Weekly Reads

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

Weekly reads: BioViva & life-extension clinic, RMATs, universal cells

BioViva CEO Liz Parrish in YouTube video.

I’ve written before about Liz Parrish and her life-extension firm BioViva. Now they appear to have connections with another entity called Integrated Health Systems or IHS, according to a new Wired article. Some of what is going on with IHS and maybe BioViva in Mexico seems extremely risky to me. BioViva, Parrish, and Integrated Health Systems The …

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Weekly reads: stem cells for ALS, cell wrinkles, editors quit

Clive Svendsen, ALS researcher

I’ve been writing The Niche now for more than 13 years and the idea of stem cells for ALS has been around that whole time. Unfortunately, it has been slow going on this front, but there are still reasons for hope. Probably now much more than ever before. I’ll start with news on one path …

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Weekly reads: FDA nod on new cell therapy, gray hair, pong-playing cells

It’s a big challenge to get a cell therapy approved by the FDA and if you look at my list of FDA-approved stem cell therapies, it’s not as long as we might hope. FDA OK on cell therapy from Gamida Cell For this reason, it was excellent news to see that the FDA approved a …

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Weekly reads: Sarepta, epigenomics, FDA on eyedrops

Sarepa CEO interview.

The biotech Sarepta has had a complicated go of it with the FDA sometimes related to their Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) gene therapy efforts. In late 2016 I wrote about how there was some controversy as the FDA approved the Sarepta drug eteplirsen (Exondys 51) also for DMD, going against an advisory panel that had …

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Weekly reads: Macchiarini pub, cloned journal, Mammoth genome, tweet of the week

Paolo-Macchiarini

Remember Paolo Macchiarini, the famous-turned-infamous so-called “stem cell surgeon” who ended up in legal trouble and with trial participants who died? Before we get into this we have a new feature for our weekly reads, which is the stem cell and regenerative medicine tweet of the week. See that at the bottom of the post. …

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Weekly reads: genome sequencing, chemical reprogramming 2.0

Human genome sequencing

I wrote earlier this week about genome sequencing of famous dead celebrities, pointing out that the trend seems full of ethical complexities. Genome news More broadly, sequencing the genomes of non-celebrities from hundreds or thousands of years ago can be important research. A new NYT piece covers such work on the Swahili people. Such research …

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Weekly reads: UC Davis Medical School diversity, CRISPR, Parkinson’s

UC Davis Medical School

It’s been almost seventeen years that I’ve been a professor here at UC Davis Medical School. It feels like home. I enjoy teaching our first-year medical students each year. Some end up doing research in my lab. Our school recently got a nice write-up over at STAT News by Usha Lee McFarling on the diversity …

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Weekly reads: oocytes from males, David Sinclair longevity inc, diabetes, He Jiankui

David Sinclair

A team led by Harvard professor David Sinclair had a recent Cell paper on reprogramming to fight aging that I reviewed here on The Niche. I thought the paper was exciting and important. Note that in vivo reprogramming was first done more than a decade ago. Sinclair did have a novel fast-forward aging method and overall …

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Weekly reads: big CRISPR mtg, Mesoblast good news, Neuralink spiked

Victoria Gray, CRISPR meeting

Where do things stand with potential applications of CRISPR and other gene editing technologies in patients? Overall, things are looking very positive. CRISPR human trials This week the third big international human genome editing meeting took place in London. The summit addressed numerous potential clinical applications. It was good to see the agenda included quite …

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Weekly reads: human CRISPR, MRT risks, private IRBs, skincare

David Liu, human CRISPR

It’s funny how sometimes there are many new articles about one general topic like this week with heritable (and somatic) human CRISPR gene editing and related tech.  There are clear reasons for optimism in the somatic arena given advancing trials. Germline editing remains highly questionable in my view even just technically. Then there are loads …

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