Search Results for: Elon Musk

Something Elon Musk & I agree on: pushing back on anti-aging bluster

Elon Musk

Would you guess that Elon Musk might be into using biotechnology in a high-profile way to try to live far longer than usual, say to age 150? That would have been my assumption. There are countless things about Elon Musk that I really don’t like. I also don’t see many issues on which we are […]

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Dragons, unicorns, & glowing bunnies, oh my: Josie Zayner & Cathy Tie launch the Los Angeles Project

Josie Zayner, Cathy Tie, The Los Angeles Project

I have been reading up on something called the Los Angeles Project that involves gene editing embryos to try to make new animals. Biohacker Josie Zayner and Cathy Tie are the founders. They even have aspirations to make dragons and unicorns with CRISPR. That resonated with me for reasons I’ll talk about in a minute. What’s

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Weekly reads: blowtorch to American science, stem cells for teeth & stroke

Knoepfler-science-march

In all the time I’ve been a scientist I never worried about American science until the last month. Even during the first Trump administration, while there were challenges, I felt like things would generally be okay. Research continued. One of my daughters and I went to the Science March in 2017 in Sacramento. We bumped

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Grading my 20 stem cell & regenerative medicine predictions for 2024

Stem cell, crystal ball, predictions

Did you predict the major events in the stem cell and regenerative medicine field this year? I tried and today’s post are the grades on my predictions. Prediction is a key part of being a scientist even if we may not think about it that much. For instance, we have to try to predict what

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Weekly reads: aging cells, scientists relying on ChatGPT, anemone stem cells

cellular aging

Do our aging cells necessitate that we age overall as people? Flipping it around, if we can stop or reverse enough cellular aging, will our overall aging be positively affected? It’s clear that people age very differently from each other and so do our cells and organs. Interestingly, intramurally in a sense the cells and

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Weekly reads: Scott Gottlieb v. RFK Jr., DNA typewriters, Arnold Caplan

Peter-Marks-Scott-Gottlieb-FDA

Remember former Trump’s FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb? Gottlieb’s back in the news in an interesting way related to the upcoming second Trump administration. I just wrote about what to expect from new FDA Commissioner nominee Marty Makary. In that piece, I noted that Scott Gottlieb first came to lead the FDA after a record of

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Neuralink on the brain: another person gets implant

Neuralink, BCI

Neuralink has had a rollercoaster ride in the last few years with many ups and downs. They just recently deployed a brain implant into a second clinical trial participant. So it’s a good time to update where things stand. This more general area of science is often called brain-computer interface (BCI) research. The implants are

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20 stem cell & regenerative medicine predictions for 2024

Stem cell, crystal ball, predictions

Each year I make predictions for the stem cell and regenerative medicine field for the following year. Today’s prediction post is focused on what to expect in 2024. You can also see my stem cell predictions for 2023 and my grades on how I did. I also have made a video version of these predictions so please

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2023 stem cell predictions grades reflect wild year for regenerative medicine

stem cell predictions

Every year I make stem cell and regenerative medicine predictions. Looking at my predictions for 2023, they reflect a wild year but in many ways a good one overall. Below I have graded my 2023 predictions. Overall, my crystal ball gave solid results. Some of the predictions have been condensed to keep things concise, but you

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Weekly reads: stem cells for MS, good news x2, extending dog years, Neuralink updates

stem cells for MS

For about as long as I’ve been writing The Niche, people have been asking about stem cells for MS. There’s a huge need for new therapies. While a chemo-based approach with autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) looks to work for certain cases of multiple sclerosis (although not yet approved in the US), other cell

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