The FDA has delayed the planned big April public meeting on stem cells until later this year. Basically, the reason given is that more time is needed for stakeholders to comment. It will be interesting to see if the FDA expands the meeting beyond the 1-day format, which was going to allow each speaker only …
Breaking: FDA postpones big stem cell public meeting Read More »
Should we be injecting bone marrow cells into someone’s eyes? it seems like a terrible idea to me based on what we currently know. Whenever I see a stem cell headline like this one from a recent Baltimore Sun piece, it raises many questions: Stem cells apparently reverse woman’s blindness. First of all, is the reporter, …
Study injects marrow cells into eye, charges $20K Read More »
Here are some cool science reads to enjoy this weekend. Lab-grown sperm made from stem cells can’t swim, but are able to fertilize eggs, reports Eric Boodman over at STAT. Mouse-human neural crest chimeras: Not only a matter of black and white. Clever title. Antonio Regalado writes about a DNA App Store coming soon to a …
Weekend reads: sperm, stem cells, chimeras, STAP, DNA Apps Read More »
We just ran a CRISPR backronym contest here at the Niche blog. What were we looking for in terms of CRISPR backronyms? We were hoping to see backronyms that were in a sense clever explanations using the letters C, R, I, S, P, R for what CRISPR might “really” stand for if it weren’t Clustered, Regularly, …
Medical News Today (MNT) published an article yesterday on a stem cell clinic in Mexico that caused a lot of concern because to many of us it came off as unbalanced and even promotional of the clinic. You can read my post from yesterday on this situation. In response, MNT has now revised their piece and included this …
Revised Medical News Today Stem Cell Article Improved But Still Unbalanced Read More »
A new article by Honor Whiteman in Medical News Today (MNT) on a Mexico stem cell clinic really takes the prize so far in 2016 amongst media pieces that engage in stem cell hype. Update; Many on Twitter are calling for retraction of this MNT article. The MNT article entitled “Stem cell therapy: is the US …
Medical News Today article reads like an ad for Mexico stem cell clinic Read More »
Over the years some scientists including yours truly have expressed concerns about the possibility that mutations could crop up during the reprogramming process to make induced pluripotent stem cells (IPS cells or IPSC). How concerned should we be about IPS cell mutations? A cool new paper, Bhutani, et al, in Nature Communications from a team led by …
For IPS cell mutations, some reassuring new data but validation still key Read More »
Below is a my interview with an FDA spokesperson on the upcoming April public meeting on the four recent draft guidances related to the regulation of HCT/Ps, including stem cell treatments. This meeting and the draft guidances could have substantial impact on future regulatory frameworks for stem cell treatments so I thought it important to …
New FDA Interview on April stem cell meeting & draft guidances Read More »
A great new piece in The New Yorker by Dana Goodyear, The Stress Test, gives us a window into Charles Vacanti’s side of the STAP cell mess and includes recent quotes from him. It’s a long, fascinating look inside of STAP, the tangled and ultimately tragic scientific implosion that created and then brought down two Nature …
Last month the stem cell community learned that a patient of the business US Stem Cell Inc./US Stem Cell Clinic, previously known as Bioheart, had filed suit in a Broward County Florida Court against the publicly traded company alleging various charges including damage to her eye. Now US Stem Cell has more recently filed suit in the …
US Stem Cell Clinic sues anonymous critics for libel, seeks IDs from websites Read More »