2008 Woodie Awards
An Italian team of scientists and doctors tested a stem-cell treatment on dogs with the debilitating disease Duchenne's muscular dystrophy. After administering the treatment, the dogs that had been limping around for months, were suddenly bounding around like normal, healthy dogs.
Thousands of people who suffer from an irregular heartbeat known as atrial fibrillation can now rest a bit easier as research has begun on a product intended to stop strokes in the affected people. According to the Associated Press "the Watchman device (as it is being called for now) might provide long-needed protection for thousands of people with atrial fibrilation, whose main hope now is a problematic blood-thinning drug that too many can't tolerate.