As many of you know I am a cancer survivor myself so studying cancer stem cells has meaning for me on another level. Cancer is also the possible side effect most patients worry about when considering going to an unproven stem cell clinic. I’ve got a new video up on possible stem cell side effects […]
Weekly reads: cancer stem cells, Bik, & more Read More »
What can a gecko possibly teach us about skin cancer? Read on. It’s fun when a week’s worth of science reading covers so much territory including COVID-19, geckos that get cancer, a research misconduct sleuth, an FDA letter, and more. Baltimore weighs in on COVID lab origin idea Caltech has a very interesting interview with
Recommended reads: Bik, FDA letter, gecko cancer model, David Baltimore on COVID origin Read More »
The stem cell field has puzzled on and off for years over a constellation of papers on purported stem cells including so-called VSEL and MUSE cells. Many of us haven’t been convinced that these are real stem cells. I see VSEL and MUSE fitting into a larger pattern of dubious stem cell claims including the STAP
STAP cell deja vu? 28 VSEL papers flagged by Bik Read More »
How are stem cells, nukes, and bikini experts connected? Let’s go back in time a bit… The idea of stem cells has been around more than a century. For example Dr. Artur Pappenheim made a cell fate tree including stem cells in 1905. You can read more about this amazing, more than 100-year old stem
Stem Cells, Nukes, & Bikini Experts Read More »
When I was first really getting into stem cells as a trainee the name Catherine Verfaillie came up as a scientist to watch in the adult stem cell area. It wasn’t too long after that though that I started hearing that some of the work from her lab at the University of Minnesota was being
Recommended reads: Nature Catherine Verfaillie retraction, Horvath paper, Vertex Read More »
What happens during brain aging and how can we tell if dementia is coming? Are there particular early hallmarks? There are an increasing number of medical tests for predicting or detecting dementia. Alzheimer’s disease can often be detected early. But what do patients or their doctors do with such information? Until recently there weren’t any
Weekly reads: brain aging, perinatal stem cell clinics, $1M lab meat fine bill Read More »
Exactly ten years ago today, on January 29, 2014, I wrote about two new Nature papers on so-called STAP cells. The papers claimed that stress alone could convert regular non-stem cells into some of the most powerful stem cells. More specifically, the authors claimed to make pluripotent stem cells similar to iPS cells this way.
In today’s post, I reviewed a stem cell clinic firm called Docere Clinics. In my opinion, there are some concerning issues here and reasons for caution. One type of procedure at Docere is particularly surprising and raises risks in my view. What is Docere Clinics? | What kind of stem cells does Docere use? | What they
Review of Docere Clinics run by Harry Adelson including total-body injections Read More »
There has been a big jump in paper retractions in science over the last 20 years. What’s going on? How do the trends in the stem cell field compare to other fields like cancer research and more broadly? Is AI going to change the dynamic between those engaging in misconduct and those who are looking for misconduct
Trends in retractions as AI arms race on misconduct looms Read More »
As we think about how much of a role belief should play in the hard sciences such as cell biology, a supposed cell type called VSEL or very-small embryonic stem cell-like cells comes to mind. For these guys it seems to me that the ratio of data to belief isn’t great. VSELs have nine lives. I
The role of belief in hard science: the VSEL case Read More »