Watch the Stem Cell Infrastructure Grow
The real pace of progress can be seen in improvements in infrastructure - the health of a field in the next decade can be gleaned from the work of the toolmakers today. In regenerative medicine, the tools are improving markedly from year to year, as illustrated by this release from Newswise: "Previously, the system to grow and isolate neurons was very messy and it was unknown whether those neurons were functioning. We're excited because we have been able to purify so many more neurons out of the cell culture and they were, surprisingly, healthy enough to form synapses. These cells will be excellent for doing gene expression studies and biochemical and protein analyses ... The large number of pure neurons produced will allow Sun and her team to study their biological form and structure, the genes they express, the development of synapses and the electric and chemical communication activities within the synapse network. ... We will be able to study the cellular properties of neurons in a very defined way that will maybe tell us what goes wrong in diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. We're currently creating many models of human neurological diseases that may provide the answers we're looking for."