Stem cell research yields advance against cystic fibrosis

Researchers at Harvard University have made another advance in the fight against cystic fibrosis using stem cells, adult stem cells:

Harvard stem cell researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have taken a critical step toward discovering in the relatively near future a drug to control cystic fibrosis (CF), a fatal lung disease that claims about 500 lives each year, with 1,000 new cases diagnosed annually. 

Beginning with the skin cells of patients with CF, Jayaraj Rajagopal and colleagues first created induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, and then used those cells to create human disease-specific functioning lung epithelium, the tissue that lines the airways and is the site of the most lethal aspect of CF, where the genes cause irreversible lung disease and inexorable respiratory failure.

For the record, embryonic stem cell research has yet to yield a single scientific advance, while adult stem cell research has yielded at least 90 advances.