A new right-to-try company called Beacon of Hope is stirring some intense discussion. State and federal right-to-try laws could potentially change the fabric of how many investigational studies are conducted. That may happen through firms like Beacon of Hope. However, we don’t know much about the firm. I’m hoping to help change that. Today’s post …
Richard Garr Q&A on his new Right-To-Try firm Beacon of Hope Read More »
On one level a reasonable argument can be made for letting terminally ill patients have a right to try experimental as yet unproven therapies, but in the real world Right-To-Try laws have many downsides. On the whole, they are likely to be negative for patients as a group. Raising the stakes is a push for …
Will Right-To-Try Morph into Right-To-Profit for Stem Cell Clinics? Read More »
The U.S. Senate just passed a bill that if it becomes law would codify Right-To-Try as a federal law, meaning terminally patients across the U.S. could ask their physicians and drug manufacturers to be given still investigational therapies such as still unproven stem cell therapies in development. The bill’s official name is “The Trickett Wendler …
Senate Passes Federal Right-To-Try: Poll on Your Opinion Read More »
Should patients have the Right To Try experimental therapies that could be unsafe and ineffective? What if those patients have a terminal illness and no reasonable prospects of being helpful to conventional medicine? Doesn’t it make perfect sense to let them try a risky approach if they want to do so? On the other hand, …
Upcoming Right-To-Try debate: NYU’s Roxland and Goldwater’s Sandefur Read More »
Right-To-Try laws have been passed in many states across America, paving the way in theory for gravely ill patients to have the right to try unproven treatments of various kinds, and now there is a serious push underway for a national Right-To-Try law. What is a Right-To-Try law? Typically, these Right-To-Try laws allow for a patient …
Push for National Right-To-Try Law Raises Concerns in Stem Cell Community Read More »
There is still plenty of reason to worry about unproven stem cells being marketed in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world. I’ll start with a new item here in the U.S. on a firm called MD Stem Cells and end with a newly published paper about how things are going in Poland on this …
Weekly reads: MD Stem Cells, embryo models & headaches, cell therapy trial updates Read More »
If you’ve never heard of the KRAS G12C mutation, it’s a particularly frightening mutation present in numerous cancers. Like the MYC oncogene, many people view mutations in RAS as undruggable, but new efforts show some glimmers of hope. The drug Sotorasib has been approved by the FDA to target the KRAS G12C mutation. Here’s a …
Weekly reads: KRAS G12C, eLife journal controversy, bird iPSCs Read More »
Each year I metaphorically try to look into a crystal ball for stem cell predictions for the coming year and I did so for 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic threw a monkey wrench into my predictions. It actually kind of blew some up. It also raised some interesting questions and dilemmas. For instance, do many …
To get at addressing what’s the real deal on the idea of cellular therapies for COVID-19, I did a short email Q&A interview with Dr. Sean Morrison. Sean is Chair of the Public Policy Committee at ISSCR and Director of Children’s Research Institute at UT Southwestern. He was also President of ISSCR in 2015-2016, and …
Interview with Sean Morrison on cellular therapies for COVID-19 Read More »
Every year in December and early January I do a post predicting some key events for the stem cell and regenerative medicine field for the upcoming year and today’s post contains my predictions for 2020. You can see my past 2019 predictions along with my grades for them here. I gave myself a B+ for …
20/20 vision? The Niche’s 20 stem cell & regenerative medicine predictions for 2020 Read More »