Month: May 2015

Statins dilemma: heart & cancer benefits, but diabetes risk

statin_drugs

Statins have been hailed as some of the best drugs ever. Given the massive, deadly prevalence of cardiovascular disease, some have even semi-jokingly talked about putting these drugs in the water supply for public health. The growing evidence (e.g. this story) that statins might significantly aid in prevention, delayed progression, or even post-treatment delay of …

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Stem cells on Mother’s Day, clinical trials, and more

stem-cell-clinical-trials-map

One of the many interesting ways in which “stem cells” are named in different languages around the world is “mother cells”. For example, in Spanish, you can learn more about these “mother cells” here in ¿Qué son las células madre? On Mother’s Day it is worth thinking about where the stem cell field stands at this …

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GMO: Why 3 Such Difficult Little Letters?

GMO

What is a GMO? I realized a few years ago that I really should know a lot more about the whole debate over genetically modified (GM) organisms (GMOs). What are the facts on GMOs? As a scientist who has for many years done amongst other things genetics research including making and studying so-called “knockout mice” …

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Biotechnology & the Ethical Imagination – A Preview of BEINGS summit

beings-logo

Later this May, I will attend and participate in Biotechnology and the Ethical Imagination (BEINGS 2015). This is an exciting and experimental summit that will focus on advances in cellular biotechnology – including both stem cell science and synthetic biology. The meeting is premised on the idea that the implications of increasing biotechnology power are …

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Doudna most deserving of CRISPR Cas9 patent, says poll

CRISPR-Patent-Poll

With more than 250 votes cast, Jennifer Doudna is leading by a decisive margin in a poll asking who deserves the patent for use of CRISPR-Cas9 as a tool. Feng Zhang got only just over half the votes of Doudna. Another take home message from this poll is that a sizable minority–almost one in five– said …

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Recommended stem cell papers for weekend reading

Below I’ve listed some papers that are recommended for weekend reading. Enjoy. You can find more recent recommended reads here. Cool new heterochromatin stem cell aging paper in Science from Izpisua Belmonte Lab. ESC apoptosis pathway. An Apela RNA-Containing Negative Feedback Loop Regulates p53-Mediated Apoptosis in Embryonic Stem Cells, paper from Jing Huang lab in …

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