The patent dispute on CRISPR between UC/Jennifer Doudna and The Broad/Feng Zhang has been the subject of major attention including in a recent piece on Stanford Center for Law & Biosciences Blog. There is a lot of confusion over this important CRISPR dispute so I turned to a patent expert for their take on this via an interview …
Patent expert weighs in on CRISPR dispute between UC & Broad Read More »
Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In December I attended and spoke at the World Stem Cell Summit in Atlanta. It was a great meeting, but also I had the chance to go visit the Martin Luther King (MLK) Monument and tour his birth home. It was a very inspirational experience. MLK has been a hero …
I was eating my Sunday breakfast and reading the SacBee, when a full-page ad for a stem cell clinic jumped out at me. I dropped my toast onto the plate and grabbed my iPhone to take a picture. The ad is for Nervana Stem Cell Centers in Sacramento. A little research on their website revealed …
Fat & amniotic stem cell clinic Nervana opens in Sacramento Read More »
Science blogging is somewhat of a communal exercise. At least, it should be and cool biomed blogs are a great community. One of the most invigorating aspects of blogging is finding new blogs that are worthwhile and edgy. Below I list some of my recommendations for blogs that you might not be familiar with, but …
Cool biomed blogs you may not heard of: a drugmonkey, a med student, #CRISPR, & more Read More »
Over at RetractionWatch, their team does a great job following retractions of science papers. Sadly, the number of published manuscript retractions gives them more than enough material to post several times a day. There’s another phenomenon going on that I think might warrant their increased attention: the possibly rising number of retractions or corrections of science …
Science press releases behaving badly: time to start tracking their retractions? Read More »
Just how often do press releases (PR) get science wrong? A new paper came out from the lab of Matthias Lutolf in Nature Materials that seems interesting. Using a special matrix, reprogramming of cells reportedly worked better. Good stuff. However, a (PR) from the home institution of EPFL and media pick up on the story used …
Squeeze PR on stem cell paper evokes STAP cell bad vibrations, gets corrected Read More »
The FDA has sent a Warning Letter to the Irvine Stem Cell Treatment Center. The leader of Irvine Stem Cell Treatment Center is Dr. Thomas Gionis and the letter was addressed to him. Interestingly, this letter, dated December 30, 2015, contains redactions. At one time this clinic was part of the larger Cell Surgical Network (CSN) …
FDA Warning Letter to Irvine Stem Cell Treatment Center Clinics Across US Read More »
The Nuffield Council on Bioethics has released an open call for information and comments on genetic modification, including on humans and other organisms. I strongly encourage readers to participate and voice your opinions, regardless of whether you lean toward caution or taking risks on genetic modification. Your input will be important for how the Nuffield …
Patients are increasingly being used as guinea pigs in the stem cell for-profit clinic world via what I call stem cell shot-in-the-dark procedures. The clinics have no logical basis for claiming that these treatments work and are safe. As the number of stem cell clinics continues to grow in the US and more physicians add on …
A stem cell shot in the dark: clinics experiment on patients Read More »
I try to catch up on my science reading over the weekends and evenings. Here’s my recommended weekend reading on stem cells & science. Did I miss anything especially cool? Let me know in the comments. Direct reprogramming of skin cells into insulin-producing cells. I love direct reprogramming. Healios and Athersys Enter Into Regenerative Medicine Partnership. …
Recommended weekend reading on stem cells & science Read More »