Stem cell good news, cool pubs, & some hype on living robots

Would living robots be good news? Purported living robots made from frog stem cells, which are called xenobots. This has been hyped
Would living robots be good news? Image of purported living robots made from frog stem cells, which are called xenobots. This idea has been hyped in my view as these seem like chimeric organoids to me.

Over time I seem to collect more upbeat stories about stem cells and regenerative medicine as well as cool publications  so today’s “good news” post is a collection of these kinds of things plus one example of huge science hype. Here’s a list of past such upbeat posts.

The preclinical good news in rats from my graduate alma mater UCSD, ‘New Injection Technique May Boost Spinal Cord Injury Repair Efforts‘ via stem cells. Here’s the actual Stem Cells Translational Medicine pub.from a team led by Joseph Ciacci.

On the IPS cell clinical front, stem cell-derived cardiac muscle cells go into the heart in human patients: ‘Osaka University transplants iPS cell-based heart cells in world’s first clinical trial

More on the IPS cell front, but this time disease modeling: “iPSC modeling of young-onset Parkinson’s disease reveals a molecular signature of disease and novel therapeutic candidates from a team lead by Clive Svendson.

A common problem, especially with aging: A review,  “Regenerative medicine and injection therapies in stress urinary incontinence“.

An interesting study in mice on the brain, aging, and stem cells from Cell Metabolism: “Reducing Hypothalamic Stem Cell Senescence Protects against Aging-Associated Physiological Decline.”

And finally, some huge hype here even if the research is quite interesting, “Meet the xenobot: world’s first living, self-healing robots created from frog stem cells.” I don’t think these are really unique, living organisms. They’re small collections of different cells like hybrid organoids. I’m also not convinced they qualify as robots either. We’ll see where this leads and whether I end up changing my initial impression.

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