The Japanese public broadcasting system, NHK, has been accused by scientist Haruko Obokata of violating her human rights. Obokata was the primary researcher involved in the STAP cell fiasco in which two ultimately retracted Nature papers contained duplicated, plagiarized, and manipulated data. She was certainly not the only researcher on those papers, but overall she […]
Did NHK Violate Rights of Obokata (小保方 晴子) on STAP? Read More »
Below is a conversation with bioethics commentator Kelly Hills (who BTW has a great blog), tackling some of the key issues surrounding the potential use of CRISPR-Cas9 technology to make heritable human genetic modification. I really appreciate her clear and insightful answers to some tough questions that many are grappling with today on this topic. Part
Kelly Hills interview: human genetic modification & bioethics Read More »
As many of you know, the pioneering, first of its kind IPS cell clinical study in Japan has been suspended as I first blogged about here.2020 Update: I believe a version of this study is ongoing. In the comments section of that blog post there has been a helpful overall discussion that has involved Dr.
Historic turning point for IPS cell field in Japan? Read More »
Why do some scientists commit suicide and can such suicides be prevented? Clearly it can be hard or even impossible to tell from the outside what things may be like on the inside for anybody whether they are a scientist or not. Last year the world of science, and in particular the stem cell and
Scientists and suicide Read More »
The pioneering induced pluripotent stem cell (IPSC) clinical study in Japan led by top stem cell clinical researcher Dr. Masayo Takahashi has been stopped reports the WSJ in Japan. This development is confirmed by other sources and in a PDF report by RIKEN (in Japanese here). One patient was transplanted in September 2014 with their own IPSC-derived
Landmark IPSC clinical study on hold due to genomic issue Read More »
It seems hard to believe it was a year ago that the STAP cell Nature papers came out to much fanfare on January 29, 2014. These now discredited and retracted papers reported a supposed new method to easily make reprogrammed powerful stem cells, a finding touted as a Nobel Prize-worthy discovery. Now a year later on
Personal Reflections on STAP Cell Mess On 1-Year Anniversary Read More »
Signaling a nightmare ending to what was originally a fairy tale scientific story, the Japanese press (e.g. here) are reporting that Haruko Obokata has herself been unable to make STAP cells again as part of a RIKEN team testing STAP under watchful supervision. In advance of a scheduled RIKEN press conference tomorrow, newspapers including Asahi Shimbun are
Obokata Can’t Reproduce STAP Cells Read More »
What does this stem cell blog focus on? Even I am not always sure of patterns unless I analyze my own posts.Inspired by DrugMonkeyBlog, I have gone through and listed the first ipscell.com blog posts of each of the 12 months of 2014. It makes for a surprising summary of the year. Think of it as
The 12 months of stem cell blog mass Read More »
Recently I was at the World Alliance Forum in San Francisco (WAFSF), a great meeting on stem cells and regenerative medicine. WAFSF had some excellent talks and I saw one session on the use of stem cells to treat vision impairment that was particularly striking. World Alliance Forum in San Francisco (WAFSF) This session’s all-star lineup included Drs. David
WAFSF stem cell vision talks: Hinton, Tsukamoto, Klassen, Takahashi Read More »
Congratulations to Masayo Takahashi (高橋 政代), MD, PhD, the winner of the 2014 Stem Cell Person of the Year Award. Dr. Takahashi received this award including the $2,000 prize for her exceptional achievements in stem cell research in 2014. She was selected as the winner from a stellar group of top 12 finalists this year. Takahashi leads
Stem Cell Person of the Year 2014: Masayo Takahashi (高橋 政代) Read More »