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 […]
Weekly reads: HIV from vampire facials, CAR-T, FDA warns Regenative Labs Read More »
I’m kind of in grant writing hell at the moment, as many of you may have been at various times, but I’m still finding time to read a little on cell therapy and stem cell research. Here are some things that caught my eye as I work on multiple grants with impending deadlines. Clinical trials
Weekly reads: cell therapy trials, melanoma, β-thalassemia Read More »
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
Weekly reads: gene therapy nod, Nature pub ethics, CRISPR LDL Read More »
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
Weekly reads: reprogramming hearing loss, heart disease, eye drops, sickle cell Read More »
Research on in vitro gametogenesis or IVG is jumping ahead and such work could one day lead to new infertility treatments. In vitro gametogenesis is the process of producing gametes (sperm and eggs) from stem cells. Those powerful stem cells, called iPS cells, can be made from ordinary adult cells like skin or blood cells.
Questions on National Academies in vitro gametogenesis (IVG) meeting sponsorship Read More »
Almost two years ago I publicly called on the FDA to freeze the unproven cord cell expanded access program (EAP) at the Duke Autism Center. Duke has been infusing kids with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with unproven cord cells and requiring large payments for this. The cost was as much as $15,000. A halt and a
Why did Duke autism team halt its troubling pay-for-play program? Read More »
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
Weekly reads: Sarepta, epigenomics, FDA on eyedrops Read More »
As we think about how much of a role belief should play in the hard sciences such as cell biology, a supposed cell type called VSEL or very-small embryonic stem cell-like cells comes to mind. For these guys it seems to me that the ratio of data to belief isn’t great. VSELs have nine lives. I
The role of belief in hard science: the VSEL case Read More »
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
Weekly reads: genome sequencing, chemical reprogramming 2.0 Read More »
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
Weekly reads: UC Davis Medical School diversity, CRISPR, Parkinson’s Read More »