We know quite a bit more about the Nature papers on stress-induced STAP stem cells than we did just a couple weeks ago when they were published, but there are many crucial outstanding questions too and odd things that remain unresolved. Below are my top STAP stem cell oddities. 10. Dr. Vacanti says that STAP […]
Oddest Things About Unfolding STAP Stem Cell Story Read More »
Today may be a turning point in the STAP stem cell story. Nature itself opened up in a newsy piece about the events that have occurred in the past couple weeks since they published two related papers on acid/other stimulus-induced powerful pluripotent or totipotent stem cells (aka STAP stem cells). Update: Science also published a
STAP stem cell update 2.0: method isn’t working so far, investigations & more Read More »
Sometimes you think you know a person and they suddenly surprise you by doing something so new that it is shocking or by taking on a new personality. Cells can be that way too. In my book on stem cells, Stem Cells: An Insider’s Guide (you can buy it here on Amazon–it’s very affordable–or also here at
New Ways of Thinking About Stem Cells: Book Excerpt Read More »
It is important for the stem cell field to gain clarity on STAP stem cells. For this reason it is reasonable and at times helpful to critically discuss the data, past findings, concerns about elements of publications, and such. However, it is not helpful and is in fact against the policy of this blog to
Note on policy on commenting and how it relates to STAP stem cell situation Read More »
What’s the latest on the now two-week-old STAP stem cell saga? More preliminary data from around the world. People continue to deposit their data into our crowdsourcing page with 8 reports so far and I know some of them are from top-notch labs. Only one of them is even slightly encouraging with a report of
STAP stem cell update: more prelim data, missing data, & 2011 paper problems Read More »
This is a crowdsource page for people who want to post their findings on their attempts to validate the STAP stem cell ( ＳＴＡＰ細胞) method. I’m going to color successful or even moderately encouraging reports green and failures/discouraging results in red. *For those with longer attention spans, see some additional important considerations for this crowdsourcing effort at
Update: I’ve set up a STAP new data page where people can share their results, thoughts, etc. The report of STAP stem cells has shaken things up. The idea that you can easily make powerful stem cells with a simple acid treatment or other sources of cellular stress has definitely caught the attention of the world of
Invitation to crowdsource STAP stem cell follow up data here Read More »
I’ve been doing a poll on the extent to which people believe or do not believe in the stress-induced STAP stem cells reported in Nature last week. In just a few days of poll, we’ve got almost 400 respondents, which is great. It’s still not a scientific poll, but the results (above) are interesting for
STAP stem cell poll: interesting results & regional differences Read More »
The STAP papers on making iPS like cells using acid treatment of differentiated cells really has people talking. See embryo at right made from GFP reporter STAP cells that glow green. As I said in my review of the papers yesterday, there are still some critical things we do not know about STAP cells and I
More thoughts from STAP acid reprogramming stem cell paper Read More »
My lab just published a somewhat provocative paper (still in unproofed form at this point) arguing that iPS cells are very similar in some ways to cancer cells. How did we get to that conclusion (discussed in this post today, part 1 of the story) and what’s the back story on this paper (discussed in a later
iPS cells are similar to cancer cells: part 1 of discussion of new paper Read More »