Can you paradoxically kill yourself early by trying to cheat Death? For example, die through risky anti-aging approaches? The question came to mind because such longevity efforts have become more extreme. They also get more hype in the media. I’ve been following the anti-aging space mainly because many interventions involve risky stem cell injections. Those […]
Can trying to cheat death paradoxically kill you sooner? Read More »
The FDA issued a statement this week that there have been reports of new cases of blood cancer after patients received CAR-T therapies. The FDA specifically mentions T cell malignancies. New cancers in rare cases? In the announcement, FDA Investigating Serious Risk of T-cell Malignancy Following BCMA-Directed or CD19-Directed Autologous Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cell
Some CAR-T may very rarely cause new cancers Read More »
In today’s post, I reviewed a stem cell clinic firm called Docere Clinics. In my opinion, there are some concerning issues here and reasons for caution. One type of procedure at Docere is particularly surprising and raises risks in my view. What is Docere Clinics? | What kind of stem cells does Docere use? | What they
Review of Docere Clinics run by Harry Adelson including total-body injections Read More »
Let’s start this week’s digest with a discussion of clonal expansion and mutations during cell and gene therapy development. Here’s the article that brought this to mind. Sickle cell gene therapy process may cause cancer-linked mutations in blood stem cells, Fierce Biotech. Clonal expansion This is a story about a non-CRISPR gene therapy using a
Some folks can view data from early, small clinical trials too skeptically or overly enthusiastically, and maybe that’s going on with some preliminary results from Verve Therapeutics. Good news? Bad news? I’m going to start with two articles about the same news that have very different vibes. What do I think? On the whole, I
Weekly reads: Verve Therapeutics, Casgevy UK OK, GDNF, MYC Read More »
Cell therapy companies face many hurdles. I wrote recently about four cell therapy biotechs that have been really struggling. Blogging here at The Niche for more than a dozen years, I’ve seen many companies even go under. That’s bad news for the field, for patients, and for investors. Today I wanted to highlight some cell therapy
3 cell therapy companies doing well: Vertex, Vericel, & Regeneron Read More »
For me, this was another week of heavy grant writing but also taking on Google again. How? Over how badly its search engine often performs on stem cell queries. I have a new piece at MedPage Today. It’s focused on the problem of Google Search promoting unproven stem cell clinic websites. Google still prefers stem
Weekly reads: Google, CIRM, young Swedish bone marrow Read More »
We all know people who seem far younger than their age, which feeds into the idea of biological age. It’s often in the news these days and all over social media. Some people who are fighting high-profile battles with aging are also doing something I call “health flexing.” I also called these folks by another
Biological age, health flexing, & stabs at rejuvenation Read More »
Neil Riordan may be most well-known for running the Panama stem cell clinic called simply enough the Stem Cell Institute, but he also has a U.S. firm Signature Biologics. The Panama clinic sells unproven umbilical cord cells grown in a lab for a host of medical conditions. I’ve had many concerns about it over the
FDA warns Neil Riordan U.S. perinatal firm Signature Biologics Read More »
BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics is developing Nurown, an investigational therapy intended for treating ALS. I recently posted about BrainStorm and its prospects for providing real hope on stem cells for ALS. I see it as a long shot. The ALS community needs real hope, but one challenge is determining how good clinical data have to be to
BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics Hail Mary with FDA on Nurown for ALS Read More »