By Jeanne Loring “Shared Labs Axed” was the headline for David Jensen’s blog about the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the funding agency founded after voters approved Proposition 71, the “stem cell research and cures” initiative. I was there when the ax fell, in Los Angeles at the meeting of CIRM’s governing board, along with […]
Guest Post By Jeanne Loring: Efforts to Save CIRM Shared Labs Read More »
The Knoepfler Lab conducts stem and cancer cell as well as chromatin/epigenetics research at the UC Davis School of Medicine. Our team has two big picture goals: (1) catalyzing the development of more effective treatments for cancers based on targeting stem cell-related machinery in tumorigenesis and (2) producing safer stem cell-based regenerative medicine therapies. We are particularly
Scientific reviews and scores are in for CIRM’s Disease Team III RFA. We don’t know the identifies of the applicants yet, but 3 out of 4 of the top scoring grants recommended outright for funding are focused on cancer. As a cancer stem cell researcher (and cancer survivor) I’m excited to see how well these
Cancer Grants Perform Well With CIRM Disease Team Reviews Read More »
A big, fat elephant in “the room” of the commercial stem cell field today is something called stromal vascular fraction or SVF, made from human fat tissue or adipose. If you care at all about stem cells or the stem cell field more generally, you had better educate yourself on SVF. You can learn a
Law and Order SVF: what is stromal vascular fraction? Read More »
Can Google’s new anti-aging company, Calico, have you Googling at age 140? Don’t sell your burial plot just yet. The idea of anti-aging has been around for a very long time and efforts to combat aging have spanned millennia largely without any success so Calico (apparently short for California Life Company, which sounds more like
Has anti-aging finally come of age with Google’s Calico? Read More »
Yesterday I posted a list of a dozen potential candidates to be considered for the position of the new CIRM President. To be clear, that list is not my list. It is also not CIRM’s list and I’m sure that CIRM’s Search Committee has its own ideas of course. The list in yesterday’s post was
Some More Thoughts on the Search for a New CIRM President Read More »
Who might make a fantastic new CIRM President? The California stem cell community is abuzz with this question. This new President will not only lead CIRM today, but also in all likelihood will steer CIRM in its new incarnation after 2017, what I’ve called CIRM 2.0. At least that would be ideal. CIRM has posted a
Dozen Candidates To Be New CIRM President Read More »
De-extinction is big right now and some of the extinct target creatures are big too like the woolly mammoth. “Let’s bring back these extinct creatures”, say proponents. Wouldn’t it be cool? I have to admit seeing a woolly mammoth, mastodon, or saber tooth tiger would be cool, but such efforts would not be without consequences
Why I oppose de-extinction of woolly mammoths Read More »
I opened the most recent edition of Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and found a striking full-page ad from the FDA. It’s unclear if this is the first ever such advertisement. I have been unable to find a similar one on the Internet at least. Has anyone seen such ads before? The JAMA
Full page JAMA ad from FDA warns docs on foreign drugs Read More »
Osiris, a cellular therapy biotech, recently received a so-called “untitled letter” from the FDA. The text of the letter seems on the whole negative in my opinion, while the company’s public reaction to the letter on the other hand could be seen paradoxically as rather cheery. What’s going on here? With Halloween coming, one has
Osiris FDA Letter: Trick or Treat? Read More »