Cambridge, Mass. (June 31, 2008) – Kevin Eggan, Ph.D., Stowers Medical Institute Assistant Investigator and Assistant Professor with the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, has published the first successful attempt to create pluripotent human stem cells from a patient’s own skin cells. Dr. Eggan’s team coaxed skin cells from two elderly patients diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease) to become stem cells and then motor neurons, the cells that waste away in ALS patients. In the short term, the discovery will allow researchers to study the origins of ALS in ways that were previously impossible. It is also important poof of principle that patient-specific stem cells can be coaxed from skin cells. Learn more about this discovery on the Harvard Web site or read the paper in its entirety on the Science Express Web site (subscription required).

About the Stowers Medical Institute
      The Stowers Medical Institute was founded by Jim and Virginia Stowers of Kansas City. Mr. Stowers founded the multi-billion-dollar American Century Companies in 1958. Inspired by personal experiences with cancer, he and Mrs. Stowers founded the Stowers Institute for Medical Research (SIMR) in Kansas City in 1994. Repeated efforts to ban early stem cell research in the state of Missouri motivated the Stowers to create and endow with their personal funds a new entity, the Stowers Medical Institute (SMI), in 2005 to fund early stem cell research outside of Missouri. The Stowers’ funding of SMI is in addition to the $2 billion combined endowments they have created for SIMR.