The stem cell field lost a great scientist and friend this week with the passing of Meri Firpo from metastatic breast cancer. I’m going to post a tribute to Meri from several of us sometime this coming week. I’m in a bit of a somber mood but still trying to write, read, and do all the other usual academic stuff. Here are this week’s recommended reads.
COVID-19
Ethical issues and public communication in the development of cell-based treatments for COVID-19: Lessons from the pandemic, Stem Cell Reports. The authors Leigh Turner, Megan Munsie, Aaron D. Levine and Laertis Ikonomou provide a helpful overview of the cell therapy for COVID-19 arena and provide some perspectives on ways things could be improved. They cite work from my student Mina Kim and I where we evaluated the anticipated rigor of COVID-19 cellular therapy trials in the journal Regenerative Medicine.
Stem cell reads & other regenerative reads
- Introducing dorsoventral patterning in adult regenerating lizard tails with gene-edited embryonic neural stem cells, Nat. Comm. See image from Fig. 1 above. In this context, tissue regeneration is not able to reproduce the complex patterning of normal development.
- A cis-acting structural variation at the ZNF558 locus controls a gene regulatory network in human brain development, Cell Stem Cell
- Joint single-cell multiomic analysis in Wnt3a induced asymmetric stem cell division, Nat. Comm.
- Stress-responsive transcription factors train stem cells to remember, Cell Stem Cell
- ZFP423 controls EBF2 coactivator recruitment and PPARγ occupancy to determine the thermogenic plasticity of adipocytes, G&D
- Morc3 silences endogenous retroviruses by enabling Daxx-mediated histone H3.3 incorporation, Nat. Comm.
- Emerging roles of bromodomain protein 4 in regulation of stem cell identity, Stem Cells.
- Want to add healthy years to your life? Here’s what new longevity research says, WaPo.