Re: How have animals contributed to potential stem cell treatments for disease?

Stem cell research involves animals in two senses. First, stem cells must originally be isolated 
from an animal. Second, although it is possible to investigate the differentiation of stem cells 
into different cell types in vitro, for stem cells to be of any use in human medicine it is essential 
to determine whether these cells can function normally when transplanted into an animal.

I could write a more detailed explanation of stem cell research, but there is a terrific site on this 
subject from the National Institutes of Health:
 http://stemcells.nih.gov/index.asp

This site contains basic information, literature citations, and glossary, and other resources. I 
highly recommend it.

Yours,

Paul Szauter
Mouse Genome Informatics