Search Results for: weekly reads

Weekly reads: Vertex & CRISPR Therapeutics, Arnold Caplan death, MS genetics

CRISPR Therapeutics

The biotechs Vertex and CRISPR Therapeutics have an interesting relationship as biotechs. They are partners are multiple levels but also are very different as companies including in size. There’s been a key development in one of their partnerships. Before we jump into that, please check out the video version of my 20 stem cell and […]

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Weekly reads: game of clones, super-SOX, Moonwalk Bio, Great Wall’s living skin

dog clones

I’m trying to remember the first time I ever heard about clones. It had to be as a kid. Maybe in a monster movie or TV show? Possibly a clone was referred to by the more general term “double”, which is not necessarily a clone. Whatever it was, I’m sure as a kid that I

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Weekly reads: RMAT jump, tissues as liquid crystals, gov stem cell advisor scammed of $650K

RMAT, FDA data

The FDA has a unique mechanism called RMAT or regenerative medicine advanced therapy designation. It’s intended to move investigational regenerative therapies forward more effectively. RMAT data I recently updated The Niche RMAT list and it has jumped to 85. The FDA has approved many new RMATs this year. The data on how many applications the FDA

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Weekly reads: FDA OKs 2 gene therapies for sickle cell, new Paolo Macchiarini series, Fujifilm

Marie Tornyenu, Casgevy gene therapies for sickle cell

The big news broke Friday that the FDA approved two new gene therapies for sickle cell disease. While the approvals were expected and the actual use of these treatments will be complex on several levels, this is a historic development. 2 FDA-approved gene therapies for sickle cell Friday’s news follows on recent UK approval for

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Weekly reads: stem cells for MS, good news x2, extending dog years, Neuralink updates

stem cells for MS

For about as long as I’ve been writing The Niche, people have been asking about stem cells for MS. There’s a huge need for new therapies. While a chemo-based approach with autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) looks to work for certain cases of multiple sclerosis (although not yet approved in the US), other cell

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Weekly reads: clonal expansion, Golden Retriever cancer, FTC hits genetics firm on testi-phony-als

clonal selection

Let’s start this week’s digest with a discussion of clonal expansion and mutations during cell and gene therapy development. Here’s the article that brought this to mind. Sickle cell gene therapy process may cause cancer-linked mutations in blood stem cells, Fierce Biotech. Clonal expansion This is a story about a non-CRISPR gene therapy using a

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Weekly reads: Verve Therapeutics, Casgevy UK OK, GDNF, MYC

Sekar Kathiresan, Verve Therapeutics

Some folks can view data from early, small clinical trials too skeptically or overly enthusiastically, and maybe that’s going on with some preliminary results from Verve Therapeutics. Good news? Bad news? I’m going to start with two articles about the same news that have very different vibes. What do I think? On the whole, I

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Weekly reads: Google, CIRM, young Swedish bone marrow

Google stem cell side effects

For me, this was another week of heavy grant writing but also taking on Google again. How? Over how badly its search engine often performs on stem cell queries. I have a new piece at MedPage Today. It’s focused on the problem of Google Search promoting unproven stem cell clinic websites. Google still prefers stem

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Weekly reads: Mammoth De-extinction update, space babies, Alzheimer’s, MSCs don’t help knees

George Church De Extinction Mammoth

What’s more important than Woolly Mammoth de-extinction research in the stem cell arena? Only maybe a 10,000 other things. Still, the mammoth de-extinction efforts  capture people’s attention much more than the average research story. Mammoth De-extinction update Is de-extinction only a pipette dream? This startup has a big, expensive plan to find out, Popular Science.

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Weekly reads: late Macchiarini retractions, stem cells & Lululemon

Paolo-Macchiarini

Paolo Macchiarini is one of a small group of people in the stem cell universe whose misconduct has blown up in the press. Piero Anversa, Haruko Obokata, Hwang Woo-Suk, and some operators in the unproven stem cell clinic sphere come to mind. Macchiarini published quite a few seriously problematic papers, some of which just hung

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