Search Results for: sci-fi

Mystery of wild sci-fi film ad for unproven exosomes: Liveyon?

awakening-exosome-film-ad

What’s Liveyon up to these days? A new, somewhat mysterious short film that serves as an advertisement for unproven exosomes has some of us scratching our heads. It seems to point to Liveyon. Can you guys as readers of The Niche help solve the puzzle of who’s behind this wild “cinematic commercial” and what the …

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NYT asks which sci-fi work is most prescient today: I think GATTACA

GATTACA-poster

The New York Times recently asked 6 people what sci-fi movie or novel is most prescient today; in my view it’s GATTACA. The responses ran the gamut: Fahrenheit 451, The Martian, The Fifth Season, The Body Snatchers, Book of the New Sun, and Use of Weapons. To me of those 6, the best case can …

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Portraying sci-fi about stem cells and aging as reality: unhelpful hype

I believe that stem cells may at some point allow people to live slightly longer, maybe a couple years on average. However, I think they have the potential to dramatically increase the quality of life during the time we are alive.  My colleague Amy Adams over at the CIRM research blog had a great post …

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In big shift Dr. Robert Lanza exits Astellas

Dr. Robert Lanza

The recent news of Vertex Pharma buying small stem cell biotech ViaCyte and Doug Melton moving to Vertex brought to mind an old stem cell biotech called Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) and its leader, stem cell biologist Dr. Robert Lanza. Years ago, big pharma firm Astellas bought ACT and Lanza moved to be a leader of regenerative …

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Cheating death via regenerative medicine or stem cells?

Cheating-death

How does one go about cheating death? As I get older, fighting aging seems more relevant. Having battled a potentially fatal cancer also gave me a taste of mortality. In biomedical research, it seems like living longer has become an obsession for some recently. Cheating death with cell therapies or other regenerative approaches? Could stem …

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Human cloning is more likely now but would you take the big risks?

human cloning

I’ve been following the research related to human cloning now for more than a decade. Is human cloning more possible at this point? How do we even define such cloning? Did you know there are two types? The goal of this post is to educate you and in the process answer such questions. What’s in …

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Ukraine clinic plans to sell CRISPR enhancements: hair color, skin, & breast size

medeus clinic crispr enhancements

It was a couple of years back that researcher He Jiankui claimed he made three “CRISPR babies.” No one would think about doing any kind of rogue gene-editing again, right? Not even somatic gene edits. After all, as far as we know he’s in jail. We still don’t know the health risks that these three …

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Liveyon is back (again) with unproven exosome product

Liveyon

Remember our old friends Liveyon? Their leader John Kosolcharoen? Liveyon’s continuing metamorphosis This biologics supply firm has gone through several stages of corporate metamorphosis as a supplier of biologics including at first a purported living umbilical cord stem cell product. That stem cell thrust ultimately landed a dozen or more people in the hospital as …

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More Liveyon links to exosome Awakening film include potential relative

Awakening-film-marketing-screenshot

A new film-commercial entitled Awakening pitches unproven exosomes and has already been possibly tied to the troubled stem cell supplier firm Liveyon, but now it seems that the links go far deeper including a possible relative of Liveyon leader John Kosolcharoen. Even so, Kosolcharoen (pictured with another Liveyon leader Alan Gaveck below in a web …

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Counterpoints to Lovell-Badge & Daley’s CRISPR baby rationales

CRISPR-baby

Two prominent scientists, Robin Lovell-Badge and George Daley, have been amongst the most outspoken proponents of leaving the door open to heritable human genetic modification via CRISPR. While they each have articulated their reasons in somewhat different ways at times, their core reasons arguing in favor of future heritable CRISPR appear largely the same. In …

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