Stem cell research.
When we hear the word senile we might think stereotypically of an older person who has cognitive impairment, but some argue that senility can apply to cells too as they age and that such cells can be targeted by drugs called senolytics. Unfortunately, the supplements industry has picked up on this idea to sell iffy […]
Recommended reads: senolytics, cow iPS cells, big CIRM royalty Read More »
Sometimes it’s useful to ask questions like, “How many stem cells are in the human body?” As we try to answer them we end up going through key aspects of cell biology and stem cell identity more generally. How many stem cells in the human body? It might seem like possibly an easy question at
How many stem cells do we have & can you run out? Read More »
The big news of the week was the launch of Altos labs and their ambitious plan to tackle aging through cell therapies. Altos has recruited a large number of top cell biologists away from academia. That team plus top biotech execs and a $3B war chest make Altos one to watch in coming years. I
Weekly reads: aging, CRISPR delivery, hair, oocytes, paralysis Read More »
The fact that a person for the first time has received a heart transplant from a pig and it was a genetically modified pig made big news this week. Organ transplant waiting lists are a huge problem so if this kind of approach can be proven to be safe and effective, it would be a
Recommended reads: pig heart transplant, lasers, $11K pub fee Read More »
When I read about Elizabeth Holmes and her blood testing startup Theranos I see parallels to hucksters in the arena of stem cells and cell therapy. I’m thinking especially of the unproven stem cell clinics out there. It goes farther than that though too, including people who aren’t hucksters at all but get caught up
Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos, & lessons for the stem cell field Read More »
Happy New Year and get ready for another 364 more days of stem cell excitement and craziness in 2022. In the next day or two I’ll post my predictions for this new year. Recommended reads EO Wilson obit by Carl Zimmer in NYT. Who’s the next EO Wilson or someone like him with such big impact these
Weekly stem cell reads: COVID kidney, FDA letter, H3.3, EO Wilson Read More »
The amount of biomedical science hype out there is mindboggling at times, but some media or other items really take the cake for being exceptionally bad. Today’s post highlights the worst of the year 2021 as the candidates for my annual The Screamers science hype award. Click on the link in the previous sentence to
We’ll begin this week’s recommended reads with some news on two wonderful stem cell scientists. While there are thousands of stem cell scientists, some stand out for their especially creative work. News on stem cell scientists Nobel laureate Yamanaka to retire as director of iPS cell center, Asahi Shimbun. Dr. Yamanaka will spend more time
Recommended reads: stem cell scientists, eggs from blood, Cryo-Cell Read More »
The world of stem cell research and regenerative medicine is unpredictable but it’s fun to be a part of it and try to do predictions. Each year in late December or early January I make prognostications for the coming year for stem cell research and regenerative medicine. I made 21 such predictions for the current
Grading my 21 stem cell & regenerative medicine predictions for 2021 Read More »
A quick review of the publicly-traded stem cell stocks I’ve been following in 2021 finds mostly discouraging news, but a few firms relatively outperformed the other publically-traded biotechs. One had some great news today. In this post, I’m doing a brief overview of how things went this year in the regenerative medicine space. I’m going
2021 scorecard for stem cell stocks: REGN, VCEL, CCEL, LCTX did best Read More »