What is a woolly dog? Is it somehow related to the Woolly Mammoth? Before we get into that and the rest of my recommended reads, note that I’m finalizing my list of contenders for this year’s The Screamers Science Hype Awards. Last year The BBC won The Screamers for an article “Baby’s life ‘probably saved’ …
Holiday reads: woolly dog vs. mammoth, man eggs, designer B-cells, bluebird bio blues Read More »
For about as long as I’ve been writing The Niche, people have been asking about stem cells for MS. There’s a huge need for new therapies. While a chemo-based approach with autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) looks to work for certain cases of multiple sclerosis (although not yet approved in the US), other cell …
Weekly reads: stem cells for MS, good news x2, extending dog years, Neuralink updates 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 »
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 »
People often ask me what are the most promising stem cell therapies in development and new data suggest we should add stem cells for epilepsy to the list based on work by Neurona Therapeutics. I’ll start off the weekly recommended reads with this new mouse paper on cell therapy for epilepsy. Neurona Therapeutics: stem cells …
CRISPR gene editing has made rapid progress heading from bench to bedside. Perhaps the fastest has been its progress toward clinical use to combat sickle cell disease. We’ll start with a new paper on one major effort here. CRISPR gene editing. This process often involves cutting DNA, which then can be used as an opening to …
Weekly reads: CRISPR sickle cell, Parkinson’s, pig-human chimera concerns Read More »
A days ago the news came about Mesoblast not getting FDA approval for its MSC product for GvHD. The MSC area has had a rough few years with various clinical trials including for COVID. The “stem cells for heart disease” arena has also had a tough time. Here’s more news along these lines: BioCardia pauses enrollment in PhIII trial …
Weekly reads: BioCardia, HeLa suit, illegal bio lab in CA Read More »
From the beginning of the pandemic, I have been mostly skeptical about the idea of cell therapy for COVID including stem cell therapies. However, at the same time, I’ve closely followed the data, especially up until 2022. Now having just had a nasty bout with COVID myself for the first time this summer, I recently …
Update on stem cells & cell therapy for COVID trials Read More »
Unproven stem cell clinic firm US Stem Cell and many others are apparently facing potential malpractice lawsuits. How it came to light via US Stem itself is somewhat surprising. US Stem Cell and malpractice notice The news popped up in an SEC filing by US Stem Cell, which I wasn’t even sure was still active …
US Stem Cell says it & 10 others face malpractice suits Read More »
Are long telomeres better than short ones? What about older folks lengthening their telomeres somewhat or stabilizing the length? Could this counter aging? As with many things, the story is far more complicated than we might hope. For background, telomeres are special structures protecting the ends of chromosomes. I remember as a young student that …
Long telomeres link to disease suggests caution on anti-aging push Read More »