Last year an odd pub made the big claim that the interstitium is a new organ. I didn’t buy that. Now an over-the-top stem cell advertisement that recently ran in the San Diego Union-Tribune (U-T) is piggybacking off of the supposed “interstitium as new tissue” claim to make all kinds of other claims about some …
Wild stem cell ad piggybacks off hyped ‘interstitium is new tissue’ pub Read More »
The 60 Minutes show here in the U.S. has done sobering segments over the years on risky, unproven stem cell clinics, but now there is a new episode of 60 Minutes Australia that is the polar opposite: it mostly made a mess of things with its fluffy coverage of the story of a wonderful little …
60 Minutes Australia Pushes Unproven Stem Cells for Cerebral Palsy Read More »
Three recent media pieces on unproven, for-profit stem cell clinics paint an unflattering picture of this industry. At the intersection of these pieces is the clinic “treatment” consisting of fat stem cells (being manufactured as in a screenshot at right from a clinic YouTube video), a product the FDA has indicated is most often going …
New stem cell clinic insights from trio of critical media pieces Read More »
About once each year or two, I try to schedule what I call a “big picture” lab meeting where my lab and I discuss major issues related to being a scientist. Also, I try to answer their questions about just about anything. In my lab we rotate between various lab meeting formats and also have …
The big picture lab meeting: ethics, careers, publishing & other questions Read More »
What is stem cell media? When us scientists hear the phrase “stem cell media” we usually think about the liquid food that we feed our stem cells in the lab, which resembles a kind of nutrient-rich Kool-aid, but another kind of stem cell media consists of the news coverage of stem cells. This other kind …
Grading 3 stem cell media reports on clinical science: vision, MS, & paralysis Read More »
I’ve been blogging about stem cells now for about 8 years and the recent level of hype about and fluffy media coverage of Celularity, the biotech spun out of Celgene, ranks right up here with the most extreme past cases I’ve seen. What is Celularity and who is its leadership? It’s a new biotech focused …
Just one word placentas: Can Celularity live up to hype? Read More »
Stem cells for flu? For me, that idea is new. Some months back there was buzz about the stem cell biotech Longeveron related to its report on early trial data on testing infusions of mesenchymal stem cells for frailty in the aged. Frailty that pops up in some aging folks can manifest in a variety …
Stem cells for the flu? Pondering PR email, frailty data from Longeveron Read More »
Science hype is one of the more troublesome issues in our field today especially at its interface with the media, and unfortunately a ‘great’ example of that came this past week in a headline from the Daily Mail on the new CRISPR of human embryos paper from Kathy Niakan’s group in the UK. Although Niakan’s …
One of the biggest claims related to stem cells and in particular to induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSC or IPS cells) of 2015 came just yesterday about growing a human fetal brain. A press release from Ohio State University reports that two of its researchers had grown a nearly full-formed human fetal brain. My initial reaction …
Healthy skepticism needed on claim of stem cell-derived human fetal brain Read More »
A hot topic in biomedical sciences is converting white “bad” fat into brown “good” fat. The latter type of adipose is viewed more positively because it seems to be associated with a relatively metabolically more active, leaner state. Could we somehow convert white adipose to brown adipose and in so doing have a beneficial effect …
Harvard Predicts Fat Burning Stem Cell Pill To Replace Exercise Read More »