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Researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the ̽»¨Ö±²¥ of Cambridge have created sOPTiKO, a more efficient and enhanced inducible CRISPR genome editing platform. Today, in the journal Development, they describe how the freely available single-step system works in every cell in the body and at every stage of development. This new approach will aid researchers in developmental biology, tissue regeneration and cancer.

Science is demanding as well as exciting. Dish Life, the final of four Cambridge Shorts films, compares the task of raising stem cells in the lab to the challenge of looking after a gang of unruly kids. In conversation with real-life children, scientists show how tricky it is to work with these ‘super cells’.

̽»¨Ö±²¥capacity for language is what sets us apart from other animals. Talk with Your Hands, the third of four Cambridge Shorts films, explores the richness of sensory perception in interviews with blind and deaf people together with insights from neuroscientists.  

Scientists have identified for the first time the ‘cell of origin’ – in other words, the first cell from which the cancer grows – in basal cell carcinoma, the most common form of skin cancer, and followed the chain of events that lead to the growth of these invasive tumours.

In the first genome-scale experiment of its kind, researchers have gained new insights into how a mouse embryo first begins to transform from a ball of unfocussed cells into a small, structured entity. Published in Nature, the single-cell genomics study was led by the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and the ̽»¨Ö±²¥ of Cambridge.

Scientists at the ̽»¨Ö±²¥ of Cambridge have for the first time shown that it is possible to derive from a human embryo so-called ‘naïve’ pluripotent stem cells – one of the most flexible types of stem cell, which can develop into all human tissue other than the placenta.

There are many challenges facing people with spinal cord injury – and walking again is often the least of their problems. Cambridge research could help patients take control of their lives once more.

Cambridge researchers have found the strongest evidence to date that human pluripotent stem cells – cells that can give rise to all tissues of the body – will develop normally once transplanted into an embryo. ̽»¨Ö±²¥findings, published today in the journal Cell Stem Cell, could have important implications for regenerative medicine.

A protein activated by vitamin D could be involved in repairing damage to myelin in people with multiple sclerosis (MS), according to new research from the ̽»¨Ö±²¥ of Cambridge. ̽»¨Ö±²¥study, published today in the Journal of Cell Biology, offers significant evidence that vitamin D could be a possible treatment for MS in the future.

Nerve cells damaged in diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS), ‘talk’ to stem cells in the same way that they communicate with other nerve cells, calling out for ‘first aid’, according to new research from the ̽»¨Ö±²¥ of Cambridge.