Scotland signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Californian Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) on Thursday 19 January 2012.

CRM students Florian Halbritter and Harsh Vaidya have produced a user-friendly data analysis softwaresystem which streamlines best-practice procedures and makes it possible for researchers with different levels of experience to rapidly analyse their primary data.

The software program, called GeneProf, also aims to speed up research progress by making completed analyses along with the input data and results transparently and reproducibly available to other scientists and the public.

Human blood stem cells
Scientists at the University of Edinburgh’s MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine are one step closer in establishing exactly the right protocol needed to turn pluripotent stem cells into blood stem cells in the laboratory, an essential step in the quest to find a more effective treatment for blood cancers like leukaemia.

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Featuring beautiful hand-drawn animations and interviews with leading stem cell scientists, 'Stem Cell Revolutions' charts the history and scientific evolution of stem cell research – from the earliest experiments that first revealed stem cells in the body, to leading current scientific and clinical developments.

Parkinson's iPS cells differentiated towards dopaminergic neurons.Scientists have for the first time generated stem cells from one of the most rapidly progressing forms of Parkinson’s disease.

The development will help research into the condition as it will enable scientists to model the disease in the laboratory to shed light on why certain nerve cells die.

Scientists, funded with a £300,000 grant from the charity Parkinson’s UK, took skin samples from a patient diagnosed with one of the most progressive types of Parkinson’s.

Stem cell scientists, including CRM researchers Dr Clare Blackburn and Prof Sir Ian Wilmut, have raised serious concerns about the impact of a possible ban on patents for techniques using human embryonic stem cells.

The constant search for enough donated blood to meet demand could become a thing of the past, thanks to research into the development of industrially-generated blood funded by the Scottish Funding Council (SFC).

Scientists have discovered a new way to generate human motor nerve cells in a development that will help research into motor neurone disease.

A team from the Universities of Edinburgh, Cambridge and Cardiff has created a range of motor neurons – nerves cells that send messages from the brain and spine to other parts of the body – from human embryonic stem cells in the laboratory.

Damage caused by multiple sclerosis could be reversed by activating stem cells that can repair injury in the central nervous system, a study has shown.