What to read when there are almost an endless number of stem cell and regenerative medicine pubs? Here are some suggestions including what I would say is a very unusual Nature paper on making egg cells from stem cells. If this could be done safely with human cells all the way to functional eggs, would …
Recommended regenerative medicine reads: making eggs, retraction, freezing, more Read More »
The stem cell field has puzzled on and off for years over a constellation of papers on purported stem cells including so-called VSEL and MUSE cells. Many of us haven’t been convinced that these are real stem cells. I see VSEL and MUSE fitting into a larger pattern of dubious stem cell claims including the STAP …
STAP cell deja vu? 28 VSEL papers flagged by Bik Read More »
It’s usually a tossup as to whether my weekly reads skew more towards stem cells/regenerative medicine or cancer. Other times they are more enriched for genomics and epigenetics articles. Seeds of cancer in normal skin, Nature News & Views Engineering synthetic morphogen systems that can program multicellular patterning, Science. Pig fat can be used to …
Regenerative reads: pig fat, cancer, organoids, more Read More »
One of the highlights of Day 1 of #ISSCR2018 for me so far was the talk by Lorenz Studer (Co-Founder of BlueRock) on the use of human embryonic stem cell (HESC)-derived dopamine neurons for Parkinson’s Disease. Note that for this post and if I have time any others on this meeting, they are probably going …
Lorenz Studer on Day 1 #ISSCR2018: HESC-based therapies for Parkinson’s Disease Read More »
One of the most famous living biological scientists, Sir Ian Wilmut, just announced that he has Parkinson’s Disease. I wish him the best in dealing with this illness. Wilmut is very well-known for having cloned the first mammal, Dolly the Sheep. This work followed on the earlier breakthrough by Sir John Gurdon of cloning the …
Ian Wilmut, who cloned Dolly, opens up about his Parkinson’s Disease Read More »
A team of researchers at RIKEN and Kobe City Medical Center reported at a press conference today a serious adverse event in a clinical trial participant receiving an induced pluripotent stem cell (IPS cell)-based therapy for vision loss. According to Japan Times and Yahoo! Japan (in Japanese), the patient in question in the IPS cell …
Adverse event in IPS cell (ips細胞) trial for vision loss in Japan: initial perspectives Read More »
Human germline CRISPR raises major bioethical considerations, but what about technical issues? Setting aside the many ethical issue about the general idea of human modification itself, could this really work? Yes in theory it could, but there are some very tough technological challenges that could and likely would cause failures or unacceptable outcomes at many steps …
It’s been a long road, but the first ever IPS cell clinical study in humans is starting up again in a new incarnation. You might say it has been regenerated in a novel form. Masayo Takahashi (高橋 政代) first started the pioneering IPS cell study a few years back in 2014, but it ended up …
Japan IPS cell trial for vision to start in new incarnation Read More »
In the past year there has been a great deal of attention given to the potential use of CRISPR-Cas9 for gene editing in human embryos. An important recent development, described in a new NPR article by Rob Stein, is the use of CRISPR-Cas9 in healthy human embryos for developmental biology research by assistant professor Fredrik …
Interview with Fredrik Lanner who is CRISPR’ing healthy human embryos Read More »
I talked last year about human genetic modification by CRISPR with George Church a year ago. Now we’ve followed up with a long chat on this topic going into much more detail and with questions on recent developments. Each question is listed numerically and then there is a back and forth on that question with George …
George Church chat: CRISPR people, Zika, weapons Read More »