About 1 million people are living with multiple sclerosis in the U.S. alone with millions of other cases around the world so a huge effort has gone into trying to find new approaches to the disease including stem cells for MS. We’ll start our weekly recommended reads by talking about a new paper on MS …
Stem cells for MS & other weekly reads: CRISPR, COVID & a bat cave, Huntington’s Read More »
Some conditions like Huntington’s Disease are so bad and there are no treatments such that any bit of encouraging news can be cause for legitimate excitement, but at the same time things can go too far potentially, especially if there is news coverage not backed up by a published paper or some other definitive source …
Hope & hype on unpublished Huntington’s Disease trial splashy news Read More »
This is the first post in a series focusing on stem cell advances related to specific diseases. Today we discuss Huntington’s Disease and a paper that came out yesterday in the journal Neuron that provides some significant insight into the mechanisms behind the disease. It is entitled: Huntingtin Is Required for Mitotic Spindle Orientation and …
There appears to be a big, risky loophole in the relatively new national Right To Try law. Some folks apparently anticipated this problem long ago, but I think most of us weren’t aware of it. Update: More specifically, some law and policy experts were writing about this and other potential loopholes in 2018. I recommend …
Right To Try law has a big loophole that’s an opening for bad actors Read More »
I received a score of great nominations for the Stem Cell Person of the Year 2016 Award and have briefly described the twenty nominees below. The point of the award is to honor the top positive stem cell leader who specifically thinks outside the box and takes risks. I’ve started an on-line vote where you can vote once per day for …
20 Nominees for Stem Cell Person of the Year 2016 Award Read More »
The second session at our CRISPR meeting was really powerful. As with other posts from the UC Davis CRISPR meeting, since I was taking notes on the fly during this session, this post is a stream of bits from the different talks, often trying to capture the essence of key questions or ideas as the speakers …
UC Davis CRISPR Meeting Panel: A View from the Trenches on Human Disease Read More »
Both before and particularly now after the big human gene editing summit in Washington, D.C. at the National Academy of Sciences, I’ve talked with patients about their views on this new technology including at last week’s World Stem Cell Summit. One of the most striking moments of the DC summit was when the mother of …
Just freakin do it: patients voice impatience on CRISPR for genetic diseases Read More »
By Heather Main I was a little ashamed of myself that I didn’t know who half of the finalists were in Paul Knoepfler’s Stem Cell Person of the Year Award. I decided to look into it and find out what (or who) I have missed…..Interestingly, 3 of the 7 listed here are not scientists but …
Mini-bios on finalists for Stem Cell Person of the Year Read More »
By Jeanne Loring Last Tuesday I visited the FDA headquarters in Maryland, for a meeting called Public Meeting on Patient-Focused Drug Development for Huntington’s and Parkinson’s Diseases. The FDA holds about 6 meetings on different diseases each year, inviting patients and advocates to speak while a panel of FDA directors listens. The FDA representatives at …
Guest Post from Jeanne Loring: Patients talk stem cells. The FDA listens. Read More »
On Thursday here at UC Davis School of Medicine we held our second annual Stem Cell Ethics Symposium. The symposium was organized by Drs. Mark Yarborough and Nanette Joyce as well as me. In this post I report on key take homes from the meeting and summarize the specific talks. As far as I know, this is one of the few …
Meeting review of unique stem cell ethics symposium @UCDAVIS Read More »