03
Mar
2004
Why the Number of Stem Cell Lines is Important
Permalink | View Comments (0) | Post Comment | Posted by Reason

If you're not up on the basics of stem cells and their relationship to the future of medicine (or even if you think you are), you should read the excellent introduction at InfoAging before carrying on with the rest of today's post. InfoAging really is an enormously useful site. It manages to simply and easily explain many of the wonders of modern medicine and the aging process for non-scientists amongst us.

If you keep up with news on politics or research, you have no doubt heard a lot about the number of stem cell lines available to researchers in the US (and the rest of the world, for that matter). A stem cell line is a growing collection of similar cells, all cultured from a stem cell. Lines can continue to divide and grow for a long time, and so researchers can continually draw cells from lines for research. If you want to do reliable stem cell research, you need a reliable source of stem cells - hence the lines. Without them, no research.

Read on to see why this matters a great deal:

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