See links to both the AP & Reuters news coverage articles. The below are
excerpts only and not the full article.

Dr. George Daley and his colleagues at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute used
ordinary skin cells and bone marrow from people with a variety of diseases,
including Parkinson's, Huntington's and Down syndrome to produce the stem
cells.

Writing in the journal Cell, the team at Harvard Medical School and
Children's Hospital in Boston said the point is not yet to treat anyone, but
to get as many researchers as possible experimenting with these cells in lab
dishes to better understand the diseases. "This is just the first wave of
diseases," said Dr. George Daley, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical
Institute investigator.


Scientists create stem cells for 10 disorders
By STEPHANIE NANO, Associated Press Writer Fri Aug 8, 9:26 AM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080808/ap_on_sc/sci_stem_cells_diseases

NEW YORK - Harvard scientists say they have created stems cells for 10
genetic disorders, which will allow researchers to watch the diseases
develop in a lab dish. This early step, using a new technique, could help
speed up efforts to find treatments for some of the most confounding
ailments, the scientists said.

The new cells will allow researchers to "watch the disease progress in a
dish, that is, to watch what goes right or wrong," Doug Melton, co-director
of the institute, said during a teleconference. "I think we'll see in years
ahead that this opens the door to a new way to treating degenerative
diseases," he said.

On the Net: Harvard Stem Cell Institute: http://www.hsci.harvard.edu


Skin cells produce library of diseased stem cells
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN07315956
Thu Aug 7, 2008 12:00pm EDT By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON, Aug 7 (Reuters) - U.S. stem cell experts have produced a library
of the powerful cells using ordinary skin and bone marrow cells from
patients, and said on Thursday they would share them freely with other
researchers.

WHAT GOES WRONG

"They allow researchers ... to watch the disease progress in a dish, to
watch what goes right or wrong," said Harvard's Dr. Doug Melton, who will
head up the distribution of the cells. "I think we'll see in the years ahead
that this opens the door to a new way of treating degenerative diseases."

Every cell in the human body contains the same genetic instructions, and in
people with inherited genetic diseases, every cell carries the same
mistakes, Daley and Melton said.

Stem cells -- and the new iPS cells -- will grow virtually immortal in the
lab, and given the right conditions, can be made to form any desired tissue,
from heart muscle to brain cells.

One day these might be used as tailor-made patches to fix diseased or
damaged organs, but right now Melton said it is important to simply
understand the diseases.

While the cells are an alternative to the more controversial embryonic stem
cells, taken from a human embryo, Daley and Melton are adamant that they do
not replace them.

For one thing, viruses are used to carry the transformative genes to make
the iPS cells. Daley says cloning technology is still superior. "The egg
does it faster and better," he said.

Melton said researchers can get batches of cells from the lab to grow on
their own. Other cell types they have made to date include samples from
people with Huntington's disease, a form of combined immunodeficiency
commonly known as "bubble boy's disease," Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, Gaucher's
disease, and two forms of muscular dystrophy.

(