“If I’m going to the trouble of cloning myself, I want the clone to be a copy of me!” I’m imagining what someone might say if they were told that their expensive and ethically dubious personal cloning efforts produced a clone that was somebody else instead of them. Even if the clone was very similar …
Surprising reason why human cloning may produce someone else Read More »
One of the highlights of Day 1 of #ISSCR2018 for me so far was the talk by Lorenz Studer (Co-Founder of BlueRock) on the use of human embryonic stem cell (HESC)-derived dopamine neurons for Parkinson’s Disease. Note that for this post and if I have time any others on this meeting, they are probably going …
Lorenz Studer on Day 1 #ISSCR2018: HESC-based therapies for Parkinson’s Disease Read More »
Could potential associated cancer risks claw into CRISPR’s potential? The short answer from both previous and new data is that while CRISPR gene editing impacts the P53 pathway, which is involved in cancer along with having many other functions, this news is neither too surprising nor a fatal flaw, but some caution is warranted. CRISPR …
Could Cancer Risk Claw CRISPR’s Potential? Some Balanced Perspectives Read More »
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how about a Facebook video from a stem cell clinic? In my view it sure tells a story with some unusual twists. I wrote last week about this Facebook video by Kristin Comella, the leader of the publicly-traded stem cell clinic firm US Stem Cell, Inc. (USRM). As …
Up your nose? OMG Facebook video moments from clinic sued by DOJ Read More »
One of the most famous living biological scientists, Sir Ian Wilmut, just announced that he has Parkinson’s Disease. I wish him the best in dealing with this illness. Wilmut is very well-known for having cloned the first mammal, Dolly the Sheep. This work followed on the earlier breakthrough by Sir John Gurdon of cloning the …
Ian Wilmut, who cloned Dolly, opens up about his Parkinson’s Disease Read More »
Some in CRISPR-Cas9-land who are focused on potential future clinical applications are kind of rejoicing or at least sighing a breath of relief. This upbeat swing in the atmosphere (from investors especially) was sparked by retraction of that paper, the one initially reporting tons of supposed off-target CRISPR-Cas9 activity in mice, which turned out to be a “nothing …
Analysis: human immunity to Cas9 bigger #CRISPR therapeutic hurdle than off-targets? Read More »
By Claire Horner In 2016, a law firm in California began looking for individuals who were “misled or harmed by stem cell treatment” in the southern California area (which was discussed on this blog here). While there had been other lawsuits filed by plaintiffs against individual clinics, this firm was looking to take a different …
There’s much more to CRISPR-Cas9 than just gene editing and a new paper from the lab of Rudy Jaenisch in Cell highlights that in an exciting way. It reports epigenetic reversal of a Fragile X Syndrome phenotype in induced pluripotent stem cell (IPSC) neurons. Fragile X Syndrome is a neurological disorder in boys resulting from CGG repeat …
Journal club: Jaenisch lab paper on epigenetic CRISPR-Cas9 rescue of Fragile X in a dish Read More »
On President’s Day, let’s think about our country’s leader, Donald Trump. Do we have to? Yeah, sometimes we do. For the first time in my lifetime, I see the President of the United States as a serious threat to overall science & to our country’s democracy. Trump is not well-acquainted with fact-based reality and that’s …
On President’s Day: Dealing with Reality Trump is Threat to Science & Democracy Read More »
My first job in science was as a lab technician at UCSD School of Medicine and a big part of that job was growing cells called HUVECs or human umbilical vein endothelial cells. We isolated and grew the HUVECs from umbilical cords that we retrieved from the maternity ward of the UCSD hospital, which first …
Why we shouldn’t view the human embryo as a gizmo even in the CRISPR era Read More »