My lab is focused in part on chromatin states in stem cells and cancer including heterochromatin. In fact, my lab’s website is chromatin.com. Heterochromatin is dense, often inactive chromatin. By H&E staining and electron microscopy, heterochromatin looks dark compared to the rest of the nucleus, largely composed of euchromatin. Toward the end of my postdoc […]
Weekly reads: heterochromatin, H3.3, Mesoblast bump Read More »
An unproven Georgia stem cell clinic called Superior Healthcare and other co-defendants recently lost a key court case. Some of you may remember that the Attorney General (AG) of Georgia Chris Carr and the FTC have been collaborating on this case. Now we have the good news that they have won the case via a
Georgia AG & FTC win Superior Healthcare stem cell clinic case, seek $17 million Read More »
So many things go wrong during the lead up to clinically-evident Alzheimer’s disease. This complex disease pathway has, in turn, led to a vast array of approaches to try to treat or prevent Alzheimer’s. Most of these efforts one way or another have something to do with the amyloid plaques and tangles that accumulate in the
The Mayo Clinic does some great research on stem cells and regenerative medicine. However, at times I’ve felt that a few Mayo researchers are overexuberant. This mainly relates to certain not-yet-proven stem cell and related offerings. Fitting with that perception, the Mayo website also has some inaccurate stem cell content that leans toward overstating things.
Key Mayo Clinic stem cell webpage is overexuberant & outdated Read More »
Last week one of the most popular stories was about a preprint from a mammoth de-extinction research group led by George Church having made elephant stem cells. I finally got a chance to look carefully at their preprint. Elephant stem cells preprint and mammoth de-extinction The elephant stem cells preprint has solid data. It looks like
Weekly reads: elephant stem cells, RIP Connie Eaves, AI cell biology Read More »
A few dozen clinics in the US sell an unproven RNA therapy called supportive oligonucleotide therapy or SOT. The product comes from a Greek firm RGCC or Research Genetic Cancer Center, which also pre-tests patients’ gene expression to design the RNA product. Clinics marketing SOT in the US say it is intended to act by
Anti-aging might already be the big regenerative medicine story of 2024 and it’s only early March. Anti-aging hype going to the dogs? One of my 20 stem cell and regenerative medicine predictions for 2024 was that longevity would continue to make big news including in some not-so-great ways. In just over two months there has
Utah appears ready to pass a new stem cell law that would explicitly allow clinical use of non-FDA-approved placental cell drug therapies in the state. Bill 199 seems likely to set up a conflict with the FDA that may land in court. The key part of the bill says: “A health care provider whose scope
Vertex Pharmaceuticals has a lot going for it right now on the cell therapy front. For instance, they have the strongest type 1 diabetes cell therapy pipeline after some recent acquisitions. Still it’s not a simple matter to succeed in the cell therapy space even with one therapy for one targeted disease. Trials are tough
Weekly reads: Vertex, stem cells for MS, Athersys, 900-day paper review at Nature Read More »
Would you guess that Elon Musk might be into using biotechnology in a high-profile way to try to live far longer than usual, say to age 150? That would have been my assumption. There are countless things about Elon Musk that I really don’t like. I also don’t see many issues on which we are
Something Elon Musk & I agree on: pushing back on anti-aging bluster Read More »