Month: June 2011

Growing organs for transplants in swine: a pig in a poke?

There have been a lot of recent headlines about a report that it might be possible to grow human organs in pigs. Someone even proposed the crazy idea of using human iPS cells to make chimeric human/swing animals that contain certain human organs, which could then be harvested.  To say this is a bad idea …

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Help save prostate cancer research, make a difference on the day after Father’s day!

Congress is looking for ways to cut spending and one way they are considering is cutting the Dept. of Defense Prostate Cancer Research Program (DoD PCRP). The DoD PCRP has an incredible track record for funding the best cancer research and has pushed forward research leading to important clinical trials. Cutting the DoD PCRP is …

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The recipe for success for stem cell biotechs such as Geron, ACT, and ViaCyte: 3 key ingredients

What will we define as a success for any given stem cell biotech? In academia, even if we do pre-clinical, translational kind of biomedical sciences, we still do not often think about what it takes to succeed in industry. Even if we very much want our research to make a difference for patients, do we …

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Advanced Cell Technology and Geron: allies or competitors?

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Two companies, Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) and Geron, both HQ’d here in California, have FDA-approved early stage clinical trials in the works. Geron’s trial has already started and reportedly now has enrolled at least two patients. The trial is of course for the safety of Geron’s GRNOPC1 oligodendrocyte product made from human ES cells for …

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Top News from ISSCR today: exciting stuff!

What’s going on at ISSCR? A lot of cool stuff based on today’s Tweets from people attending. Tweeters are in ( ).  Andras Nagy is the iPS cell Renaissance man! This morning at #ISSCR2011, talks by Shinya Yamanaka and Andras Nagy both featured Glis1, an egg-specific TF that promotes reprogramming. (the_Node) #ISSCR2011 Jaenisch:changing the order of …

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Our readers’ somewhat sobering predictions on the clinical future of iPS cells: I’m more optimistic

I put up a poll recently asking readers for their predictions on where iPS cells as a field will be one year from today. We got a large number of responses to the poll and overall they appear to reflect surprisingly limited optimism. I am not as pessimistic as my blog’s readers, but I think there …

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Lisa Ray, Stem Cell City, and stem cell resources across the globe

The McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine has launched a new effort they call “Stem Cell City”. As part of the launch they have enlisted the help of Lisa Ray, a Canadian Actress/Model, who was treated for Multiple Myeloma in 2009 using a stem cell transplant. Lisa Ray has a video that is quite compelling (see …

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Family Research Council angrily calls NSF ignorant about stem cells: reality check!

The ultra right-wing Family Research Council (FRC), a non-scientific organization, today issued a press release slamming the National Science Foundation (NSF), one of the premier scientific organizations in the world over their supposed ignorance about stem cells. What sparked the FRC’s ire was a press release from NSF that discussed a paper in Cell that …

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President Romney and stem cells: the road to disaster

Tonight the Republican candidates for President of the United States will face off in their first fully-attended debate. The frontrunner by far to win the Republican nomination and face President Obama in the Fall of 2012 is Mitt Romney. Although that is not saying a whole lot given the weakness of the Republican group of …

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