We live in a plastic world, full of BPA. Over the last 1/2 century, the proportion of our food and beverages that are consumed out of plastic containers has skyrocketed. Unfortunately, the concentrations of plastic-related chemicals in people around the world, even in remote corners, has gone up in parallel. I’ve written about avoiding plastic […]
Keep Your Stem Cells Away From BPA Read More »
Here an anonymous stem cell scientist frankly answers questions about the field in an interview with me. Of course I have to ask you about the recent U.S. court ruling essentially declaring all federal funding of human ES cell work illegal. What’s your take on this? ANSWER: The ruling has so many flaws in it.
Anonymous stem cell scientist frankly answers questions about the field Read More »
The Obama administration has announced it will “quickly” appeal the ES cell decision, but I’m not hearing anything about a stay on the judge’s order in the meantime or anything like that. It’s quite the opposite. The NIH, in the form of Director Francis Collins, has finally spoken about the federal judge’s ruling that apparently banned
Grim reality of the impact of judge’s ES cell decision is emerging Read More »
UPDATE: A second recent study, this one in Nature Genetics has found a novel genetic link between the immune system and Parkinson’s Disease. The authors were screening for genomic variants unique to Parkinson’s patients, finding known ones but also a novel linkage. The link was with the HLA region, known to play a key role
Parkinson’s Disease, promising new results on iPS cells Read More »
UPDATE: I have added more discussion at the bottom about therapeutics and how regenerative medicine might work for Alzheimer’s Disease. Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia throughout the world, affecting 10s of millions of people. The cost to society is staggering and on a personal level for those of us who
Exciting stem cell progress on Alzheimer’s Disease Read More »
This is the first post in a series focusing on stem cell advances related to specific diseases. Today we discuss Huntington’s Disease and a paper that came out yesterday in the journal Neuron that provides some significant insight into the mechanisms behind the disease. It is entitled: Huntingtin Is Required for Mitotic Spindle Orientation and
Huntington’s Disease, a major new finding Read More »
Update: Now in 2020 it seems that peer review remains very problematic. The Scientist has a few pieces out on the trouble with peer review including my personal favorite: I Hate Your Paper. That article rings so true as do the quotes from the scientists. Peer review in the stem cell field and the IPS cell
I Hate Your Paper: Dr. No and the Editors that are ruining peer review Read More »
Regenerative medicine is very exciting. But what’s even better than regenerative medicine? Preventative medicine. If one can prevent a problem for occurring in the first place, it is far better than trying to treat it after the fact. Of course in many cases we do not know the causes of diseases so it is difficult
Update in 2020: It was kind of wild to read this post now so many years later as an “old” professor, seemingly ages from the realm of new PIs (principle investigators). What do you think? You can read more about the current state of our lab here. It’s an exciting feeling coming into a new
Advice for new PIs part I: start before you start Read More »
A paper just came out in PNAS entitled “Promotion of direct reprogramming by transformation-deficient Myc“. The main thrust of this paper is that the tumorigenic and pluripotency-related functions of Myc could be separated. It focused primarily on the lesser studied LMyc. The topic of the intertwined good (pluripotency) and bad (tumorigenicity) functions of Myc, addressed
Tumorigenicity and Pluripotency teased apart? Not yet for Myc Read More »