The stem cell clinic industry selling unapproved “therapies” is ubiquitous and yet somehow still growing it seems. Many of us are encountering more of them including via ads and the clinics are basically all over the place. What should someone do if they see or have had a bad experience with a stem cell clinic …
Time to sell exosome therapies to patients? No. Some stem cell clinics and related firms are looking for new ways to make profits and toward that goal a few have latched onto the legitimate buzz around exosome research. What are exosomes? Imagine if you could bubble up a pea-sized sphere off your skin full of …
As exosome work advances, clinics pitch unproven therapies to patients Read More »
“If I’m going to the trouble of cloning myself, I want the clone to be a copy of me!” I’m imagining what someone might say if they were told that their expensive and ethically dubious personal cloning efforts produced a clone that was somebody else instead of them. Even if the clone was very similar …
Surprising reason why human cloning may produce someone else Read More »
By Claire Horner In 2016, a law firm in California began looking for individuals who were “misled or harmed by stem cell treatment” in the southern California area (which was discussed on this blog here). While there had been other lawsuits filed by plaintiffs against individual clinics, this firm was looking to take a different …
My first job in science was as a lab technician at UCSD School of Medicine and a big part of that job was growing cells called HUVECs or human umbilical vein endothelial cells. We isolated and grew the HUVECs from umbilical cords that we retrieved from the maternity ward of the UCSD hospital, which first …
Why we shouldn’t view the human embryo as a gizmo even in the CRISPR era Read More »
Are you a risk-taker or do you do everything possible to avoid risks? Taking risks in science is necessary, but is there a wise way to take the risks you do? Science and medicine need a certain amount of risk and risk-takers to make transformative leaps forward. The risks in biomedical science can be conceptual …
Some thoughts on taking risks in science & medicine Read More »
I started The Niche blog in largely its current form early in 2010, and now 7+ years later we’ve hit two big milestones recently. First, about a month ago, we reached 10,000 comments made on the blog. Thanks for being involved in the discussion on the Niche blog! Second, we reached 7,000,000 total page views …
There’s an idea floating around out there called “young blood” to use donations from young folks to infuse older people to reverse aging. I’m skeptical. Imagine an old man and a teenager sitting side by side, with blood flowing from the kid to the oldster in a stab at anti-aging. Sort of like a one-way …
Young blood as anti-aging fountain of youth: hype or hope? Read More »
The Future of Genomic Medicine conference last week down in La Jolla at Scripps was one of my favorite meetings ever. I wish I had time to have live blogged it more beyond the one post I did about some gene editing talks. Below I discuss 10 top takeaways from this great meeting that I’m planning to attend …
10 takeaways from Future of Genomic Medicine meeting Read More »
Editor’s note: this is a guest post from Dr. Semenow on her new educational DNA game that also invokes stem cells. She has the remarkable distinction of having been the first woman who was a science Ph.D. student at Caltech. Stay tuned for my coming interview with her on her experiences in science. Her Kickstarter campaign …