I often get asked about where things stand with stem cell therapy for back pain, which is the focus of today’s post. Back pain is a complex condition with many potential causes. New treatments are needed as existing approaches often don’t work that well. What about stem cells? Stem cell therapy or other cell therapy …
It’s mostly been a week of good and encouraging news in the regenerative medicine space including with gene therapies maybe with the exception of some eye drops warning (more below). There’s realistic hope for an approved sickle cell disease soon. I also see some long-term positive news on hearing loss research. Hematopoietic stem cell transplant …
Weekly reads: reprogramming hearing loss, heart disease, eye drops, sickle cell Read More »
Research on in vitro gametogenesis or IVG is jumping ahead and such work could one day lead to new infertility treatments. In vitro gametogenesis is the process of producing gametes (sperm and eggs) from stem cells. Those powerful stem cells, called iPS cells, can be made from ordinary adult cells like skin or blood cells. …
Questions on National Academies in vitro gametogenesis (IVG) meeting sponsorship Read More »
It’s a big challenge to get a cell therapy approved by the FDA and if you look at my list of FDA-approved stem cell therapies, it’s not as long as we might hope. FDA OK on cell therapy from Gamida Cell For this reason, it was excellent news to see that the FDA approved a …
Weekly reads: FDA nod on new cell therapy, gray hair, pong-playing cells Read More »
Almost two years ago I publicly called on the FDA to freeze the unproven cord cell expanded access program (EAP) at the Duke Autism Center. Duke has been infusing kids with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with unproven cord cells and requiring large payments for this. The cost was as much as $15,000. A halt and a …
Why did Duke autism team halt its troubling pay-for-play program? Read More »
The biotech Sarepta has had a complicated go of it with the FDA sometimes related to their Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) gene therapy efforts. In late 2016 I wrote about how there was some controversy as the FDA approved the Sarepta drug eteplirsen (Exondys 51) also for DMD, going against an advisory panel that had …
Weekly reads: Sarepta, epigenomics, FDA on eyedrops Read More »
There has been a big jump in paper retractions in science over the last 20 years. What’s going on? How do the trends in the stem cell field compare to other fields like cancer research and more broadly? Is AI going to change the dynamic between those engaging in misconduct and those who are looking for misconduct …
Trends in retractions as AI arms race on misconduct looms Read More »
Remember Paolo Macchiarini, the famous-turned-infamous so-called “stem cell surgeon” who ended up in legal trouble and with trial participants who died? Before we get into this we have a new feature for our weekly reads, which is the stem cell and regenerative medicine tweet of the week. See that at the bottom of the post. …
Weekly reads: Macchiarini pub, cloned journal, Mammoth genome, tweet of the week Read More »
As we think about how much of a role belief should play in the hard sciences such as cell biology, a supposed cell type called VSEL or very-small embryonic stem cell-like cells comes to mind. For these guys it seems to me that the ratio of data to belief isn’t great. VSELs have nine lives. I …
The role of belief in hard science: the VSEL case Read More »
I wrote earlier this week about genome sequencing of famous dead celebrities, pointing out that the trend seems full of ethical complexities. Genome news More broadly, sequencing the genomes of non-celebrities from hundreds or thousands of years ago can be important research. A new NYT piece covers such work on the Swahili people. Such research …
Weekly reads: genome sequencing, chemical reprogramming 2.0 Read More »