Year: 2018

CRISPR to make IPS cells: review of new Ding lab paper

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CRISPR and IPS cells are two of my favorite things so when they come together as in a cool, new paper from Sheng Ding’s lab, I’m excited to read it and curious as to what the scoop is. Since 2006-2007 when mouse and human reprogramming were first reported, many different methods have been explored to …

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Adverse event in IPS cell (ips細胞) trial for vision loss in Japan: initial perspectives

Takahashi-IPS-transplant

A team of researchers at RIKEN and Kobe City Medical Center reported at a press conference today a serious adverse event in a clinical trial participant receiving an induced pluripotent stem cell (IPS cell)-based therapy for vision loss. According to Japan Times and Yahoo! Japan (in Japanese), the patient in question in the IPS cell …

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Florida bill aims to “crack down” on state’s for-profit stem cell clinics

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Florida is a hot mess on the for-profit stem cell clinic front. My own state of California isn’t much better and actually has a great number of clinics, but more problems are coming to light in Florida, at least at this point. Now WLRN reports that a legislator in Florida has proposed a new bill to try to …

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Some thoughts on taking risks in science & medicine

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Are you a risk-taker or do you do everything possible to avoid risks? Taking risks in science is necessary, but is there a wise way to take the risks you do? Science and medicine need a certain amount of risk and risk-takers to make transformative leaps forward. The risks in biomedical science can be conceptual …

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Keep calm & CRISPR on: perspectives on report of human Cas9 immunity

Keep-calm-CRISPR-on

The news that CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing in its current form may not work in a substantial fraction of people due to many of us having immunity to Cas9 came as a shock to many, but if you think about it, maybe it’s not so surprising. I don’t see it as the end of the world. A (preprint) from …

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FDA Issues 1st Stem Cell Warning Letter of 2018 to American CryoStem

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The FDA started off 2018 with a bang on the direct-to-consumer stem cell clinic front with a warning letter on January 3rd to American CryoStem, a firm involved in processing and distributing adipose stem cells. The company’s ATCELL™ adipose stem cell product was the focus of much of letter. The FDA indicated in the warning …

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Stem cells for scleroderma, new NEJM article reports promise

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The idea of using stem cells for scleroderma seems a bit more promising today. A new NIH-funded study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) gives some hope for the use of a combination of a specific type of myeloablation and a transplant of hematopoietic stem cells (HSC). This approach yields improved long-term …

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