Research

Stem cell research.

Weekly reads: stem cell therapy for eyes research, DMD, cheating death, cancer sensors

September 14, 2023 / By / 1 Comment
stem cell therapy

Many avenues are being pursued to get stem cell therapy to the clinic for eye conditions. These different approaches employ a variety of stem cell types. In some cases, such as with iPS cells, the stem cells themselves are not transplanted. Instead, the iPS cells are used to make differentiated eye cells, such as RPE …

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Weekly reads: HIV from vampire facials, CAR-T, FDA warns Regenative Labs

July 15, 2023 / By / 3 Comments
vampire facials

Imagine regularly having someone rub your face all over with the equivalent of a small roller covered with spikes and doused with either your blood or someone else’s and you have what’s called vampire facials. There’s more news that this is a very bad idea. Vampire facials linked to more HIV cases “Vampire facials” promoted …

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Weekly reads: Vertex stem cells for diabetes update, new CRISPR , immortality

July 9, 2023 / By / 1 Comment
stem cell therapy for diabetes

Where do things stand with the investigative approach of stem cells for diabetes? 33% of Type 1 Diabetes Patients Insulin-Free With Stem Cells, Medscape. Not the best headline given the few number of participants here. If your study has only two subjects and one responds, someone is going to say, “50% of people had a …

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He Jiankui proposes editing human embryos again

July 3, 2023 / By / 2 Comments
He Jiankui

It wasn’t that long ago that Chinese scientist He Jiankui got out of jail. Why was he in there? For doing unauthorized human CRISPR to make heritably gene-edited humans. He botched that and apparently forged some approvals to make it happen. The three children involved may have life-long health problems as a result. I wrote …

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Weekly reads: MD Stem Cells, embryo models & headaches, cell therapy trial updates

July 2, 2023 / By / Leave a Comment
dr. jeffrey weiss, MD Stem Cells

There is still plenty of reason to worry about unproven stem cells being marketed in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world. I’ll start with a new item here in the U.S. on a firm called MD Stem Cells and end with a newly published paper about how things are going in Poland on this …

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Weekly reads: stem cell for hair loss, clinic lawsuit update, 2 big retractions

June 12, 2023 / By / Leave a Comment
stem cell for hair loss

There seems to be a never-ending supply of stem cell for hair loss research but a new article invokes a novel mechanism. Stem cell for hair loss research and cell mechanics Here’s a recent news item about a PNAS paper: Coaxing hair growth in aging hair follicle stem cells, NW Now. A common theme is things …

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Weekly reads: stem cell cost, trial death, HSCT for MS, Neuralink

May 27, 2023 / By / Leave a Comment

So many things have gotten very expensive these days that it got me thinking this past week again about stem cell cost. For this reason, I’ve been running polls asking people what they’ve paid for stem cells and how many therapies they’ve gotten. Before jumping into our weekly reads, check out those running polls on …

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Weekly reads: BioViva & life-extension clinic, RMATs, universal cells

May 14, 2023 / By / 2 Comments
BioViva CEO Liz Parrish in YouTube video.

I’ve written before about Liz Parrish and her life-extension firm BioViva. Now they appear to have connections with another entity called Integrated Health Systems or IHS, according to a new Wired article. Some of what is going on with IHS and maybe BioViva in Mexico seems extremely risky to me. BioViva, Parrish, and Integrated Health Systems The …

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Weekly reads: reprogramming hearing loss, heart disease, eye drops, sickle cell

April 29, 2023 / By / Leave a Comment
Regener-Eyes, eye drops

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 …

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Weekly reads: FDA nod on new cell therapy, gray hair, pong-playing cells

April 22, 2023 / By / Leave a Comment

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 …

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