Australia

STEM CELL RESEARCH in Australia dates back to the early 1990s, with an Australian researcher gaining a patent for deriving animal embryonic stem cells in 1992. Much of this early research was conducted by Dr. Alan Trounson from Monash University in Melbourne, Victoria. He had been part of the team that delivered the first in vitro fertilization baby in Australia in 1980, and during the late 1990s, he had been involved in work using human embryonic stem cells. In 2000 Dr. Trounson led a group of scientists from the Monash Institute of Reproduction and Development that was able to report work on developing nerve stem cells derived from embryonic stem cells. The success was reported on the front page of Nature magazine, and it received ...