Giving people with chronic heart failure injections of their own bone-marrow stem cells appears to improve their heart function and extend their lives, new research suggests.

Researchers have tracked a cell-to-cell signaling pathway that designates the future location of the ear's sensory organs in embryonic mice. The scientists succeeded in activating this signal more widely across the embryonic tissue that becomes the inner ear. Patches of sensory structures began growing in spots where they don't normally appear.

Earlier this month the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sought a legal injunction against a US stem cell clinic to halt their treatments – stem cells that are taken from patients and grown before administration at sites of tissue or bone injury (see Nature news).

Human pluripotent stem cells, which can become any other kind of body cell, hold great potential to treat a wide range of ailments, including Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injuries.

The first successful report of using cell-depleted lung as a natural growth matrix for generating new rat lung from embryonic stem cells is presented in a breakthrough article in Tissue Engineering, Part A, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

The findings by Toronto University researchers - Daniel Durocher, Anne-Claude Gingras and Frank Sicheri - show how cells regulate their genetic material.

A study led by scientists at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) reveals a new method of identifying drugs to treat children suffering from fatal cancers for which an effective treatment has not been found.

A study led by a researcher at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University has revealed a unique "partnership" between two types of bone marrow stem cells, which could lead to advances in regenerative medicine.