Would you want a GI specialist doing your heart surgery? How about a radiologist doing your brain surgery? I wouldn’t. So why then do so many patients accept that the doctor doing their stem cell transplant has no training in that area? I’m doing a series on eight simple reasons not to get an unlicensed …
A few days ago I had a long, very enjoyable phone conversation with the father of the mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) field, Dr. Arnold Caplan. Dr. Caplan is Professor of Biology, Director Skeletal Research Center at Case Western. He coined the phrase “mesenchymal stem cell” in the late 1980s. I’m going to break the interview …
Insightful interview with Arnold Caplan: Part 1: MSC history, nomenclature, & properties Read More »
Recently I speculated on how a new pope (as yet unidentified at that time) might impact stem cells and the Catholic Church’s view of stem cells. I was skeptical. Now that we have the new Pope Francis, formerly Jorge Mario Bergoglio, what will happen on the Catholic Church’s stem cell front? I could not find …
Will new Pope Francis (Jorge Mario Bergoglio) cancel upcoming Vatican stem cell meeting? Read More »
What can a giant goldfish teach stem cell researchers about clinical use of the cells? It turns out, a great deal! A few weeks ago researchers from my home institution UC Davis and the US Forest Service made headlines with reported catches of giant goldfish in Lake Tahoe. These are not your grandad’s pond’s “big” …
Giant goldfish teach researchers about stem cell treatments Read More »
Last night there was a great fund-raising event for the St. Baldrick’s Foundation for children’s cancer research here in Sacramento. I was honored to captain the UC Davis School of Medicine Team (see at left). So far we have raised almost $2,500 for St. Baldrick’s. Please consider pitching in via this link. You can help …
Bald heads & big smiles: St. Baldrick’s 2013 Sac Event Inspires Read More »
The so-called “SafeCell” paper from the journal PLoS One is one that a number of advocates of deregulation of the stem cell industry often have mentioned to me: Safety of Cell Therapy with Mesenchymal Stromal Cells (SafeCell): A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Clinical Trials I have read this paper and have some thoughts on it. As …
Many of us in the scientific community who work on cancer got the message below about the extremely dire state of funding. To the NCI-supported scientific community: As you have heard and read, the Budget Control Act (aka “sequestration”) has gone into effect as of March 1st. All components of the NIH, including the …
Official message from Harold Varmus, Director of NCI, on Sequestration Read More »
Allan Robins of Viacyte (pictured at left–sorry for the fuzzy image) and Paul Simmons of Mesoblast presented this morning at the CIRM Grantee Meeting. Both talks were outstanding. Robins went first. He started by saying how Viacyte had a productive pre-IND meeting with the FDA last year. I believe a target for them is to …
There is a cool new art exhibit and it is the Bay Bridge here in San Francisco, decorated with 25,000 LEDs. It is the largest LED sculpture in the world. I took some video of it from the hotel (see below). It’s a must-see! It’s the work of artist Leo Villareal.
I’m here in San Francisco at the annual CIRM Grantee Meeting. As President Alan Trounson said, this is the best stem cell meeting in the world. We had two speakers tonight to kick off the meeting. Let me tell you my thoughts on each one. First, we had Rainer Storb from The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center …
CIRM Grantee Meeting on Wednesday March 6: fantastic talks by Drs. Storb & High Read More »