Search Results for: adult stem cells

Duke Autism Center has Panama clinic to thank for $10s millions?

Drs.-Neil-Riordan-and-Joanne-Kurtzberg-MSCs-for-autism

What do a Panama stem cell clinic and the Duke Autism Center have in common? More than I might have imagined. It’s a remarkable story that needs telling. Duke Autism Center There is a puzzle when it comes to the controversial idea of using cord blood for autism. Why? Because two of the strongest proponents …

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Mesoblast MSCs Quell Peds GvHD; On Road to FDA Approval?

MSCs-mesenchymal-stem-cells-stromal-cells-small

Graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) is counterintuitive In the weeks and months following a transplant, a major concern is the recipient’s immune system rejecting the “foreign” biological material. But in GVHD, the opposite happens: transplanted tissue unleashes a horde of T cells that spark a cascade of inflammation, within 100 days. Typically, GVHD follows a bone marrow …

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OCT4-SOX DNA dance, PRC2, a noisy competition & more cell weekly reads

EMBO-J-2020-Fig-3b-Salazar-Roa-et-al

What’s new in the stem cell, cell therapy, and regenerative medicine world as well as biomedical science more generally including cancer? There’s quite a bit of news as reflected in media pieces and new pubs. Today’s post is focused on pubs that just came out. For last week’s recommended reads see here. Oct4-Sox2 Nucleosome Binding …

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4th Obokata retraction after Harvard investigation: STAP saga finally over?

si-Haruko

Retraction Watch broke the news that Haruko Obokata of the STAP cell train wreck now has a 4th paper retraction. The publication related to the controversial idea that adult tissues have pluripotent potential or actual pluripotent stem cells in them so it was kind of foundational for the debunked STAP cell idea. It also reminds …

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Dragon book

Knoepfler-How-to-Build-A-Dragon-book

My daughter Julie and I have written a book together entitled,  “How to Build a Dragon or Die Trying, A satirical look at cutting edge science.” The book will be out sometime in June most likely. This is a very different kind of book than my first two, Stem Cells: An Insider’s Guide and GMO …

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How to Build a Dragon or Die Trying: check out new book with my daughter Julie

How-to-Build-a-Dragon-or-Die-Trying

My daughter Julie and I have written a book together entitled,  “How to Build a Dragon or Die Trying, A satirical look at cutting edge science.” The book will be out sometime in June most likely. This is a very different kind of book than my first two, Stem Cells: An Insider’s Guide and GMO …

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Don’t mess with (mother) Nature: why risk taking on a powerhouse journal?

Dont-mess-with-mother-nature

When I was a kid there was this commercial on TV for Chiffon margarine (fake butter) with the slogan, “It’s not nice to fool mother nature!” As a kid I thought it was dumb but kind of funny. A modified version of that mother nature advertising slogan has become a cultural tagline. Don’t mess with …

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Digesting new esophageal organoids papers

Esophageal-organoids

There’s a new paper in Cell Stem Cell on esophageal organoids that has really caught people’s attention. It is entitled, “3D Modeling of Esophageal Development using Human PSC-Derived Basal Progenitors Reveals a Critical Role for Notch Signaling.” It comes from a team led by Jianwen Que. Update: I didn’t realize when I first did this post that …

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Analysis: human immunity to Cas9 bigger #CRISPR therapeutic hurdle than off-targets?

Cas9-immunity-pre-print

Some in CRISPR-Cas9-land who are focused on potential future clinical applications are kind of rejoicing or at least sighing a breath of relief. This upbeat swing in the atmosphere (from investors especially) was sparked by retraction of that paper, the one initially reporting tons of supposed off-target CRISPR-Cas9 activity in mice, which turned out to be a “nothing …

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