Year: 2019

Stem cell & regenerative medicine meetings for you to go to in 2019

Stem-Cell-Meetings-2019

I keep a yearly hub of stem cell & regenerative medicine meetings here on The Niche. Below I’ve pasted the list for 2019, which continues to grow. If you don’t see yours listed, send me an email with the info including a link (knoepflerATucdavisDOTedu). These meeting listings are not endorsements and I try to make …

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Counterpoints to Lovell-Badge & Daley’s CRISPR baby rationales

CRISPR-baby

Two prominent scientists, Robin Lovell-Badge and George Daley, have been amongst the most outspoken proponents of leaving the door open to heritable human genetic modification via CRISPR. While they each have articulated their reasons in somewhat different ways at times, their core reasons arguing in favor of future heritable CRISPR appear largely the same. In …

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4 possible roles for stem cell therapy besides cell replacement

stem-cells-drug-delivery

Historically, the main route of proposed healing via stem cell therapy was cell replacement. In this way of thinking the transplanted cells engrafted (took up home) in the patient’s tissue and replaced dead or diseased cells. However, interest continues to grow in other possible modes of healing by stem cells that don’t rely on cell …

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‘So you don’t get eyeball in your hand’: Swedish Medical Center ‘infomercial’

Swedish-Adam-Pourcho-Regenerative-Medicine

Swedish Medical Center in Seattle is now marketing regenerative medicine therapies including some things that in my view are not really scientifically proven to work including via an infomercial. This is part of a bigger trend where more legit medical centers have begun selling regenerative medicine “treatments” that are still being developed. Sometimes they even …

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New Florida bill mixes RTT spirit with turning unproven stem cell sales into a felony

Florida-stem-cells

A new Florida bill (Bill 65 of 2019) could make the practices of stem cell clinics a felony. At the same time it would open the door to patients receiving still experimental stem cells that have at least started the clinical trial process. What’s going on? A number of states have been stepping up action …

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Japan’s dangerous gamble approving unproven stem cells for spinal cord injury

spinal-cord-injury-MRI

There is real hope for treating spinal cord injury with stem cell-based therapies in the future. However, unfortunately regulators in Japan have taken a major misstep in approving a not-ready-for-primetime mesenchymal stem cell (MSC)-based approach to spinal cord injury. Their decision is dangerous and unwise. In a Nature piece (linked to above) by David Cyranoski …

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Sales of ‘zombie’, birth-related ‘stem cells’ continue to mushroom

zombie-stem

The birth-related stem cell clinic industry is a serious problem for patients, the stem cell field, and the FDA as the clinics sell more and more of what I think of as “zombie” injections. One of the biggest changes in the last 2 years in the unproven stem cell clinic arena was predicted by the …

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Upbeat Burt team pub on stem cells for MS comes with uneasy back story

Stem cells for MS, Types-of-Multiple-Sclerosis

Stem cells for MS? How promising is that? A new paper gives stronger reason for hope, but unfortunately this story is more complex than it seems on first glance. New Paper The idea of using a stem cell-related approach to treat multiple sclerosis (MS) has been around for a long time holding major promise, but …

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Autologous or Allogeneic: a stem cell question (guest post from Jeanne Loring)

stem-cells-and-development-parkinsons-disease

By Jeanne Loring What can you do with cells that live forever and can make every cell type in the body?  The answer is: remarkable things, as new reports of clinical trials using cell types derived from pluripotent stem cells indicate. Pluripotent stem cells are either derived from embryos donated from IVF procedures (human embryonic …

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Stem cell & regenerative medicine good news including Fate Therapeutics

Stem cells spina bifida

In the past month or two there has been a steady stream of good news in the stem cell and regenerative medicine world. Here are three examples starting with Fate Therapeutics. Fate Therapeutics Fate Therapeutics announced the first US IND for an induced pluripotent stem cell (IPSC)-related product. Its cleared product, FT500, is an off-the-shelf …

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