Where do things stand with the investigative approach of stem cells for diabetes? 33% of Type 1 Diabetes Patients Insulin-Free With Stem Cells, Medscape. Not the best headline given the few number of participants here. If your study has only two subjects and one responds, someone is going to say, “50% of people had a …
Weekly reads: Vertex stem cells for diabetes update, new CRISPR , immortality 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 »
Where do things stand with potential applications of CRISPR and other gene editing technologies in patients? Overall, things are looking very positive. CRISPR human trials This week the third big international human genome editing meeting took place in London. The summit addressed numerous potential clinical applications. It was good to see the agenda included quite …
Weekly reads: big CRISPR mtg, Mesoblast good news, Neuralink spiked Read More »
It’s funny how sometimes there are many new articles about one general topic like this week with heritable (and somatic) human CRISPR gene editing and related tech. There are clear reasons for optimism in the somatic arena given advancing trials. Germline editing remains highly questionable in my view even just technically. Then there are loads …
Weekly reads: human CRISPR, MRT risks, private IRBs, skincare Read More »
When I first heard of CRISPR gene editing I was excited for my lab to try it out, but it seemed a long way from the field having even one CRISPR therapy available to treat human disease. In the Knoepfler lab, we study genetic and genomic programming in human development and disease. Gene editing seemed …
Updates on CRISPR therapy development and clinical trials 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 »
My to-read list this weekend includes a range of papers along with various news & media including a report of two US research groups aiming to get CRISPR baby patents. More on that below. At long last a trip + fun thing to do in NYC Last week I took my first trip in more …
Weekly reads: escape to New York, CRISPR baby patents, ISSCR guidelines, pubs Read More »
It was a couple of years back that researcher He Jiankui claimed he made three “CRISPR babies.” No one would think about doing any kind of rogue gene-editing again, right? Not even somatic gene edits. After all, as far as we know he’s in jail. We still don’t know the health risks that these three …
Ukraine clinic plans to sell CRISPR enhancements: hair color, skin, & breast size Read More »
Here are our weekly recommended regenerative medicine and other notable science reads including a few things on COVID. It’s been quite an interesting week. “Junk DNA” is not so junky, role in differentiation NIH scientists showed how ancient retroviral genes, or “junk DNA”, may play a role in helping stem cells decide to become neurons. This …
Weekly reads: ‘junk DNA’, COVID chaos, CRISPR CasΦ, & postdoc opps, more Read More »
Three new studies reported in preprints all show severe DNA damage to human embryos from CRISPR a surprisingly high percentage of the time including in some cases loss of heterozygosity (LOH). Anywhere from about a quarter to half of CRISPR’d embryos exhibited major genome damage. As readers of The Niche know, I never was a …