What does the future hold for the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), also known as the California Stem Cell Agency? While new CIRM grants should be awarded up until 2017, CIRM is rightly thinking about its future. Californians should be paying attention and thinking ahead too. You might say that since I’m a CIRM …
The Case for CIRM 2.0: Continuing California’s Stem Cell Leadership Read More »
Congratulations to Dr. Elena Cattaneo, the winner of the 2013 Stem Cell Person of the Year Award. Her lab studies neural stem cells, particularly as they relate to developing new therapies for Huntington’s Disease. Cattaneo is Director and Co-Founder of the Unistem, the Centre for Stem Cell Research at the University of Milano, Italy. She …
Stem Cell Person of the Year 2013: Elena Cattaneo Read More »
Osiris, a cellular therapy biotech, recently received a so-called “untitled letter” from the FDA. The text of the letter seems on the whole negative in my opinion, while the company’s public reaction to the letter on the other hand could be seen paradoxically as rather cheery. What’s going on here? With Halloween coming, one has …
I recently held a flash 48 hour contest for free tickets to the World Alliance Forum on the future of stem cells at which Yamanaka and others will be speaking. Congrats to the winners, Sai Vemula and Johnathon Anderson. Here are their winning entries. Sai Vemula Editor, SSSCR-International, UC Berkeley, Molecular and Cell Biology B.A. This …
Ben Paylor has made some awesome animated stem cell videos for educational outreach via his project called StemCellShorts supported in part by the Stem Cell Network. These videos are narrated by true scholars of the field and are a very effective means for teaching about stem cells. I really enjoyed them and highly recommend them …
StemCellShorts Videos Cool & Powerful Tools for Stem Cell Outreach Read More »
This morning I particularly enjoyed a talk by Sui Huang focused on the application of mathematics as a tool to understand cell behavior and fate. I love this stuff! I just wish I was better at math and physics so I could have a deeper understanding of how they apply to stem cells. Huang is …
Mountains in Banff: From Theoretical Stem Cells Ones to the Real Deal Read More »
You can jailbreak your iPhone, but perhaps you can jailbreak a cell too to turn it into a stem cell. In his very cool talk up here at the Till & McCulloch Meeting on Stem Cells yesterday, Andras Nagy characterized the reprogramming process to make iPS cells as “jailbreaking” cell fate. Nagy described some intriguing studies done on …
What is “radically deterministic” cellular reprogramming? Jacob Hanna’s lab recently published a very high profile Nature paper on nearly 100% efficient iPS cell formation based on targeting a factor called Mbd3. This super efficiency is a major departure from past reported efficiencies. This morning here at the Till & McCulloch Stem Cell Meeting in Banff, …
Jacob Hanna on Radically Deterministic Reprogramming @TMM2013 Read More »
Several people up here at the Till & McCulloch Stem Cell Meeting in Banff have asked who is going to be the winner of the 2013 Stem Cell Person of the Year Award. The winner will be announced on Tuesday, October 29th. As many of you know we have 12 finalists chosen by an Internet …
I have made it in one piece to beautiful Banff all the way from Davis, CA. Talk about a change of scene. Davis, CA couldn’t be flatter, while Banff is surrounded by beautiful snowy capped mountains. See image at right from the hotel. Wow. I walked over to the conference center and there was a …
Till & McCulloch Stem Cell Meeting in Banff: The Road Here Read More »