It’s been mostly a downbeat week on the stem cell news front including a deep revisit by Reuters to the Piero Anversa case that has new revelations. It’s ugly stuff involving other folks too. We’ll start on the iPS cell front, where a trial participant had a teratoma. I’ve had a long-standing interest in the […]
People are the real driving force in the stem cell and regenerative medicine field including my colleague Jan Nolta here at UC Davis. She is the Director of our Stem Cell Program. There’s also news about Stanford’s stem cell Director Irv Weissman. Jan Nolta receives award Jan’s lab is prolific and in many ways is
Weekly reads: Jan Nolta recognition, new director after Irv, FDA guidance Read More »
Blastoids are lab-grown models of human embryos that represent a relatively new area of developmental biology research. The goal of today’s post is to give you everything you need to know about this topic. What’s in this article What are blastoids? | How are blastoids made? | Use in research | Blastoids challenges & Ethics
What are blastoids, roles in biomedical research, & ethical considerations Read More »
I recently wrote about stem cell-related ideas for anti-aging and even cheating death, but there are of course other approaches including drugs like metformin. A new article outlines a massive research funding plan to tackle aging. Let’s start with that. Recommend reads including anti-aging Saudi Arabia plans to spend $1 billion a year discovering treatments to
Weekly reads: $1B Saudi anti-aging push, OCT4 necklace, cancer trial wows, coffee brain Read More »
The Pink Sheet just broke the story that the FDA may change up its oversight of the cell therapy space. This possible shift could drop the oversight bar somewhat for certain products. Most likely it’d be those with lower anticipated risks. The Pink Sheet piece by Sue Sutter is titled US FDA To Explore New Regulatory Pathways
One size doesn’t fit all? FDA may soften some cell therapy regs Read More »
There was a time when The Niche was just about the only stem cell blog or even stem cell-dedicated website more generally across the globe. I realized early on that I needed to reach people who don’t speak English or for whom English is not their first language. This goal was crucial for effective educational
The Niche foreign language outreach program: 2.5 million reads Read More »
A planned change to the Google ads policy will allow some ads for unproven cell and gene therapies. This shift, allowing educational ads, was just announced. I have a few concerns about this change that will start in July. Google ads policy and stem cells This move seems to be a refinement of their “ad ban” policy
Google ads policy change to allow unproven cell & gene therapy educational material Read More »
If there’s one area of biologics where the FDA has been consistently busy lately it’s the perinatal cell therapy space. The agency has made it clear in the last year that allogeneic birth-related cell products are often drugs requiring premarket approval. This has mainly manifested at a practical enforcement level. We’ve seen actions taken in
End of FDA “grace period” impacted perinatal cell therapy biotechs Read More »
This has been one of those weeks where I spent some time thinking about taking risks in science. How much risk one should take? Risks can come in many forms. It could be at the core level at the bench doing specific experiments and not others. There’s risk in clinical trials, and even in advocacy. Sometimes
Weekly science reads: Macchiarini trial, somites, CRISPR babies Read More »
We often don’t think of them that way but reproductive cells like sperm and egg are also relatives of stem cells, and it turns out that there are stem cells that make the reproductive cells too like sperm stem cells. Sperm and germ cell stem cells DNMT3A-dependent DNA methylation is required for spermatogonial stem cells
Recommend reads: CRISPR baby guy free, DNMT3, sperm, Editas, hearing loss, reprogramming Read More »