It was an honor and pleasure yesterday to show my friends, Roman Reed and Keri Kimler, around my stem cell lab here at UC Davis School of Medicine. My lab members got a chance to show Keri and Roman some of the interesting research we have ongoing involving ES cells and human iPS cells, funded …
Two people making a million-person difference in the stem cell field Read More »
I have in the past posted advice to new faculty and also top 10 advice list for the academic job hunt, but today I wanted to specifically talk about mentoring. Also, stay tuned for a special post later this week with an autobiographical section from Irv Weissman on his early career and who his key …
Irv Weissman’s lab came out with a very intriguing paper in Nature this week on regeneration and something called a blastema. Having a blastema It is not exactly on regenerative medicine of the kind we think about using exogenous stem cells, but more about how we might tap into nature’s own program for regeneration by …
If I only had a blastema: obstacles to human regeneration Read More »
I have posted before about publishing trends in the iPS cell field here and in here…. but where do things stand today? Here, I provide an important update. What’s going on now? Here I provide answers to the key questions. How many papers are there on iPS cells? An interesting and unexpected trend for this …
Everything you need to know about publishing in the iPS cell field Read More »
With the bewildering amount of news about stem cells, how do we tell the difference between hype and hope? Although the words “hype” and “hope” only differ by one letter, sometimes it is hard to tell them apart in real life, but of course they are very different things. So how do we know when …
We have a running series here on The Niche on the Republican candidates including Rick Perry for the GOP nomination for President for the 2012 Election. I blogged about Romney here, Huntsman here, and talked about Tex Guv Perry’s own stem cell transplant here. I also discussed the Republican field more generally in my podcast …
If Rick Perry is Prez what’s impact on stem cell research? Read More »
Periodically we do updates on the iPS cell field and now seems like a good time. Where do things stand? Here’s my top 5 list of action items for the iPS cell field in the coming year. 5.) Methods on the brain. A significant fraction, some would argue too high a fraction, of iPS cell …
Recently I polled my readers on how they make iPS cells and what the best method is in their opinion. The surprising results to date are above. The first thing that is striking is how dominant the Yamanaka method remains after 5 years. Despite scads of papers reporting new methods that are supposedly better in …
Texas Republican Governor, an opponent of Embryonic Stem (ES) cell research, has reportedly undergone an experimental procedure on his spine involving autologous transplantation of adult stem cells taken from his hip. The procedure, which is not FDA approved and costs tens of thousands of dollars, has no proven track record of success according to The …
Tex Guv Perry Gets Stem Cell Treatment: what if ES cells were his only hope? Read More »
Science Magazine has a new venture called ScienceLive that they say will “bring our readers in touch with prominent scientists on a weekly basis so they can ask questions on the hottest topics in science.” Sounds pretty cool to me. This week’s topic for ScienceLive is the future of stem cells featuring Hank Greely and …
New Outreach Effort by Science Magazine: this week’s live topic–stem cells Read More »