Could potential associated cancer risks claw into CRISPR’s potential? The short answer from both previous and new data is that while CRISPR gene editing impacts the P53 pathway, which is involved in cancer along with having many other functions, this news is neither too surprising nor a fatal flaw, but some caution is warranted. CRISPR …
Could Cancer Risk Claw CRISPR’s Potential? Some Balanced Perspectives Read More »
By Jeanne Loring There are ten million people in the world who have Parkinson’s disease. 125,000 of these are living in California. People with the disease often have to step away from their jobs because the main symptoms – tremor or freezing up of muscles – make it difficult to get through a whole day …
On the threshold of cell therapy for Parkinson’s disease Read More »
So everyone is buzzing about the CRISPR patent court decision (which BTW I think was flawed but that’s for another post), but the research roars on at warp speed. Here are 7 recent CRISPR articles that caught my attention. What are your favorite recent CRISPR papers? Genome surgery using Cas9 ribonucleoproteins for the treatment of …
A new paper focused on human and other chimeras just came out today in Cell reporting a number of findings, but most strikingly successful generation of human-pig chimeras in utero. The paper, entitled, “Interspecies Chimerism with Mammalian Pluripotent Stem Cells” describes various chimeras including mouse-rat ones, although those have previously been reported. This work comes …
Cynata Therapeutics Limited has received approval from UK regulators to start a first-of-its-kind allogeneic IPSC-based trial of MSCs for graft versus host disease (GVHD). Cynata also had some big news a couple weeks back with a deal with Fujifilm. The company is aiming to recruit 16 patients to test whether the MSCs (a type of adult …
Cynata approval for 1st ever allo trial of IPSC-derived MSCs for GVHD Read More »
Has it really been 10 years since induced pluripotent stem cells (aka IPS cells or IPSC) came onto the scene in the stem cell field? Yes, it was a decade ago that now Nobel Laureate Shinya Yamanaka (山中伸弥) published that seminal Cell paper on reprogramming to make mouse IPS cells and then human IPS cells …
Yamanaka’s baby turns 10: ten IPS cell hot button bullet points Read More »
Over the years some scientists including yours truly have expressed concerns about the possibility that mutations could crop up during the reprogramming process to make induced pluripotent stem cells (IPS cells or IPSC). How concerned should we be about IPS cell mutations? A cool new paper, Bhutani, et al, in Nature Communications from a team led by …
For IPS cell mutations, some reassuring new data but validation still key Read More »
A new Cell Stem Cell paper by Victoria L. Mascetti and Roger Pedersen on human-mouse chimera modeling is quite interesting and important. I really enjoyed this short paper, but I do have a reservation about one way that it is being interpreted. The authors show that human pluripotent stem cells (hPSC) including induced pluripotent stem cells …
Perspectives on Pedersen Lab Human-Mouse Chimera Paper Read More »
The post-lunch session is “Applications of Gene Editing Technology: Human Germline Modification”. Prior to hearing it I’m curious how cautious or gung-ho the speakers will be, or if their gestalt will be one of balance in the middle somewhere. Robin Lovell-Badge, The Francis Crick Institute, was the moderator of this session. He said, “We’d be …
Live Blogging #GeneEditSummit Day 1 Post #3: human germline modification Read More »
Here are some recommended weekend science reads and links including stem cells, CRISPR, and clones. Woo-Suk Hwang & his dog clones…all started with Snuppy (pictured): Disgraced Scientist Clones Dogs, And Critics Question His Intent.Now in 2020, I wonder where Hwang is and what is he doing? I’m going to look into it. Human gene editing …