Stem Cells and CAM

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It is no exaggeration that stem cells are a hot topic in the international biomedical arena. In California we are particularly and actually aware of this fact. We started the new year on January 12 with a Stem Cell Technology Conference focusing on senescence. More than a year after California voters elected to give $3 billion in bonds to fund stem cell research, and with the measure stalled in legal proceedings, professors and researchers met to discuss the proposition and other related concerns at UCLA for a stem cell symposium February 5, 2006 (1). At this event, called ‘Stem Cells: Promise and Peril in Regenerative Medicine’, several stem cell research experts discussed various topics, all with the goal of illuminating the complex problems of Proposition 71 and its implications. The symposium was organized by the UCLA Center for Society and Genetics, the UCLA Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Medicine and the UCLA School of Law. Six days later, there was a similar event: the UCLA 10th Annual Health Care Symposium. One of the four speakers was Irving Weissman, MD, director of the Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. For those interested in evolution, Weissman has devoted a good portion of his career to understanding the origins of stem cells in colonial tunicates (2). Then just under a month later, on March 3, there was another 1-day symposium: ‘Stem Cells, Pathways and Cancer: From Biology to Therapy’. The two main topics covered aspects of cancer stem cell biology, models and disease and of cancer stem cell pathways as therapeutic targets. Stem Cells on CAM: Ears and Teeth on the CAM