Informational posts on The Niche are primarily intended to educate readers.
In the past many of us have wished there was a list of FDA-approved stem cell therapies. Patients and fellow scientists often asked me, but I couldn’t find a list. As a result, I made a comprehensive list, which is the focus of today’s post. I’ve updated the list now in 2024 with the great …
List of FDA Approved Stem Cell Therapies & Drugs for 2024 Read More »
What are embryonic stem cells and how do we scientists obtain them? My lab here at UC Davis School of Medicine has been doing research on embryonic stem cells for more than 14 years. You’ve come to the right place for expert answers on these very intriguing cells. What’s in this article Where do embryonic …
What are embryonic stem cells & where do they come from? Read More »
Stem cell stocks, meaning cellular therapy biotech companies, face many challenges, but their clinical research is crucial. Stem cell biotechs These biotechs have ups and downs, sometimes at the same time. This is kind of the standard of “life” as any biotech company. It is definitely the case in the volatile stem cell and cell …
24 cell therapy & stem cell stocks I’m following Read More »
I confess that I’m old enough to remember when the acronym MSC stood unambiguously for “mesenchymal stem cells”, but should it refer to a broader term like “mesenchymal cells”? The field has moved in that direction. I think that’s the best way to go too and I’ll explain why. The goal of today’s post is …
Mesenchymal cells or MSCs: definition, clinical potential, challenges Read More »
Induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells just might be the most exciting development in the stem cell field over the last 15 years. They have unique potential for clinical impact for regenerative medicine too. This may manifest both through their use to produce differentiated cellular therapies and indirectly via disease modeling as well as …
What are induced pluripotent stem cells or IPS cells? Read More »
Sometimes on The Niche or while teaching students as a professor here at UC Davis School of Medicine, I’ve been asked: What is a teratoma? Not all tumors are created equal and some like teratomas are particularly unusual. Exactly what is a teratoma tumor? Teratomas are germ cell tumors. What this means is that the …
Some key questions about stem cells often go unanswered like ‘where do stem cells come from?’ The goal of this post is for me as a stem cell biologist to answer your questions on stem cells. What’s in this article? The Niche | Adult stem cells | Where do stem cells come from? | What …
The stem cell field has puzzled on and off for years over a constellation of papers on purported stem cells including so-called VSEL and MUSE cells. Many of us haven’t been convinced that these are real stem cells. I see VSEL and MUSE fitting into a larger pattern of dubious stem cell claims including the STAP …
STAP cell deja vu? 28 VSEL papers flagged by Bik Read More »
Introduction to CAR-T cells CAR-T cells are an exciting cutting-edge technology that has been garnering great interest including in the stem cell field. Potential therapeutic uses of CAR-T, which stands for Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cells (CAR-T), are being studied in clinical trials as immunotherapies to potentially fight cancer as well as many other diseases by …
CAR-T cells review: cancer & a critical look at possible uses in aging & COVID-19 Read More »
One of the most common questions that patients have asked me over the last decade is, “how much does stem cell therapy cost?” They actually seem most often to want to know more specifically how much the treatments should cost. To try to authoritatively answer this we need data from the present and past along …