stem cells

Insightful interview with Arnold Caplan: Part 1: MSC history, nomenclature, & properties

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A few days ago I had a long, very enjoyable phone conversation with the father of the mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) field, Dr. Arnold Caplan. Dr. Caplan is Professor of Biology, Director Skeletal Research Center at Case Western. He coined the phrase “mesenchymal stem cell” in the late 1980s. I’m going to break the interview […]

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Will new Pope Francis (Jorge Mario Bergoglio) cancel upcoming Vatican stem cell meeting?

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Recently I speculated on how a new pope (as yet unidentified at that time) might impact stem cells and the Catholic Church’s view of stem cells. I was skeptical. Now that we have the new Pope Francis, formerly Jorge Mario Bergoglio, what will happen on the Catholic Church’s stem cell front? I could not find

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Giant goldfish teach researchers about stem cell treatments

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What can a giant goldfish teach stem cell researchers about clinical use of the cells? It turns out, a great deal! A few weeks ago researchers from my home institution UC Davis and the US Forest Service made headlines with reported catches of giant goldfish in Lake Tahoe. These are not your grandad’s pond’s “big”

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Bald heads & big smiles: St. Baldrick’s 2013 Sac Event Inspires

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Last night there was a great fund-raising event for the St. Baldrick’s Foundation for children’s cancer research here in Sacramento. I was honored to captain the UC Davis School of Medicine Team (see at left). So far we have raised almost $2,500 for St. Baldrick’s. Please consider pitching in via this link. You can help

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My take on the much-touted ‘SafeCell’ paper on adult stem cell safety: encouraging, but some important reservations

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The so-called “SafeCell” paper from the journal PLoS One is one that a number of advocates of deregulation of the stem cell industry often have mentioned to me: Safety of Cell Therapy with Mesenchymal Stromal Cells (SafeCell): A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Clinical Trials  I have read this paper and have some thoughts on it. As

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Official message from Harold Varmus, Director of NCI, on Sequestration

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Many of us in the scientific community who work on cancer got the message below about the extremely dire state of funding. To the NCI-supported scientific community:   As you have heard and read, the Budget Control Act (aka “sequestration”) has gone into effect as of March 1st.  All components of the NIH, including the

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Please pass on bull testicles Soup No. 5 & on stem cell Soup No. 7

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Is this a “good” stem cell blog post to write as I gobble down my lunch in between working on grants….hmm, maybe not. Too late! Stem cells are hot all around the globe, but they are particularly scorching hot in certain countries such as the Philippines. There are an increasing number of news articles on

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