Reportedly, Geron has decided to only focus on cancer research and for financial reasons has shut down its hESC trial for spinal cord injury. This is a very sad day for stem cell science. (Update in 2020: the firm still exists, but is working in different areas. The stock has struggled.) No more spinal cord […]
Bad news as Geron to quit hESC SCI trial for financial reasons Read More »
I recently did a post telling you about one of my favorite molecules, Myc, which is important not only in cancer but also in most, if not all stem cells including iPS cells. There’s a lot more to Myc and how it does it’s tricks in embryonic stem cells and iPS cells. It cannot do
More on Myc: meet the “Miz’s” in our new paper Read More »
Tomorrow night voters in Mississippi will vote on the so-called “Personhood Amendment”. If passed, the amendment would make a fertilized egg by definition a human being with the same rights as a living, breathing, thinking, walking person in the state of Mississippi. The consequences are not clear, but possibilities include such things as complete bans on
Why Horton was wrong: a person is not a person no matter how small, even in Mississippi Read More »
Every now and then I do a post on something fun and non-science related, and today it’s all about Seattle. Since it’s Friday, don’t you wish you were on vacation in Seattle? If you can ever imagine visiting Seattle in the near future, bookmark this page because I give suggestions for great things (some that
Six fun, amazing, sometimes secret things to do in Seattle Read More »
When I talk to people about stem cell science and the timeline for turning data into treatments and cures, their reactions completely depend on whom they are. Scientists are patient, perhaps too patient….perhaps too understanding of the many years that we are told that science takes to get something to the clinic. Patients and patient
Is it fair to tell a patient to be patient? Read More »
Are street smarts important in science? Some of the smartest people I have ever met in my life were scientists. But some of these same people made the dumbest mistakes I have ever seen in my life. Why? Their raw brainpower and knowledge of science is amazing, but they seemed to lack common sense and
Science street smarts: how to succeed in science in the real world Read More »
The CIRM Grantee Meeting will wrap up today in San Francisco with more great talks I am sure. It has been an inspiring meeting and one that fills me with hope for stem cell science to help a huge number of patients. The meeting was kicked off with a talk by Craig Venter, the amazing
Venter: CIRM is the greatest scientific organization founded in our era. Read More »
Monday I did a post in response to an item that appeared in the Secondhand Smoke Blog by Wesley J. Smith where he invoked the opponents of ESC research favorite term to contrast so-called adult stem cell research with ESC research. In addition, he implied that George W. Bush deserved some of the credit for
Lessons from getting attacked by ESC research opponents Read More »
What’s big tent science? As a stem cell scientist I hear all the time about how the pipeline from the lab to the clinic is incredibly slow and terribly inefficient. Meanwhile millions of people have conditions that the current state-of-the-art medicine cannot effectively treat. Somehow we need to make a fundamental change to improve this
Big tent science: new ideas about clinical trials Read More »
This is just the first in a series “Tales from the hood” about the stories of the stem cell scientists at the front lines of research. What really goes on in labs? After spending nearly half of my life being a scientist in one form or another including much time studying stem cells, I have
Tales from the Hood: what really goes on in research labs? Read More »