Year: 2020

Review of 4 cell therapy types under study for COVID-19

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This is a post by Mina Kim, a UC Davis student intern for The Niche blog, about the main types of cellular therapies being studied clinically for COVID-19. During the novel coronavirus pandemic with millions of COVID-19 cases, the development of safe and effective treatments for patients is vital. Cellular medicine treatments are one of …

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Weekly stem cell reads: diabetic wound healing, clinic bad outcomes, pubs list

CLOCK-function-in-mesenchymal-stem-cells

What’s new this week in terms of reads includes a stem cell/drug combo for diabetic wonderments healing, more documentation of patient harms from stem cell clinics, and a list of recommending papers. Adult stem cells/glaucoma drug combo promotes diabetic wound healing in mice From a team of my UC Davis School of Medicine colleagues led …

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Mid-week rec reads: plague paleogenomics, bats, art, get new skin, & more

The-Dancers-III-IV-Marguerite-Humeau

I’m doing an experiment today to see if people enjoy a mid-week splash of a few Wednesday recommended science reads and the first one collides with art. You can see Sunday’s recommended weekly reads here too. Also, be sure to visit our Facebook page if you have a moment and please like our page if …

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Q&A with Roxland on stem cell clinic suits by Iowa & Nebraska

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I wrote last week about the Nebraska and Iowa state Attorney Generals filing lawsuits against stem cell clinic firms and three individuals also named as defendants. Although I went into detail about the individuals including leader Travis Autor and the firms, I didn’t yet go into much depth on the state lawsuits themselves in that …

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Weekly reads: FDA news, goosebump stem cells, MSCs, autophagy

Levy-et-al-MSCs-Science-Advances

Ready for the latest recommended weekly reads in the world of stem cells and the regenerative medicine space including a bunch of important new FDA posts & changes? This post has quite a lot on the FDA since it had a very big week with several new items of major importance to the cellular and regenerative …

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2 State AG’s sue ‘Stem Cell Centers’ clinics including for alleged fraud

Travis-Autor

Some readers suggested earlier this year that I look into a clinic firm called ‘Stem Cell Centers’ with its owner Travis Autor. I didn’t have time to do much since I’ve been very busy in the lab before the state Attorney Generals of Iowa and Nebraska sued them based on a number of allegations including …

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Weekly reads: ‘junk DNA’, COVID chaos, CRISPR CasΦ, & postdoc opps, more

Retroviral-genes-Junk-DNA-NIHsmall

Here are our weekly recommended regenerative medicine and other notable science reads including a few things on COVID. It’s been quite an interesting week. “Junk DNA” is not so junky, role in differentiation NIH scientists showed how ancient retroviral genes, or “junk DNA”, may play a role in helping stem cells decide to become neurons. This …

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New Mesoblast “COVID kid” stem cell study

Dr-Fred-Grossman-CMO-Mesoblast.

The biotech Mesoblast is starting an expanded access study of its stem cell product for kids with a severe offshoot of COVID-19. The cellular drug in this case is remestemcel-L (more below). While most children fare better than adults in dealing with COVID-19, the rare subset of kids with COVID-19 for this study have more severe …

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Reciprocal CRISPR gene editing in pediatric glioma: defining mechanisms & testing drugs

reciprocal-CRISPR-mutant-H3.3

My lab’s new paper in Communications Biology focused on high-grade pediatric glioma that have mutant histone variant H3.3 and we did something fairly novel that we are calling reciprocal CRISPR. Kids with these tumors have a near zero survival rate within a few years of diagnosis so we as a field desperately need something new to give …

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OCT4-SOX DNA dance, PRC2, a noisy competition & more cell weekly reads

EMBO-J-2020-Fig-3b-Salazar-Roa-et-al

What’s new in the stem cell, cell therapy, and regenerative medicine world as well as biomedical science more generally including cancer? There’s quite a bit of news as reflected in media pieces and new pubs. Today’s post is focused on pubs that just came out. For last week’s recommended reads see here. Oct4-Sox2 Nucleosome Binding …

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