1963 - McCulloch and Till illustrate the presence of self-renewing cells in mouse bone marrow

1968 - Bone marrow transplant between two siblings successfully treats SCID

1978 - Haematopoietic stem cells are discovered in human cord blood

1981 - Mouse embryonic stem cells are derived from the inner cell mass

1992 - Neural stem cells are cultured in vitro as neurospheres

1995 - President Bill Clinton signs into law the Dickey Amendment which prohibited Federally appropriated funds to be used for research where human embryos would be either created or destroyed.

1997 - Leukemia is shown to originate from a haematopoietic stem cell, the first direct evidence for cancer stem cells

1998 - James Thomson and coworkers derive the first human embryonic stem cell line at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

2000s - Several reports of adult stem cell plasticity are published

2003 - Dr. Songtao Shi of NIH discovers new source of adult stem cells in children's primary teeth[14]

02 November, 2004 - California voters approve Proposition 71, which provides $3 billion in state funds over ten years to human embryonic stem cell research.

2004-2005 - Korean researcher Hwang Woo-Suk claims to have created several human embryonic stem cell lines from unfertilised human oocytes. The lines are later shown to be fabricated.

2005 - Researchers at Kingston University in England claim to have discovered a third category of stem cell, dubbed cord-blood-derived embryoniclike stem cells (CBEs), derived from umbilical cord blood. The group claims these cells are able to differentiate into more types of tissue than adult stem cells.

2001-2006 - President George W. Bush endorses the Congress in providing federal funding for embryonic stem cell research of approximately $100 million as well as $250 million dollars for research on adult and animal stem cells. He also enacts laws that restrict federally-funded stem cell research on embryonic stem cells to the already derived cell lines.

5 May, 2006 - Rick Santorum introduces bill number S. 2754, or the Alternative Pluripotent Stem Cell Therapies Enhancement Act. into the Senate

18 July, 2006 - The U.S. Senate passes the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act H.R. 810, and votes down Senator Santorum's S.2754.

19 July, 2006 - President George W. Bush vetoes H.R. 810 (Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act), a bill that would have reversed the Clinton-era law which made it illegal for Federal money to be used for research where stem cells are derived from the destruction of an embryo.

August 2006 - Cell Journal publishes Kazutoshi Takahashi and Shinya Yamanaka, Induction of Pluripotent Stem Cells from Mouse Embryonic and Adult Fibroblast Cultures by Defined Factors

07 November, 2006 - The people of the state of Missouri vote to protect the possibility of Stem Cell research in their state.

07 January, 2007 - Scientists at Wake Forest University led by Dr. Anthony Atala and Harvard University report discovery of a new type of stem cell in amniotic fluid.[1] This may potentially provide an alternative to embryonic stem cells for use in research and therapy.