pluripotent stem cells

Topic description and stories

Of mice and women

04 Aug 2017

Last year, Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, Professor of Mammalian Development and Stem Cell Biology, made not one, but two world-changing discoveries.

Colonies of human naïve embryonic stem cells grown on mouse feeder cells

Scientists develop very early stage human stem cell lines for first time

04 Mar 2016

Scientists at the University of Cambridge have for the first time shown that it is possible to derive from a human embryo so-called ‘naïve’...

Mouse blastocyst at the pluripotent stage, when cells have the capacity to generate all of the cell types of the adult, Credit: Jenny Nichols

The ‘ultimate’ stem cell

29 Oct 2014

In the earliest moments of a mammal’s life, the developing ball of cells formed shortly after fertilisation ‘does as mother says’ – it follows a...

Stem cells show auxeticity; the nucleus expands, rather than thins, when it's stretched, Credit: Effigos AG

Stem cell physical

10 Oct 2014

Looking at stem cells through physicists’ eyes is challenging some of our basic assumptions about the body’s master cells.

Scientists reset human stem cells to earliest developmental state

11 Sep 2014

Scientists have successfully ‘reset’ human pluripotent stem cells to the earliest developmental state – equivalent to cells found in an embryo before...

Foregut stem cells (green) differentiated into pancreatic cells expressing insulin. , Credit: Nicholas Hannan

Stem cell breakthrough could set up future transplant therapies

10 Oct 2013

A new method for developing stem cells enables the production of liver and pancreatic cells in “clinically relevant” quantities for the first time...

Professor Sir John Gurdon awarded Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

08 Oct 2012

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has today been jointly awarded to Professor Sir John Gurdon, Emeritus Professor in Cell Biology currently...

Top images diseased liver cells, bottom images healthy liver cells

Artificial liver cells win their creator prize for their potential to reduce animal experiments

28 Feb 2012

Cambridge research that created liver cells from stem cells has today been recognised with a national prize by the National Centre for the...