Year: 2012

Barbra Streisand: stem cell advocate

Yesterday I was visiting L.A. and happened by the Walk of Fame, seeing many stars including the one of Barbra Streisand (below). Streisand has been doing interviews (see article here ) for both TV and newspapers regarding her advocacy for heart disease research for women. Interestingly, this interest of Streisand’s directly involves stem cells according to …

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Predictions for the stem cell field for 2013: but first how did I do predicting for 2012?

Every year I make predictions about what the following year will bring us in the stem cell field. For example, last year I made some predictions for 2012 and I shortly will do a post on my predictions for 2013. First, how did I do with my predictions for this year, which I made in …

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Strangest stem cell event of 2012: Moriguchi’s fake iPS cell transplants

I’m doing a poll on the strangest stem cell-related event of the year in 2012. The results are in and people seem to think all the candidate strange events were indeed odd, but the strangest of all was deemed the Japanese scientist Moriguchi faking that he had done iPS cell transplants on humans, a story …

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Reporters & sci-writers guide to interviewing stem cell clinics: key questions

More and more often I find myself chatting with reporters and science writers about stem cells. They want to know more for background on articles on topics ranging from core stem cell scientific issues to stem cell clinics. Over time I’ve realized I’ve been telling reporters and science writers some consistent things that amount to …

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Perfect storm dodged: what are three key challenges for stem cell field going into 2013?

I recently attend a conference in Florida called The World Stem Cell Summit. It was very enjoyable and unique in that it brings together and is open to all constituents of the stem cell world. I gave a couple talks and did an “expert” luncheon at this meeting, but what I enjoyed most was talking …

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My concerns about Nature paper on Genome Transfer for mitochondrial disease

A paper just came out in Nature yesterday entitled: “Nuclear genome transfer in human oocytes eliminates mitochondrial DNA variants.” It’s surely risky of me to say this, but is this paper really a clinically-relevant breakthrough for mitochondrial disease worthy of a Nature paper? The study as science is fine and very interesting, but it seems  quite …

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What was the strangest event for stem cells in 2012? Pick from top 5 in poll

Every year around this time I put my “best of” the year in stem cells including awards such as my Stem Cell Person of the Year Award. For example here are the 2011 awards. This year I’m also trying with difficult to decide on what was the craziest thing for stem cells that happened in …

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Texas Judge Issues Complicated Restraining Order in Celltex v. RNL Bio/Human Biostar tussle

Today, a judge issued a complex, temporary restraining order (PDF here, provided by Celltex) regarding Texas stem cell company Celltex and Human Biostar Inc (HBI)/Biostar, former partners who are now in conflict and have sued each other. For more background see here, here, and here. Note that while both parties have sued each other, the judge’s ruling …

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