Weekly Reads Archives

Weekly reads: Topol on longevity biz, Peter Marks out at FDA, timeless NIH grant advice

March 30, 2025 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / 2 Comments

Most of us want longevity, especially if our quality of life remains generally solid as we age. The combination of length and quality of life is sometimes called “healthspan.” How do we get the maximum health span? Easier said than done. Not all of the obstacles are biological either. Unfortunately, accompanying all the legitimate research […]

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Weekly reads: Chinese CRISPR biotechs, cultured meat war, MSCs for Alzheimer’s

March 23, 2025 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / 6 Comments

HuidaGene Therapeutics, Chinese CRISPR biotech

Chinese CRISPR research continues to grow and this includes interesting CRISPR biotech firms. Some here in the U.S. worry that American gene editing firms could be lagging behind. Especially over the past year, investors and even some scientists have voiced frustration. U.S. gene editing firms like Editas have been struggling for years. Its stock is

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Weekly reads: blowtorch to American science, stem cells for teeth & stroke

February 23, 2025 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / 11 Comments

In all the time I’ve been a scientist I never worried about American science until the last month. Even during the first Trump administration, while there were challenges, I felt like things would generally be okay. Research continued. One of my daughters and I went to the Science March in 2017 in Sacramento. We bumped

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Weekly reads: stem cell exhaustion, Lineage Cell trial, Iowa AG wins vs. clinics

February 16, 2025 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / Leave a Comment

It’s been an exhausting week for anyone who cares about the NIH and biomedical research, but in today’s weekly reads I want to talk about another kind of fatigue: stem cell exhaustion. Please subscribe to The Niche Before we get into that, I’d like to ask a favor: please subscribe to this site, The Niche.

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Weekly reads: Altos Labs aging supplements pub, destructive NIH cuts, FDA warning, HSCs

February 9, 2025 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / 3 Comments

When I think of so-called aging supplements, visions of snake oil dance in my head. Possible benefits of supplements more generally have mostly not held up to long-term research. Supplements have risks too and so do purported longevity supplements. These pills claiming to fight aging are more in the realm of stem cell supplements that

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Weekly reads: Beth Shapiro & de-extinction, mice with two dads, stem cell patches

February 2, 2025 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / 3 Comments

Biologist and ancient DNA expert Beth Shapiro is becoming more well known for doing de-extinction research. Yet Shapiro used to be a de-extinction skeptic. Ten years ago she wrote “How to Clone a Mammoth.” In the book she mentioned serious challenges related to de-extinction. Now she is the CSO for a firm trying to make

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Weekly reads: NIH freeze even before RFK confirmation, FDA warnings, RP stem cell trial data

January 26, 2025 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / 6 Comments

RFK isn’t even confirmed as HHS Secretary and things are going south already with an NIH freeze. What do I mean? NIH freeze could do lasting damage to biomedical research The Trump Administration has frozen many NIH processes including meetings such as study sections that evaluate grant proposals. No study sections means almost no new

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Weekly reads: FDA modernization, TFs on the brain, mortality timer, pluripotent trials

January 19, 2025 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / 1 Comment

How will things change at the FDA under the second Trump Administration? It’s a key question for our field but not easy to answer. Most likely there will be more instability at the agency. Some leaders, like of CDER, have already left. in my overall regenerative medicine predictions for 2025, I’ve included more predictions about

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Weekly reads: grow a spine, China clears MSCs, Denise Richards, stem cell soups

January 12, 2025 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / Leave a Comment

If you tell a scientist that they should be growing a spine, they might take you literally. For instance, if you say this because you want a scientist to show some courage and speak out about something difficult, instead they might try to make an actual human spine in a lab. We’ll start there this

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Weekly reads: stem cell therapies that work, exosomes, H3.3 K27M, Joe Rogan

January 5, 2025 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / Leave a Comment

How close are we to having new stem cell therapies that work? The field is nearly there on several fronts, but we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. Last week I noted the “soon” in a Nature News headline “Stem cells head to the clinic: treatments for cancer, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease could soon be here.”

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