Search Results for: australia

How risky are stem cell trials for Parkinson’s beginning in China?

Brain-PET-scan, stem cells

New human clinical trials using derivatives of pluripotent stem cells in China for Parkinson’s Disease (PD) have raised expectations and some eyebrows. PD is a neurodegenerative condition, sometimes diagnosed or followed by PET scans such as the one at left, characterized by loss of dopaminergic neurons leading to severe and sometimes life-threatening symptoms. Pluripotent stem […]

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Journal club review of new CRISPR ‘lots of off-target activity’ mouse paper

CRISPR-mutations-Figure-1a

A new, brief study in mice from the Vinit Mahajan lab argues CRISPR can have very large numbers of off-target sites. Their paper is entitled “Unexpected mutations after CRISPR–Cas9 editing in vivo” and was published in Nature Methods.This work has garnered a lot of attention in the media. Let’s take a journal club review kind of approach

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20 Nominees for Stem Cell Person of the Year 2016 Award

Stem-cell-person-of-the-year-award

I received a score of great nominations for the Stem Cell Person of the Year 2016 Award and have briefly described the twenty nominees below. The point of the award is to honor the top positive stem cell leader who specifically thinks outside the box and takes risks. I’ve started an on-line vote where you can vote once per day for

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Samantha Yammine: Multiple filters for stem cell research at Canadian stem cell conference

stem-cell-pictures

By Samantha Yammine, PhD Candidate in Derek van der Kooy’s lab at the University of Toronto. See tweets live from #TMM2016 via @SamanthaZY here. Last week, 430 Canadian scientists, trainees, industry professionals, science communicators and international guests gathered in the picturesque ski town of Whistler, British Columbia for the annual Till & McCulloch meeting (TMM).

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Important Rasko team paper on global distribution of stem cell clinics

stem-cell-clinics-map-Rasko

Last week a team led by John Rasko of the University of Sydney published a very important stem cell clinic study also in Cell Stem Cell. Thus, there have now been two new reports on the state of the stem cell clinic industry both here in the U.S. and more globally. Leigh Turner and I published

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Gaetan Burgio New Data & Theory on NgAgo versus CRISPR

Burgio-Figure-5-e1469980662937

By Gaetan Burgio CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing has dramatically changed our way to perform biological experiments. While highly efficient and easy to use, one limitation with CRISPR/Cas9 mediated genome editing technology is the occurrence of off-target effects and the restriction of the PAM recognition sequence. Many modifications from the original system have been proposed to improve

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Woman’s death after “no big deal” fat stem cell therapy: coroner investigating

Macquarie-Stem-Cells

An elderly woman in Australia reportedly died shortly after receiving a fat stem cell transplant. Sheila Drysdale passed away hours after getting an adipose stem cell treatment a few days before Christmas in 2013. That death is now being investigated by the coroner there. Not only is this death in Sydney distressing in it of

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