I was fortunate enough to do my postdoctoral studies at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (aka “The Hutch”) in Seattle. I was a postdoc for more years than I’d like to admit, but it was a wonderful experience. The Hutch is the kind of place where you can imagine making the impossible become possible …
A tribute to Nobel Laureate E. Donnall Thomas, a true stem cell pioneer Read More »
I love collaborative science. I believe it advances science faster. An example? My lab recently collaborated with another lab here at UC Davis of Dr. Oliver Fiehn, a metabolomics guru. Our paper on this just came out in PLOS ONE here. Admittedly, we got scooped by another lab that published the first ever metabolomics paper …
New paper on iPS cell metabolomics: striking, yet incomplete metabolic reprogramming Read More »
Hisashi Moriguchi. He is arguably at the center of one of the biggest science scandals of 2012. This is the guy who lied about doing iPS cell transplants into human patients. He also lied about being affiliated with Harvard & its primary teaching hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), for many years after he left there. He …
Harvard spokesman: MGH withdrawing puzzling Moriguchi 2010 iPS cell patent application Read More »
A team from the Salk Institute in La Jolla led by Inder Verma has reported dedifferentiation in a paper in Science some important findings that I believe make their paper in the top 10 as a candidate for paper of the year. The paper, entitled “Dedifferentiation of Neurons and Astrocytes by Oncogenes Can Induce Gliomas …
Dedifferentiation of neurons & astrocytes into glioma forming cells Read More »
The FDA warning letter that Celltex received in late September (but that just went public yesterday–see my initial reaction here) is a possible game-changer for that company in my opinion. Why? The letter outlined in great detail the FDA’s concerns with how Celltex manufactures its stem cell product ranging from lack of documentation to concerns about aseptic/sterile …
Will stem cell clinic Celltex reinvent itself after game-changing FDA warning letter? Read More »
I’m getting some heat from some stem cell folks who think I should not have blogged about the Moriguchi iPS cell transplant case. Their argument seems to be it would have been preferable to either (A) not blog about the story at all or only minimally so fewer people would know about it or (B) …
Responding to critics of blogging the Moriguchi iPS cell story Read More »
Hisashi Moriguchi, who claimed to have transplanted iPS cells into six human patients has now admitted that he lied about five of them according to a new Nature piece by excellent science writer David Cyranoski, on the strange case citing several Japanese newspaper articles as sources. Quoted from a press conference yesterday in the Nature …
iPS cell fraud Moriguchi confesses to lying about almost, but not quite everything Read More »
The fellow at the center of what appears to be a made up story about iPS cell transplantation into humans is named Hisashi Moriguchi. Two new articles in the Japanese media support the notion that he has made the whole iPS cell transplant story up: here and here. Most people I’ve talked to in the …
More on Moriguchi: bogus iPS cell transplant poster guy Read More »
My phone has been ringing and my email flowing at an even faster rate than usual over this still breaking story of the reported transplant of iPS cells into human patients by a Japanese scientist, Hisashi Moriguchi , who at some point was a visiting scientist at Harvard, apparently no more recently than 12 years ago. …
My thoughts on the Moriguchi iPS cell controversy Read More »
The following comment was posted on my blog post about the emerging, yet still confusing story reported by the major Japanese newspaper, raises doubts about the accuracy of the newspaper article. Harvard University, the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Harvard Medical School, and Massachusetts Hospital have issued the following joint statement: “Hisashi Moriguchi was a visiting …