I remember the first time I ever witnessed human cell division first hand and it was really excitement. I was working as a part-time tech in the Lane Lab at UC San Diego School of Medicine. We studied heart disease and grew human umbilical cord endothelial cell cultures. It was striking to see a plate […]
Weekly reads: Vertex hold, new type of cell division in fish, CAR-T Read More »
It seems like the field of cell biology has mixed feelings about fibroblasts so I’m going to start off there with the recommended reads. But first, check out our stem cell YouTube channel as we are steadily heading toward 500 subscribers and 30,000 views. Please subscribe. I’ve pasted one of our top videos below, which
Weekly reads: fibroblasts, cancer stem cells, Parkinson’s Read More »
Science must go on and so must stem cell meetings in 2022 with all those great conferences out there, but hopefully this year will be better than 2020-2021. It seems that way with the pandemic easing in the U.S. and many other places. On the other hand, COVID is spiking in Asia and other regions.
Hub of Regenerative Medicine & Stem Cell Meetings 2022 Read More »
The big news of the week was a $3.6 million settlement by a stem cell clinic, StemGenex, and one of its doctors in a class-action suit. I covered this StemGenex settlement and so did Michael Hiltzik of the LA Times and Paul Schloesser at Endpoints. I’d say this was good news for the stem cell field
Stem cell weekly reads: Jamie Thomson, Lamin B1, CRISPR Read More »
About 1 million people are living with multiple sclerosis in the U.S. alone with millions of other cases around the world so a huge effort has gone into trying to find new approaches to the disease including stem cells for MS. We’ll start our weekly recommended reads by talking about a new paper on MS
Stem cells for MS & other weekly reads: CRISPR, COVID & a bat cave, Huntington’s Read More »
The idea of stem cells outright curing diseases is exciting and has powerful appeal, but media need to be careful about using the word cure in headlines and articles as we saw this week related to a possible HIV Cure. HIV cure via stem cells and chemo? The big news of the week was that
Weekly reads: possible rare HIV cure, stem cell chicken, FDA commish Read More »
Sometimes it’s useful to ask questions like, “How many stem cells are in the human body?” As we try to answer them we end up going through key aspects of cell biology and stem cell identity more generally. How many stem cells in the human body? It might seem like possibly an easy question at
How many stem cells do we have & can you run out? Read More »
I wrote briefly a few months ago about Altos Labs. It’s a new kind of biotech institute that is focused on cellular reprogramming. Now we know much more and it’s clear this is a huge deal. What’s in this article What is Altos Labs? | Cellular rejuvenation | Reprogramming oldness | Challenges | Altos Strategies | Analysis of
All about Altos Labs and $3B cellular rejuvenation push Read More »
We’ll begin this week’s recommended reads with some news on two wonderful stem cell scientists. While there are thousands of stem cell scientists, some stand out for their especially creative work. News on stem cell scientists Nobel laureate Yamanaka to retire as director of iPS cell center, Asahi Shimbun. Dr. Yamanaka will spend more time
Recommended reads: stem cell scientists, eggs from blood, Cryo-Cell Read More »
A type of human cells used in research called HEK cells or 293s has been much in the news lately. This is mainly related to COVID-19 vaccine research. There seem to be many misunderstandings about 293 cells. For that reason, I thought I’d do this post to clear things up. I’ve been working with these
Explainer on 293 or HEK cells and their use in COVID vaccine research Read More »