The Niche’s recommended Weekly Reads on stem cell research and regenerative medicine.
Platelet-rich plasma or PRP is a regenerative product that has grown in popularity. The literature on clinical applications of PRP is all over the place. Whether it works or not for any particular application is unclear to me. Many orthopedists seem enthused about it. I haven’t seen any major adverse events linked to PRP. PRP […]
Marty Makary is officially out at the FDA. From STAT: Makary departs FDA amid turmoil as Diamantas, agency’s top food official, steps in. But there’s more going on here in what looks like an agency leadership purge. This is so crazy that it’s hard to imagine a coherent path forward. Next level chaos: Marty Makary
Have we reached the reproductive frontier of lab-grown sperm? Producing oocytes in the lab has always been thought to be the initial focus in this arena. It was thought that figuring out the way to maked lab-grown sperm would take longer. Now a new report suggests both sperm and eggs can be made by in
I’ve been trying to dig out from all the stuff that piled up while I was working toward a big grant deadline last week, catch up on recent news and papers, and during this time I was excited to see the news about an approved gene therapy for a rare form of deafness. Let’s start
The last 3 weeks have been extremely busy with grant work, but one recent bit of news that caught my eye was UCB’s $1 billion+ acquisition of Neurona. Neurona has been on my radar screen for years. Neurona and stem cells for epilepsy Here’s the news: UCB pays $650M+ for Neurona, marking ‘strategic expansion’ into
Vinay Prasad has only less than two weeks left at the FDA atop CBER. I’ve been trying to imagine where CBER goes from here after he exits. It feels like FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and RFK Jr. will likely be the real leaders of CBER moving forward on key decisions. Under that pressure, will the
Over the years people have asked me why those selling unproven stem cells and more recently peptides haven’t faced more pushback. Cases do arise, but they often go nowhere. Civil cases like patient lawsuits against stem cell clinics are often settled. These are generally subject to confidentiality agreements. On the peptide front, we’ll have to
We recently saw exciting news with the first CIRM-funded therapy garnering FDA approval. Before we jump into that and other news and new publications, a reminder that my lab is still crowdfunding to support our brain tumor research in these tough funding times. Please consider making a tax-deductible gift to give more hope for kids
You’ve probably heard of the film Gattaca, but what is a Gattaca stack? The first thing that came to mind was a peptide stack (oh no!). That is where people take groups of unproven peptides together, usually by injection. Yeah, not a great idea. So, what’s the Gattaca stack? As someone following the area of
Connections between the thymus and aging are growing. Let’s start with that interesting area of research. The thymus and aging In Histology class at the med school here we teach that the thymus just naturally involutes. It mostly turns to adipose tissue with age, which is a depressing thought. A new paper suggests that there
Weekly reads: the thymus and aging, Aspen upbeat 1 year data, paired organoids Read More »