News

ViaCyte purchase puts Vertex in driver’s seat on stem cells for diabetes

Doug Melton, Vertex, ViaCyte

When I’m asked about the most promising areas of stem cell clinical research, cell therapy for type I diabetes is near the top including work by a biotech called ViaCyte. Other firms are in the mix too, boosting the overall odds of success in the coming decade. It’s really that promising even though there are […]

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Paolo Macchiarini guilty in criminal stem cell case but does a Houdini again

Paolo-Macchiarini

Dr. Paolo Macchiarini exemplifies how things can change quickly in the stem cell world and go from sky highs to deep lows. Stem cell rollercoasters Over the years, a few academic stem cell researchers as well as some operators in the unproven clinic sphere have had dizzying ups and downs. There’s John Kosolcharoen. His company

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WA AG wins half million from Seattle stem cell clinic US Stemology

US Stemology, Seattle Stem Cell Center

I grew up in the Seattle area so it wasn’t great to see stem cell clinics operating there recently, but better news was the WA State AG filing suit against a clinic there. The action included the clinic parent firm US Stemology along with its leader Dr. Tami Meraglia.  The suit was filed only months ago

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FTC fires off many warnings to stem cell clinics on COVID-19

BioXcellerator-warned-by-FTC-over-stem-cells-for-COVID-19-has-many-promotional-videos.-This-is-a-screenshot-from-one.

The FTC has sharply increased its oversight activities against stem cell and regenerative clinic firms. These new actions include quite a few warning letters. Here is the FTC database for COVID-19-related warning letters. Note that recently the FTC added a new, helpful option to view all of its warning letters here. It’s a good source

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Update on stem cells for COVID-19, Surgisphere scandal

Stem-cells-for-COVID-19-Maryland

The term Regenerative Medicine covers so much biomedical science these days including everything from just about any kind of cell therapy (not just stem cells) to CRISPR gene editing, and with the the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems this umbrella use of the term now includes potential treatment of viral illnesses. It can be hard to

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Stem cell news & pubs: Parkinson’s, Freezing, COVID, & More

Moll-et-al.-effect-of-freezing-on-stem-cells-stem-cell-news-FI

I find following both stem cell news and the stream of interesting publications to be kind of fun and thought-provoking. This past week or two has been very busy. Here is a news summary and list of notable pubs. Stem Cell News on Parkinson’s Disease There were a number of interesting developments on the Parkinson’s

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Recent stem cell news: vision, brain organoids, & lab meat

human-corneal-anatomy2

365 days a year, 24 hours a day stem cells are growing in labs around the world, providing a never-ending stream of data and products, with real hope, good news, and lots of surprises. You can see some past examples of good news in the stem cell and regenerative medicine field highlighted on The Niche here.

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Recommended recent stem cell, peds cancer & CRISPR reads

dental-stem-cells

Here are some articles that look especially interesting on stem cells, cancer, and CRISPR. I was just at the SNO meeting in SFO on childhood brain tumors so those are on my mind more. Childhood cerebellar tumours mirror conserved fetal transcriptional programs (Nature) Childhood brain tumors “think” they are building organds in fetuses. H3.3 K27M depletion

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Have you given up on your local paper? I might with The Sacramento Bee

Sacramento-Bee-stem-cell-clinic-ad-2019

For more than a dozen years we’ve subscribed to The Sacramento Bee newspaper here in Northern California. During those dozen+ years, newspapers across the U.S. have been under huge financial pressures. At a science level, one of the terrible results of this pressure on newspapers has been the vast number of excellent science writers who

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