2018

Highlights #FOGM18 Day 1: Data from Ancient Dirt, Genomics Dilemmas, CAR-T, & CRISPR

FOGM-venue-Scripps-Seaside-Forum

There are many genomics meetings out there these days, but The Future of Genomic Medicine meeting (#FOGM18) at Scripps in La Jolla is one of my favorites. This meeting is uniquely empowering. The people and the talks combine for a one-of-a-kind experience. The venue doesn’t hurt either at the Scripps Seaside Forum. The evening before the meeting

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Journal club: Jaenisch lab paper on epigenetic CRISPR-Cas9 rescue of Fragile X in a dish

Liu-et-al.-Figure-6C-Fragile-X-CRISPR-Cell-e1519673510685

There’s much more to CRISPR-Cas9 than just gene editing and a new paper from the lab of Rudy Jaenisch in Cell highlights that in an exciting way. It reports epigenetic reversal of a Fragile X Syndrome phenotype in induced pluripotent stem cell (IPSC) neurons. Fragile X Syndrome is a neurological disorder in boys resulting from CGG repeat

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Just one word placentas: Can Celularity live up to hype?

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I’ve been blogging about stem cells now for about 8 years and the recent level of hype about and fluffy media coverage of Celularity, the biotech spun out of Celgene, ranks right up here with the most extreme past cases I’ve seen. What is Celularity and who is its leadership? It’s a new biotech focused

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On President’s Day: Dealing with Reality Trump is Threat to Science & Democracy

Trump-Liberty-Bell

On President’s Day, let’s think about our country’s leader, Donald Trump. Do we have to? Yeah, sometimes we do. For the first time in my lifetime, I see the President of the United States as a serious threat to overall science & to our country’s democracy. Trump is not well-acquainted with fact-based reality and that’s

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TGIF: Guns, stem cells, science weekends reads & good news

Wakabayashi-et-al.-Cell-Stem-Cell-Figure-1F

I’ve got some TGIF recommend reads on stem cells, etc, but first, what a week, right? We need more action on preventing gun violence. It’s a uniquely American health crisis that doesn’t have to be. There’s no real, common sense reason that gun control can’t reduce mass killings of our kids and others like the

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Pending State Medical Boards Group Report on Stem Cell Clinics Could be Game Changer

State-Medical-Boards-stem-cell-draft-recommendations

We have a big problem with clinics in the U.S. selling unproven and non-FDA approved stem cell “treatments” to patients and part of the reason in my view why we have this mess today with upwards of 700 such businesses from coast to coast is that regulators including both the FDA and state medical boards

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Washington State Bill to Require Unproven Stem Cell Clinics to Post Notices

Charles-Murry-UW

There’s some also encouraging action at the state level on direct-to-consumer stem cell clinics operating without FDA approval including most recently in Washington State. Last year here in California we passed a bill into law that (1) requires stem cell clinics selling non-FDA approved therapies to post notices for patients and (2) instructs the state medical

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