Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D.

Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. is a Professor at UC Davis School of Medicine in Cell Biology and Human Anatomy. His lab does research on stem cells and cancer, especially from an epigenomic angle. He also has been working on policy and ethics matters for many years. The author of 3 books, he also has a popular TED talk on designer babies.

Small positive step for BlueRock Therapeutics Stem Cell Therapy for Parkinson’s

August 28, 2023 / By / 4 Comments
BlueRock Therapeutics, Parkinson's disease, brain imaging

Several groups including Viviane Tabar who is a founding scientist at BlueRock Therapeutics are moving forward on potential cell therapies for Parkinson’s Disease. BlueRock just released some new data that’s worth a look. Check out the new BlueRock poster. In today’s post, I briefly discuss the new data. I also go into the larger context …

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Weekly reads: stem cell therapy for eyes research, DMD, cheating death, cancer sensors

September 14, 2023 / By / 1 Comment
stem cell therapy

Many avenues are being pursued to get stem cell therapy to the clinic for eye conditions. These different approaches employ a variety of stem cell types. In some cases, such as with iPS cells, the stem cells themselves are not transplanted. Instead, the iPS cells are used to make differentiated eye cells, such as RPE …

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Weekly reads: DNA methylation, H3 K27M in glioma, memory wipe, teeth

August 19, 2023 / By / Leave a Comment
DNA methylation

I’ve been more interested in histones and their modifications versus DNA methylation when it comes to epigenetics and chromatin. In part this has just been because I have studied histones so much more. For example, we have been knocking out the two histone variant H3.3 genes, H3f3a and H3f3b, now for a decade. My lab also …

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Is DNA methylation destiny? Diving into new epigenetic clock research

August 16, 2023 / By / 1 Comment

I’ve been thinking more about the steady stream of epigenetic clock research out there.  How convincing is the research on such clocks? Do they tightly relate to human biological age?  The related notion of turning back such hypothetical clocks to reverse aging is exciting but controversial. It doesn’t help that some are hyping all of …

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Weekly reads: embryonic stem cells, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s

August 12, 2023 / By / 6 Comments
Knoepfler lab stem cells

Early during my postdoc I was primarily interested in the role of Myc genes both in cancer and in stem cells, work that later included embryonic stem cells. These cells are often called ES cells. At first I first started studying N-Myc in neural stem cells using a conditional knockout approach. However, soon after I was …

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Did US Stem Cell Clinic defy FDA injunction? New injured patient suit sparks questions

August 21, 2023 / By / Leave a Comment
Dr. Antonio E Blanco MD, US Stem Cell

It feels like I’ve been writing about the Florida clinic US Stem Cell for a very long time. The FDA has been aware of them for about as long. It was only after reports of patient injuries that the FDA at last took action on US Stem Cell and its subsidiary US Stem Cell Clinic. Several …

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Weekly reads: BioCardia, HeLa suit, illegal bio lab in CA

August 5, 2023 / By / Leave a Comment
mesenchymal cells

A days ago the news came about Mesoblast not getting FDA approval for its MSC product for GvHD. The MSC area has had a rough few years with various clinical trials including for COVID. The “stem cells for heart disease” arena has also had a tough time. Here’s more news along these lines: BioCardia pauses enrollment in PhIII trial …

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Hoping for approval, Mesoblast says FDA wants new remestemcel-L trial

August 3, 2023 / By / 1 Comment
mesoblast ceo dr silvio itescu

Australian biotech Mesoblast has had a rollercoaster ride working toward FDA approval of its mesenchymal cell therapy product remestemcel-L. They are seeking approval for use in patients with graft-versus-host disease (GvHD). More specifically, it is intended for pediatric patients with steroid-refractory acute graft versus host disease, or SR-aGVHD. This is a serious condition and new treatment …

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Some surprises from new analysis of Altos Labs papers

August 1, 2023 / By / 3 Comments
Altos Labs

Altos Labs is an intriguing multi-institution experiment in so-called rejuvenation research all rolled into one biotech. This relatively new entity headquartered in California has multiple Nobel laureates in the biomedical field in leadership. Even more importantly it has a large group of great researchers leading its individual research labs. This all leads to high expectations, …

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Weekly stem cell reads: Google Bard AI issues, fat ball reprogramming, BrainStorm on ALS

July 29, 2023 / By / Leave a Comment
stem cell research

It’s great finding stem cell videos on YouTube that are either excellent research talks or provide important information. I recently found one such video by Shiri Gur-Cohen, which I included below. Interesting data there and Shiri is such a compelling speaker. She also won The Niche image contest one year with a cool microscopy pic …

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