Lately it seems like something called Mastodon is on the minds of many a Twitter user. There is a wave of people tweeting “let’s dump Twitter and go to Mastodon now that Musk has taken over!” However, so far I don’t see Mastodon as a solid alternative to the admittedly annoyingly musky Twitter. I do […]
What is Mastodon & why so far it’s a clunky alternative to Twitter Read More »
As both a scientist who works on stem cells, cancer, and CRISPR, and a research advocate I’ve been fortunate to meet many patient advocates over the years. Some have been participants in clinical trials themselves. Benefits & risks of clinical trial participation It is very sobering to find out that a clinical trial participant has
Weekly reads: death in CRISPR trial, sickle cell, nose picking & dementia, epilepsy Read More »
I wrote recently about how political pressure on FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn in 2020 may have helped the Texas firm Direct Biologics move their product ExoFlo forward inside the agency. Today I analyze the ExoFlo Phase I clinical trial paper used in that push on Hahn to get the firm the IND for a Phase II
Review of ExoFlo paper used to push Direct Biologics IND inside FDA finds red flags Read More »
The FDA has finally filed an appeal of the Cell Surgical Network lawsuit verdict. It took them a very long time for some reason. The stem cell clinic chain Cell Surgical Network and other defendants had prevailed in a federal district court here in California in front of Judge Jesus Bernal. Their adipose cell product, stromal
FDA appeals Cell Surgical Network lawsuit verdict Read More »
If you’ve never heard of the KRAS G12C mutation, it’s a particularly frightening mutation present in numerous cancers. Like the MYC oncogene, many people view mutations in RAS as undruggable, but new efforts show some glimmers of hope. The drug Sotorasib has been approved by the FDA to target the KRAS G12C mutation. Here’s a
Weekly reads: KRAS G12C, eLife journal controversy, bird iPSCs Read More »
When you are a stem cell biologist and especially if you do a blog, you sometimes run across very strange things like a chimera cat. In this case, I stumbled on the whole topic of chimeric cats because I was searching for info on chimeric rats on Google. Of course, I was. It’s kind of
Weekly reads: chimera cat vs. chimeric rat, cheap sequencing, more Read More »
As we age a higher proportion of our cells end up in a senescent state, which has sparked interest in senolytic drugs and a broader area called senolytics research. The goal of today’s post is to give you an overview of this important area. How much data are there on efficacy or safety? Is the
What are senolytics? Drugs, activator, supplements, risks Read More »
An FDA FOIA dump of text messages of former Commissioner Stephen Hahn suggests that a Texas regenerative firm called Direct Biologics benefited from political pressure on him in mid-2020. Then he was asked again to help in early 2021. This was shortly before he resigned at the start of the Biden Administration. The push came from
FDA leader Stephen Hahn was pressured to aid Texas firm Direct Biologics Read More »
There was a time when I thought transdifferentiation based approaches might quickly move into clinical trials. Then things kind of cooled off. We didn’t see many papers reporting methods to transdifferentiate cells. I still think that this technology, sometimes called direct reprogramming, has major potential. A new paper on making human brain cells this way got
Paper sparks renewed interest in transdifferentiation & clinical potential Read More »
Exosome therapy is a still-experimental cell therapy approach aimed at treating specific diseases using secretions from cells. It’s novel since most attention on cell therapies has been given to using the actual cells themselves. In addition, this approach is a newer idea than using cells as the drug to treat diseases. Interestingly, the term “cell
Fact-checking exosome therapy: costs, risks, & lack of data Read More »