Timeline for stem cell research
The last 10 years have seen a huge increase in research into stem cells, but when did it all begin?
| 1956 | First successful bone marrow transplant between a related donor and recipient is performed by Dr E Donnall Thomas in New York. The patient, who has leukaemia, is given radiotherapy and then treated with healthy bone marrow from an identical twin. |
| 1960 | Researchers discover bone marrow contains at least two kinds of stem cells – blood or haematopoietic stem cells that form all the types of blood cells in the body and stromal stem cells that form bone, cartilage, fat, and connective tissue. |
| 1960 |
First research report to indicate that the brain may generate new nerve cells is published, but not widely accepted. |
| 1968 | British scientist Robert Edwards and his student, Barry Bavister, became the first to fertilise a human egg in the test tube. This is the beginning of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) technologies. |
| 1968 | First bone marrow transplant for non-cancer treatment. Dr Robert Good uses a bone marrow transplant to treat an eight year old boy with severe combined immunodeficiency syndrome (SCID). The donor is an HLA-matched sister. |
| 1973 | First bone marrow transplant between unrelated patients. A five year old patient in New York with SCID is treated with multiple infusions of bone marrow from a donor in Denmark. |
| 1978 | The first IVF baby is born in England. |
| 1978 | Blood stem cells are discovered in human umbilical cord blood. |
| 1981 | Mouse embryonic stem cells are derived for the first time from the inner cell mass of a mouse blastocyst and grown in vitro. |
| 1984-1998 | Pluripotent stem cells are isolated. When exposed to retinoic acid, these cells differentiate into neuron-like cells and other cell types. |
| 1989 | Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is developed – a method where a single stem cell can be removed from an IVF embryo and tested for inherited diseases. |
| 1990 | Bone marrow donor programme initiated. |
| 1990 | Dr Thomas receives the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his pioneering work on bone marrow transplants. |
| 1995 | Scientists at the University of Wisconsin derive the first embryonic stem cells from non-human primates. |
| 1998 | Scientists at the University of Wisconsin, led by James Thompson, isolate and grow the first stem cells from human embryos. The embryos used in these studies were created by IVF. |
| 1999 | Researchers discover that stem cells can be made to differentiate into different cell types. |
| 2001 | President George W Bush permits federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, but only on the 64 existing stem cell lines. |
| 2004 | Researchers in South Korea claim to be the first to clone a human embryo and then harvest the stem cells for research. The research is later found to have been fabricated. |
| 2004 | California becomes the first state in the USA to provide its own fund for embryonic stem cell research. |
| 2005 | George W Bush’s restrictions on embryonic stem cell research are loosened. |
Metadata
- Published:
- 16 November 2007
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