Happy New Year and get ready for another 364 more days of stem cell excitement and craziness in 2022.
In the next day or two I’ll post my predictions for this new year.
Recommended reads
EO Wilson obit by Carl Zimmer in NYT. Who’s the next EO Wilson or someone like him with such big impact these days or in the future? There’s a great video (below) with his advice to young scientists.
Immune and Genome Engineering as the Future of Transplantable Tissue, NEJM.
Time is of the essence: the molecular mechanisms of primary microcephaly, G&D.
SARS-CoV-2 infects the human kidney and drives fibrosis in kidney organoids, Cell Stem Cell. It seems like the virus can infect far more types of organs and cells than originally thought.
Stem cells instead of drugs? Northwestern trial testing a way to help strengthen transplant patients’ immune systems, Chicago Tribune. It seems that co-transplant of stem cells can aid in a recipient’s immune acceptance of a new organ.
FDA untitled letter to Aspen Institute for Regenerative Medicine and Anti-Aging, FDA. This letter was dated December 20th. It is focused on umbilical cord blood, adipose cells, and exosomes. The “grade period” for compliance ended about half a year ago so if the agency is seeing what it defines as non-compliance now, why is it sending just untitled letters? Maybe in the future some wisdom to the hundreds of untitled letters sent out by the FDA in 2019-2021 will emerge? I don’t know.
Glancing through the full list of 2021 BLAs approved by the FDA is kind of interesting. There’s StrataGraft, RETHYMIC, Abecma, and Breyanzi on the cell and tissue front.
Researchers develop a stem cell-based implant for cartilage restoration and treating osteoarthritis, CIRM Blog. This seems to offer real hope on the bioengineered cartilage front. Here’s the original npj Regenerative Medicine article.