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by: JuliaHanf
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Stem cell research is an area that is quite controversial. Controversy in the wake of stem cell research and the fine distinctions of universal health care are a few of the subjects explored by health policy authorities and those living with life-changing illnesses such as diabetes and migraine. The largest issue involved, being where these cells originate from. The sources of stem cells are various. They can come from adults, the blood from the umbilical cord, and embryos.

The cure for diabetes, as well as more improved treatments, may lie in stem cell research. The American Diabetes Association supports this type of research, and has worked diligently to obtain funding. The American Diabetes Association is also fighting to eliminate bans on stem cell research pertaining to diabetes.

UC Berkeley and Stanford University are two institutions that are coming together on a venture to support collaboration among scientists who perform stem cell research.

Doctors, biologists, chemists, engineers and computer scientists from the two schools formerly cited, are joining forces to talk about their effort and to contributions with students and staff.

Both universities are deeply caught up in embryonic stem cell research, which scientists anticipate will provide treatments or cures for such diseases as diabetes, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

To represent the teamwork, Stanford and UC Berkeley plan to build separate laboratories for researches who constantly visit the campuses and especially for those who spend their time off with friends and colleagues from other universities.

A biotechnology company, VistaGen Therapeutics, Inc., make use of embryonic stem cell technologies to discover and create new drugs for diabetes, publicized an extensive embryonic stem cell research unification with Toronto's University Health Network, Canada's foremost research hospital, and its stem cell research associate, the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine.

The fresh union places VistaGen to be able to continue to utilize the embryonic stem cell biology information and innovative embryonic stem cell know-how of Dr. Gordon Keller, one of the world's foremost stem cell researchers and the Director of the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine. VistaGen and Dr. Keller look forward to carrying out research into advanced techniques to differentiate between embryonic stem cells into mature cardiac, liver, and pancreatic beta-islet cells. This will progress VistaGen's industry-leading, in vitro biological systems and bioinformatics databases for prognostic toxicology submissions.

The newly maintained research program is based on VistaGen's present strategic licenses to Dr. Keller's past embryonic stem cell intellectual property, and encompasses new embryonic stem cell-based research ventures.

VistaGen is also hopeful that the outcomes of the stem cell research will be useful in developing and finding the newer invention for the different systems that would be used in embryonic stem cell-based liver, pancreas and cardiac beta-islet differentiation. Moreover, VistaGen is hopeful that the results will be used to develop pioneering medications for heart and liver diseases as well as diabetes.

Still another bunch of researchers from the Spring Point Project has been initiating hard work to offer a cure by inserting insulin-producing islet cells derived from pigs into diabetics. Studies demonstrated that transplanting healthy human islet cells in diabetics could turn around the disease. But because of a lack of human donor organs access is restricted to such cells.

Dr. Bernhard Hering, a world-renowned diabetes authority and scientific director of the Diabetes Institute for Immunology and Transplantation at the University of Minnesota, and his team ran test with pig islet cell transplants on monkeys and revealed that those cell transplants resulted in long-term diabetes reversal in the monkeys. A PowerPoint presentation incorporated a chart that showed unpredictable blood sugar counts in the monkeys achieving a level point. The application of pig parts in humans has been showing success in other areas, involving pig valves or bowels in transplants. Pig skin is already utilized in burn centers to replace human skin.

Due to the fact that this is introducing foreign cells into a body, those receiving the transplants would have to take medication to make sure they did not reject the cells. There could be side effects, but at this time, it is unknown how serious they could be, and the side effects could vary from patient to patient.

Sometime in the near future, possibly as early as 2009, the first clinical experiments will be scheduled for those with the most severe form of diabetes who are not capable of monitoring their blood sugar levels and can experience sudden blackouts or other episodes.

Stem cell research will continue to be controversial for some time as long as the sources of the cells remain the same as they are today. If the stem cells can be derived from a source that the public is comfortable with, the controversy may decline.