In a bid to overcome ethical conerns that have long hobbled research, scientists have created fresh human stem-cell lines without destroying human embryos from which they were derived, media reports on Friday quoted the journal Cell Stem Cell.

In a bid to overcome ethical conerns that have long hobbled research, scientists have created fresh human stem-cell lines without destroying human embryos from which they were derived, media reports on Friday quoted the journal Cell Stem Cell.(File Photo)

Using the new technique, scientists extracted a single cell from an eight-cell human embryo, then coaxed that cell to become a master stem-cell line. That line was then manipulated in the lab and became various other tissue types found in the body such as nerve cells.

The hope of stem-cell science is that such freshly derived tissue could one day be transplanted into patients to treat diseases.

"Ours is a working technology, and we could supply these [fresh] stem-cell lines to federal researchers immediately," said Robert Lanza, senior author of the study.

In the paper, Dr. Lanza and his colleagues said that at least 20 percent of the plucked cells yielded stem-cell lines, and further improvements took the efficiency as high as 50 percent.

(Agencies via Xinhua News Agency January 12, 2008)