Stem Cells in the New Year

Brock Reeve, executive director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, offers his predictions for what 2008 holds for the field of stem-cell research in this article on Xconomy.com, a Cambridge-based blog that focuses on technology, business, and the life sciences.

Among other things, Reeve, the brother of the late actor Christopher Reeve, told Xconomy he has high hopes for reprogramming, a technique that could enable the creation of embryonic stem cells without destroying human embryos. Scientists successfully used reprogramming in 2007 with mouse cells, but the technique they used involves retroviruses. Reeve predicts it won’t be long before researchers devise a method that uses chemical compounds instead, and would therefore be safe for use in humans. “I think that will happen within a year,” he says.