The Stem Cell Meeting on the Mesa is going on in my former hometown of La Jolla, Ca on Halloween. I wish I could have been there, but I’m too swamped with a lot of stuff right now including teaching. If I was there, I’d be asking questions including, I hope, tough ones. Here are …
Truly frightening questions for stem cell field on Halloween Read More »
I put up a poll recently asking readers how they predicted the federal court would rule on federal funding of human ESC research. Six out of 10 respondents believed that the court would rule against the government, in effect making federal funding of ESC research illegal. In addition, one third of respondents believed an immediate injunction …
Pessimism of Stem Cell Field on Federal Court Case: Poll results Read More »
Yesterday Geron announced it would be immediately stopping its stem cell research program. What does this mean? While this program has (or should I say “had”) a number of elements, at its heart was of course its hESC-based OPC drug (GRNOPC1) for spinal cord injury, which was in an FDA-approved Phase I Clinical Trial that …
The day after Geron’s news: a realistic outlook for the stem cell field Read More »
Geron abruptly announced today that it will no longer pursue its spinal cord injury trial using oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs) derived from hESC. Several sources indicate that Geron is hoping to find a buyer of its drug for this trial, GRNOPC1 and the hope is that the trial could be rescued in a sense. Why …
Rumors flying on Geron, ACT, CIRM and the stem cell field Read More »
At this week’s World Stem Cell Summit, during one of the panel discussion I was on a member of the audience asked a great question. In terms of making a broader impact on politics, who out there in the stem cell field might be the Einstein of the stem cell field? Who has the gravitas …
Who is the Einstein or Steve Jobs of the stem cell field? Read More »
It was an honor and pleasure yesterday to show my friends, Roman Reed and Keri Kimler, around my stem cell lab here at UC Davis School of Medicine. My lab members got a chance to show Keri and Roman some of the interesting research we have ongoing involving ES cells and human iPS cells, funded …
Two people making a million-person difference in the stem cell field Read More »
How are things looking for the stem cell field for Spring 2011? Issue One. Getting to the clinic. At this point, Geron and ACT have their FDA-approved clinical trials underway using derivatives of human embryonic stem cells. As expected no news has leaked out on how things are going and it may well be Fall …
It has been an eventful year so far for the stem cell field. Where do we go from here ? What are the key questions that face the field? Below are my top 10 questions for the field, NOT listed in any particular order, and some predictions. Update: you can see the predictions for the …
Questions & my predictions for the stem cell field right now Read More »
The idea of testing stem cells for COVID-19 may be music to the ears of some folks as an opportunity, but to me from the beginning it sounded mostly like a spaghetti on the wall road to trouble. There is buzz out there that some kind of stem cells or other cells will help with …
Field throws stem cells for COVID-19 like spaghetti on the wall Read More »
A fitness guru named Ben Greenfield has now reported self-injecting non-FDA approved stem cells from US Stem Cell. He says the stem cells came from a clinic that lost a big federal court case 9 days ago. Greenfield posted a Facebook video of the actual injection, which he narrates. There’s some text along with the …
Ben Greenfield DIY injection of risky stem cells Read More »