, or people we care about, become patients, and that's why I think that stem cell research is incredibly important for all of us.

So the debate obviously is when you start an embryonic stem cell line, you are destroying an embryo.

And one of the the cutting edge areas that we're just incredibly excited about is stem cell therapy.

But the moral controversy surrounding embryonic stem cells the fact that these cells are derived from five day old human embryos has encouraged research into other types of stem cells.

That's all stem cells.

Here's another example of stem cell therapy that isn't quite clinical yet, but I think very soon will be.

I truly believe that stem cell research is going to allow our children to look at Alzheimer's and diabetes and other major diseases the way we view polio today, which is as a preventable disease.

While still in a research phase, stem cells may one day herald a quantum leap in the field of cardiology.

Okay, induced pluripotent stem cells.

Plus we have stem cells.

Somatic or adults stem cells.

And a long stem rose

No, just the brain stem.

Research.

So I've studied a lot about stem cells embryonic stem cells are particularly powerful.

Cell

Cell

As we speak, the world's first human embryonic stem cell trial for spinal cord injury is currently underway following the USFDA approval.