The idea of mesenchymal cells or MSCs for MS has been around for a long time. However, there haven’t been that many strong clinical trials testing it. There’s a new paper out that reports one of the stronger MSC-related trials for MS in terms of design. In this case, they didn’t use just MSCs but […]
Mostly discouraging trial of MSC-NPs or purported neural cells from MSCs for MS Read More »
It’s always exciting when your lab has a new paper and my team just published a study knocking out the H3f3a gene in mice, which codes for histone H3.3 protein. We found that loss of this gene leads to lethality at a late stage of embryonic development. There were also indications of more specific phenotypes
Weekly reads: H3.3 on the brain, Texas bill, HSCs Read More »
A new stem cells for ALS treatment trial represents a big step forward. It’s early days still but this trial shows feasibility and provides a helpful foundation for moving forward. It also highlights challenges. The work is from a team led by Clive Svendsen. Stem cells for ALS treatment trial Here’s the study. Transplantation of
A clever idea to try to use AI to make cellular machines has produced something being called xenobots. However, the research is getting overblown in some ways. What does this have to do with Zambonis? Read on. What are xenobots? A xenobot is supposed to be a cellular robot made from frog stem cells. The robot part
Xenobots, Zambonis, and cellular hype Read More »
A cool new paper is out in Stem Cell Reports describing long-term tumorigenicity of human induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSC or IPS cells). See graphical abstract. The potential tumorigenicity of IPSC is a major concern when teams around the world are translating IPSC technology to the bedside. Past studies including one from my own lab have
Lessons from New IPS Cell Study Showing Tumors Read More »
Recently I was at the World Alliance Forum in San Francisco (WAFSF), a great meeting on stem cells and regenerative medicine. WAFSF had some excellent talks and I saw one session on the use of stem cells to treat vision impairment that was particularly striking. World Alliance Forum in San Francisco (WAFSF) This session’s all-star lineup included Drs. David
WAFSF stem cell vision talks: Hinton, Tsukamoto, Klassen, Takahashi Read More »
StemCells Inc. is a top biotech company developing stem cell-based therapies. They have a deep pipeline that includes already ongoing trials for a variety of diseases. I invited company leadership to do an interview and they graciously accepted. Below is the interview with CFO Greg Schiffman (picture at left from LinkedIn) including what I thought
Interview with StemCells Inc. leadership on hot topics Read More »