Weekly Reads

The Niche’s recommended Weekly Reads on stem cell research and regenerative medicine.

Weekly reads: abundant Abcam prices, speedy aging & cancer, stemmy CAR-T, more on STAP

April 13, 2024 / By / 3 Comments
Abcam prices

When a vendor of important reagents like antibody supplier Abcam charges big money, those high Abcam prices could negatively impact research in the long run. Some of the prices are so high that buying just a few antibodies could take up a small but meaningful slice of an entire R01 grant. Sky-high Abcam prices I’ve …

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Weekly reads: immune rejuvenation, Cryo-Cell spin-off, stem cell patches, direct reprogramming

April 6, 2024 / By / 1 Comment
Irv Weissman, immune rejuvenation

What is immune rejuvenation? How would that work and what would be the benefits? As we age, our immune systems can change in unhelpful and unhealthy ways. One such change is a drift in the balance of production of different kinds of immune cells. Such a shift can lead to too many of some immune …

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Weekly reads: heterochromatin, H3.3, Mesoblast bump

March 30, 2024 / By / 1 Comment
N-myc, heterochromatin

My lab is focused in part on chromatin states in stem cells and cancer including heterochromatin. In fact, my lab’s website is chromatin.com. Heterochromatin is dense, often inactive chromatin. By H&E staining and electron microscopy, heterochromatin looks dark compared to the rest of the nucleus, largely composed of euchromatin. Toward the end of my postdoc …

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Weekly reads: elephant stem cells, RIP Connie Eaves, AI cell biology

March 16, 2024 / By / 2 Comments
elephant stem cells

Last week one of the most popular stories was about a preprint from a mammoth de-extinction research group led by George Church having made elephant stem cells. I finally got a chance to look carefully at their preprint. Elephant stem cells preprint and mammoth de-extinction The elephant stem cells preprint has solid data. It looks like …

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Weekly reads: anti-aging tricks & treats, stealthy stem cells, Mammoth de-extinction milestone

March 9, 2024 / By / 3 Comments
Pura Munoz-Canoves

Anti-aging might already be the big regenerative medicine story of 2024 and it’s only early March. Anti-aging hype going to the dogs? One of my 20 stem cell and regenerative medicine predictions for 2024 was that longevity would continue to make big news including in some not-so-great ways. In just over two months there has …

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Weekly reads: Vertex, stem cells for MS, Athersys, 900-day paper review at Nature

March 2, 2024 / By / 1 Comment
“While still early, these results support the continued progression of our VX-880 clinical studies, as well as future studies using our encapsulated islet cells, which hold the potential to be used without the need for immunosuppression,” said Bastiano Sanna, Ph.D., executive vice president and chief of cell and genetic therapies at Vertex.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals has a lot going for it right now on the cell therapy front. For instance, they have the strongest type 1 diabetes cell therapy pipeline after some recent acquisitions. Still it’s not a simple matter to succeed in the cell therapy space even with one therapy for one targeted disease. Trials are tough …

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Weekly reads: AL embryos ruling, blasting cancer, marrow organoids, beef inside rice plants

February 24, 2024 / By / 23 Comments
Multipotent & totipotent vs pluripotent stem cells, very early human embryos totipotent stem cells

Are small clusters of cells that make up 5-day-old human embryos equivalent to children? Biologically and in terms of just common sense, the answer is “no.” These tiny spheres have around 100 cells and no organs. Actual people have many trillions of cells, brains, and other organs. Alabama law on embryos may block IVF About …

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Weekly reads: brain aging, perinatal stem cell clinics, $1M lab meat fine bill

February 17, 2024 / By / 1 Comment
brain aging

What happens during brain aging and how can we tell if dementia is coming? Are there particular early hallmarks? There are an increasing number of medical tests for predicting or detecting dementia. Alzheimer’s disease can often be detected early. But what do patients or their doctors do with such information? Until recently there weren’t any …

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Weekly reads: cool olfactory tuft cells, T-cell therapy, NK cells

February 10, 2024 / By / Leave a Comment
Olfactory epithelium, Olfactory histology

There’s a fascinating type of olfactory cell. These so-called tuft cells have unusual characteristics, especially for nose cells. I had never heard of them before until reading a new article. The inside of the nose may not seem like a very attractive place but there are cool “nose stem cells” in there.  More broadly, there …

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Weekly reads: Xist & autoimmune disease in women, Crohn’s disease, dumb headline of the week

February 3, 2024 / By / Leave a Comment
Xist ,auto immune disease

Readers of The Niche have asked me many questions about stem cells for autoimmune disease but the puzzle of why women get these conditions more often than men hasn’t come up before here. For instance, why is MS so much more common in women than men? It’s remained somewhat of a mystery over the years. …

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