Patient-Specific Stem Cell Lines
Embryonic stem cell lines are essential for much of the most important stem cell research, and as Medical News Today points out, "producing individual patient cell lines for our own future needs is now something we might all want to consider. ... a method for replacing the nuclei of [embryonic stem cells (hES)] by somatic cell nuclei has been widely sought. ... The new technique involves the fusion of different types of somatic cells with hES cells. The resulting 'cybrids' were shown to have the genotype of the donor somatic cells and the 'stemness' (the ability of the cells to divide, change throughout our lifetime, to provide cells that can become specialised and to replace those that die or are lost) of the recipient hES cells." This is very promising for the near future of regenerative medicine if verified by the wider scientific community.
Link: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=34176