Embryonic Stem Cells News and Research

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Common e-cigarette flavorant may disrupt normal embryo development

Vanillin, a common flavoring chemical in e-cigarettes, may disrupt the normal development of embryos in pregnant women who vape, according to a study published today (Thursday) in Human Reproduction, one of the world's leading reproductive medicine journals.

13 Aug 2026

Engineered spinal interneurons show promise for repairing spinal cord injuries

Spinal cord injuries affect an estimated 15 to 20 million people worldwide, often causing lasting impairments in movement, sensation, and independence.

5 Aug 2026

Clinical trial finds stem cell brain transplants feasible for Parkinson's disease

A landmark study led from Lund, Sweden, has shown that transplanting stem-cell derived dopamine progenitor cells into the brain is feasible.

9 Jul 2026

Base editing technique reveals crucial gene for early human development

Research led by the University of Cambridge Loke Centre for Trophoblast Research has shown that a genome editing technique can be used to alter a single gene in human embryonic cells, enabling the study of very early human development in unparalleled detail.

25 Jun 2026

UCI Health launches world's first embryonic stem cell trial for Huntington's disease

UCI Health, the clinical enterprise of the University of California, Irvine, has opened the world's first in-human embryonic stem cell-derived clinical trial for Huntington's disease.

23 Jun 2026

Interspecies blastocyst complementation generates generates rat-derived kidneys in mice

Kidney transplantation remains the most effective treatment for end-stage kidney disease, yet a severe shortage of donor organs continues to limit access for millions of patients worldwide.

11 Jun 2026

Ancient Y chromosome gene UTY retains regulatory function in humans

The study, published in Volume 153, Issue 9 of the journal Development on May 14, 2026, by The Company of Biologists, is the first to precisely map endogenous UTY occupancy across the human genome and demonstrate that UTY remains functionally involved in transcriptional regulation during early human development.

5 Jun 2026

New ultrasound pacemaker design promises minimal recovery time for cardiac patients

MIT engineers have developed a noninvasive pacemaker that stimulates the heart using ultrasound. The design could one day provide a surgery-free alternative to traditional cardiac implants.

2 Jun 2026

Two proteins help maintain stem cells by preventing differentiation

Researchers from The University of Osaka find that the zinc finger proteins RLF and ZFP292 assist in stabilizing the CoREST corepressor complex at gene promoters in embryonic stem cells, preventing differentiation.

12 May 2026

The power of organoids in speeding up lifesaving drug development

Organoids are miniature tissue or organ models formed by stem cells (including pluripotent stem cells, tissue-specific adult stem cells, etc.) or progenitor cells in an in vitro three-dimensional culture system, which possess structural features and partial functions analogous to their corresponding in vivo organs. In 2009, the Hans Clevers laboratory developed the first intestinal organoid, marking the inception of organoid-based disease modeling.

8 May 2026

Scientists find that human embryos are vulnerable to COVID

A University of California, Riverside study reports that cells in the earliest stages of human development could be susceptible to infection by SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, offering new insight into how the virus interacts with developing human tissues and why that may matter for pregnancy research.

4 May 2026

ISSCR urges NIH to continue support human embryonic stem cell research

The International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) has submitted a formal response to a Request for Information (RFI) issued by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) regarding its pause on new submissions to the NIH Human Embryonic Stem Cell (hESC) Registry and considerations to reduce reliance on hESCs in federally supported research.

25 Apr 2026

Protein complex cohesin found essential for guiding cell identity decisions

Temporarily disabling a protein complex that organizes DNA into loops inside the cell's nucleus drastically disrupted the three-dimensional structure of the genome, but surprisingly most genes continued to function as usual, Weill Cornell Medicine researchers found.

13 Apr 2026

Stem cell study identifies universal checkpoint controlling cell identity

A study published in Cell Research advances a central idea in stem cell biology by identifying a checkpoint that controls the identity of many different types of stem cells across developmental stages.

8 Apr 2026

AI trained on 9 trillion DNA letters predicts harmful mutations and designs new genomes

Scientists developed Evo 2, a large biological foundation model trained on about 9 trillion DNA base pairs that can analyse genomic sequences across bacteria, plants, and humans. The model predicts functional effects of genetic variants and can generate genome-scale DNA sequences, enabling new approaches to studying and designing biological systems.

5 Mar 2026