Weekly Reads

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

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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Weekly reads: stembryos or human embryo models, new Macchiarini sentence

stembryos, embryo models Monash

Researchers have been making stem cell-based embryo models for years now and a few folks have taken to calling these “stembryos.” Other names like gastruloids and blastoids are sometimes used too. “Embryo models” might be the simplest and best name. The embryo model research has advanced relatively quickly from very basic, not very organized structures

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Weekly reads: stem cell for hair loss, clinic lawsuit update, 2 big retractions

stem cell for hair loss

There seems to be a never-ending supply of stem cell for hair loss research but a new article invokes a novel mechanism. Stem cell for hair loss research and cell mechanics Here’s a recent news item about a PNAS paper: Coaxing hair growth in aging hair follicle stem cells, NW Now. A common theme is things

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Weekly reads: gene therapy nod, Nature pub ethics, CRISPR LDL

Multipotent & totipotent vs pluripotent stem cells, very early human embryos totipotent stem cells

Totipotency literally means all powerful, but it refers in biology to specific cells. These cells can make every type of cell in the body of an organism plus the extraembryonic tissues needed for development. This includes humans. So if you could reprogram human cells like blood or skin cells into totipotent stem cells, you might

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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: reprogramming hearing loss, heart disease, eye drops, sickle cell

Regener-Eyes, eye drops

It’s mostly been a week of good and encouraging news in the regenerative medicine space including with gene therapies maybe with the exception of some eye drops warnings (more below). There’s realistic hope for an approved sickle cell disease soon. I also see some long-term positive news on hearing loss research. Hematopoietic stem cell transplant

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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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