Weekly Reads

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

Weekly reads: big Retraction Watch news, stem cells & metastasis, an FDA approval, Iowa AG sues clinic

Retraction watch

Retraction Watch has been a great resource for those of us who have been following research misconduct. They widely cover and conduct research on retractions, corrections, and other developments in this space. Unfortunately, there’s been plenty to write about even just within the stem cell and cell therapy arena, which is my primary interest. Think […]

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Weekly reads: CRISPR sickle cell, Parkinson’s, pig-human chimera concerns

CRISPR gene editing

CRISPR gene editing has made rapid progress heading from bench to bedside. Perhaps the fastest has been its progress toward clinical use to combat sickle cell disease. We’ll start with a new paper on one major effort here. CRISPR gene editing. This process often involves cutting DNA, which then can be used as an opening to

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Weekly reads: stem cell therapy for eyes research, DMD, cheating death, cancer sensors

stem cell therapy

Many avenues are being pursued to get stem cell therapy to the clinic for eye conditions. These different approaches employ a variety of stem cell types. In some cases, such as with iPS cells, the stem cells themselves are not transplanted. Instead, the iPS cells are used to make differentiated eye cells, such as RPE

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Weekly reads: DNA methylation, H3 K27M in glioma, memory wipe, teeth

DNA methylation

I’ve been more interested in histones and their modifications versus DNA methylation when it comes to epigenetics and chromatin. In part this has just been because I have studied histones so much more. For example, we have been knocking out the two histone variant H3.3 genes, H3f3a and H3f3b, now for a decade. My lab also

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Weekly reads: embryonic stem cells, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s

Knoepfler lab stem cells

Early during my postdoc I was primarily interested in the role of Myc genes both in cancer and in stem cells, work that later included embryonic stem cells. These cells are often called ES cells. At first I first started studying N-Myc in neural stem cells using a conditional knockout approach. However, soon after I was

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Weekly reads: BioCardia, HeLa suit, illegal bio lab in CA

mesenchymal cells

A days ago the news came about Mesoblast not getting FDA approval for its MSC product for GvHD. The MSC area has had a rough few years with various clinical trials including for COVID. The “stem cells for heart disease” arena has also had a tough time. Here’s more news along these lines: BioCardia pauses enrollment in PhIII trial

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Weekly stem cell reads: Google Bard AI issues, fat ball reprogramming, BrainStorm on ALS

stem cell research

It’s great finding stem cell videos on YouTube that are either excellent research talks or provide important information. I recently found one such video by Shiri Gur-Cohen, which I included below. Interesting data there and Shiri is such a compelling speaker. She also won The Niche image contest one year with a cool microscopy pic

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Weekly reads: Conception Bio & IVG, MYC, Stanford Prez resigns

Conception Bio, IVG

The Bay Area biotech Conception Bio has an intriguing name. What does “conception” mean here? Scientists can make many things from stem cells. For example, lately I’ve written a lot about stem cell-based human embryo models. Another intriguing area is called in vitro gametogenesis or IVG, where Conception Bio is a leader. IVG means making

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Weekly reads: HIV from vampire facials, CAR-T, FDA warns Regenative Labs

vampire facials

Imagine regularly having someone rub your face all over with the equivalent of a small roller covered with spikes and doused with either your blood or someone else’s and you have what’s called vampire facials. There’s more news that this is a very bad idea. Vampire facials linked to more HIV cases “Vampire facials” promoted

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Weekly reads: Vertex stem cells for diabetes update, new CRISPR , immortality

stem cell therapy for diabetes

Where do things stand with the investigative approach of stem cells for diabetes? 33% of Type 1 Diabetes Patients Insulin-Free With Stem Cells, Medscape. Not the best headline given the few number of participants here. If your study has only two subjects and one responds, someone is going to say, “50% of people had a

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