I’ve seen many crazy things over the years doing this blog. There was the Moriguchi IPS cell fraud, the electric stem cell bra, the stem cell supermodel case, the stem cell soup No. 7 aphrodisiac, the STAP cell scandal….and the craziness goes on. Today there’s a new one that even surprised me. Haruko Obokata, lead STAP …
Haruko Obokata 小保方 晴子-like Game Character Conducts ‘Dangerous Research’ Read More »
By Aaron Goldman Much like the winter weather we’ve been enduring on the east coast, cancer research is advancing at a rapid clip! For decades, researchers have considered pools of “cancer stem cells” (CSC) as the subsets within a tumor which both initiate progression and underpin the failure of therapy. Over the past 5 years, …
Dr. Christopher Fasano, principal investigator at the Neural Stem Cell Institute and creator and host of THE Stem Cell Podcast founded a unique stem cell meeting in 2013. In this short interview I find out about The Next-Gen Stem Cell Conference (to be held this year on May 6-7) and how it differs from the …
A cool new paper is out in Stem Cell Reports describing long-term tumorigenicity of human induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSC or IPS cells). See graphical abstract. The potential tumorigenicity of IPSC is a major concern when teams around the world are translating IPSC technology to the bedside. Past studies including one from my own lab have …
The still mysterious BioGatekeeper had challenged Yamanaka’s IPS cell patent claiming that it was obvious. The potential implications were huge given the commercial interest in translating IPS cell technology. For background see here, here, and here. There’s pretty much zero information on BioGatekeeper otherwise. Despite the potential seriousness of this patent challenge, just a few days …
Challenge of Yamanaka Patent by BioGatekeeper Fails Read More »
On Thursday here at UC Davis School of Medicine we held our second annual Stem Cell Ethics Symposium. The symposium was organized by Drs. Mark Yarborough and Nanette Joyce as well as me. In this post I report on key take homes from the meeting and summarize the specific talks. As far as I know, this is one of the few …
Meeting review of unique stem cell ethics symposium @UCDAVIS Read More »
Here are some recent stem cell headlines. It was a busy week. The linked phrases in blue were the actual headlines from the media. ViaCyte Excites. A Pancreas in a Capsule Stem cells for malaria? (see video) Stem cells offer promising key to new malaria drugs: US research STAP Finally Snaps? Only moot penalties? RIKEN announces penalties related to stem …
Stem Cell Headlines: Pancreas, Malaria, STAP, Howe, Cosmetics, MS, and Cloning Couple Read More »
NatureNews is a science news outlet so I’ve been wondering what the heck the deal is with their strongly biased news coverage of the mitochondrial transfer 3-person IVF technology debate. By way of context, I like NatureNews and am a regular reader, but their coverage of the mitochondrial transfer debate has been completely one-sided and inaccurate. Their …
Remember that old TV show the Odd Couple with very proper Felix Unger and his polar opposite Oscar Madison who has all kinds of baggage? They’ve cloned it into a remake to be on TV soon here in the US in 2015. It seems only fitting then that actual human cloning research has a new …
The Odd Couple of Cloning Research: Mitalipov & Woo Suk Hwang Unite Read More »
It’s been somewhat of a helter-skelter time for the new technology often referred to as 3-person IVF or mitochondrial transfer as the UK considers whether to legalize this experimental technology for use in humans. I believe that this technology is not ready now for use in humans and for more background on why as well …