Month: November 2013

Has anti-aging finally come of age with Google’s Calico?

Can Google’s new anti-aging company, Calico, have you Googling at age 140? Don’t sell your burial plot just yet. The idea of anti-aging has been around for a very long time and efforts to combat aging have spanned millennia largely without any success so Calico (apparently short for California Life Company, which sounds more like …

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23andMe and the FDA: Perspectives on Warning Letter

23andMe

What’s the deal with this week’s FDA Warning Letter to 23andMe? First some background. I’m a researcher who studies stem and cancer cell genomics and epigenomics. I’m also a human being who has battled prostate cancer and is curious about my genome. With this background, I decided some time ago to take the plunge and experience what …

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Cell Surgical Network Series Part 3: Key Concerns

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I recently interviewed Drs. Elliot Lander and Mark Berman of the Cell Surgical Network. It’s an affiliated chain of clinics selling stem cell interventions for more than a dozen medical conditions. You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here of the interview where we cover 10 important questions. Today is Part 3, where I explain why their answers …

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Cell Surgical Network Interview Part 2: SVF, FDA, & Homologous Use

Today I am posting Part 2 of my interview with Drs. Lander and Berman of the Cell Surgical Network. You can read Part 1 here, which is an interesting look inside the Network. The final portion of this blog post series, Part 3, is my take on their answers and you might not be surprised that …

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Elliot Lander & Mark Berman Interview Part 1: A Window into Cell Surgical Network

The Cell Surgical Network is a large and growing group of affiliated stem cell clinics across the US. The Network providers use stromal vascular fraction (SVF) interventions for a host of conditions on a for-profit basis. Drs. Elliot Lander and Mark Berman lead the Network. They agreed to do a Q&A interview with me. Below is Part 1, …

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Review of New Yamanaka Paper on Defective iPS cells

A team led by Shinya Yamanaka has published a new study reporting analysis of defective induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells in the journal PNAS. Part of what I liked so much about this paper is that it tackled a very real, but controversial area of stem cell research. By this I mean the reality that a …

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Some More Thoughts on the Search for a New CIRM President

Yesterday I posted a list of a dozen potential candidates to be considered for the position of the new CIRM President. To be clear, that list is not my list. It is also not CIRM’s list and I’m sure that CIRM’s Search Committee has its own ideas of course. The list in yesterday’s post was …

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Dozen Candidates To Be New CIRM President

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Who might make a fantastic new CIRM President? The California stem cell community is abuzz with this question. This new President will not only lead CIRM today, but also in all likelihood will steer CIRM in its new incarnation after 2017, what I’ve called CIRM 2.0. At least that would be ideal. CIRM has posted a …

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Why I oppose de-extinction of woolly mammoths

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De-extinction is big right now and some of the extinct target creatures are big too like the woolly mammoth. “Let’s bring back these extinct creatures”, say proponents. Wouldn’t it be cool? I have to admit seeing a woolly mammoth, mastodon, or saber tooth tiger would be cool, but such efforts would not be without consequences …

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