Medical News Today reports on an advance illustrative of the pace of progress in the well funded portions of regenerative medicine: "researchers have developed a new purification procedure that gives direct access to muscle stem cells. These cells can both repair and contribute to the progenitor cell population of damaged muscles ... 20,000 purified muscle stem cells were as efficient as one million cultured cells in muscle fibre repair, when grafted in dystrophic mouse muscles ... this higher regenerative capacity reflects these cells' ability to more effectively colonise grafted muscle. Cultured cells undergo modifications that make them less efficient, probably partly because they tend to differentiate too quickly, losing their ability to regenerate damaged cells."

Link: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=30179