The Niche’s recommended Weekly Reads on stem cell research and regenerative medicine.
Readers of The Niche will recall that I’ve been skeptical of the efforts of the de-extinction firm Colossal Bio. For instance, I don’t believe they de-extincted dire wolves. They did make woolly mice, maybe their fluffiest (in a real sense) achievement. The point of that apparently was to be on the road to de-extincting woolly […]
The last eighteen months have been an unprecedented time of unpredictability for the FDA, but moving forward we’re likely going to see an emerging consistency: a higher amount of FDA flexibility on rare diseases. It’s already begun and is likely to accelerate with Prasad and Makary gone. How is this manifesting? FDA flexes flexibility I
I’ve been following the Huntington’s disease space carefully for about 15 years. I always hoped that some kind of promising gene therapy might emerge. Stem cell therapies or combination cell-gene therapies could have promise for Huntington’s too. Over the years, I got to know Judy Roberson, a wonderful HD patient advocate. I’m going to start
I’ve often wondered why there hasn’t been more research on macrophage therapy. Macrophages are some of the coolest cells in the body. They are capable of not just eating other cells (hence their name), but also numerous other functions. Before we dive into that, below is the latest stem cell video from my collaboration with
Weekly reads: macrophage therapy, Putin longevity push, human embryo base editing Read More »
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