What science and stem cell pubs are you reading right now and what do you hope to get too soon?
Sometimes science means getting out in the field. Now there are no wild stem cells out there roaming the fields to catch and analyze, but there are other ways.
A couple of my kids and I went out to watch the Perseid Meteor Shower a few weeks back. We brought our camera with us to try to catch some meteors with leaving the shutter open a long time.
We didn’t have any luck capturing meteors on camera, but we saw quite a lot of good ones ourselves.
In case you missed the shower, I found these on the web from this wonderful year of 2020: Favorite Perseid Meteor Shower photos. See one at left.
Now on to the recommend science reads for the week. If you are here for the weekly stem cell quiz question, it’s at the bottom and I’ll reveal the answer on Monday or Tuesday. Make your guesses in the comments please.
What’s real? Laureate Eugene Wigner and a physics puzzle
Quantum paradox points to shaky foundations of reality. Nobel Laureate physicist Eugene Wigner came up with a puzzle that is reminiscent of Schrodinger’s Cat. Wigner’s friend is a paradox that is still sparking debates and new discoveries in science.
Here’s a new research paper just from a few days ago about it.
Recommended science pubs
I don’t know why, but somehow most of the stuff on my science to-read or already read list is within the Nature Publishing Group family this week.
- First, here’s a link to a special Cell collection of papers on human disease modeling including via gene editing in stem cells. My postdoc Michael Chen and I wrote a review on the use of CRISPR In stem cells a couple years back that you might find interesting: To CRISPR and beyond: the evolution of genome editing in stem cells.
- Check out Broad host range of SARS-CoV-2 predicted by comparative and structural analysis of ACE2 in vertebrates, PNAS, from my UC Davis colleagues.
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Lymph protects metastasizing melanoma cells from ferroptosis from a team led by Sean Morrison in Nature. There’s a lot more to lymph than we thought.
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From Nature, Unique homeobox codes delineate all the neuron classes of C. elegans. I spent my graduate years studying homeodomain proteins including Pbx and Hox proteins so this paper brought back memories.
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Nature News has Signs of ‘citation hacking’ flagged in scientific papers. Here’s the preprint.
- Nature Plants. Gu, N., Tamada, Y., Imai, A. et al. DNA damage triggers reprogramming of differentiated cells into stem cells in Physcomitrella. Nat. Plants (2020). Yes, plants not only have stems, the foundation of their structure, but also stem cells.
- This Nature Medicine pub is focused on cartilage regrowth in joints in mice. Articular cartilage regeneration by activated skeletal stem cells. It’s not clear whether this kind of thing can happen in people.
Exosome firm Kimera submits IND application for COVID
I’ve been following a firm called Kimera Labs, one of the main suppliers of exosomes in the U.S. One of my concerns in that space has been that stem cell-like clinics have been injecting people with unproven and non-FDA approved exosomes for years and that trend seems to be increasing.
As to Kimera, I’ve been concerned that their exosomes have been used clinically by some physicians, although the material is not yet an FDA approved drug. The FDA also sent them an untitled letter a few months ago about this too.
Now Kimera has filed an IND application with the FDA, which I see as a positive step. Still, I found it remarkable that in the PR about the new IND application it is stated boldly that their product has already been used as a supposed treatment tens of thousands of times in patients:
“Founded in 2012, Kimera® generated the first publicly available isolated exosome product and has treated over 35,000 thousand patients for a variety of investigational uses.”
I’m scratching my head on that one.
Without a drug approval or to my knowledge even any other IND clearance, how could you have already treated tens of thousands of patients?
Weekly stem cell quiz question
I’m starting a new feature, which will be a weekly quiz question about stem cells and regenerative medicine. Here is today’s question and as I said at the top of the post, add your answers as comments.
What scientist working on cell fate and transcription at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in a way helped lay the foundation for Shinya Yamanaka’s later production of IPS cells in 2006? Bonus: What factor is this scientist arguably most well known for studying and why is it relevant to reprogramming?