A reader of The Niche recently asked me, “What about stem cells for deafness?” It’s a great question and, as they pointed out, stem cells for vision loss gets much more attention. I’ve covered the translational progress of stem cells to treat many diseases but there has been less progress for deafness in the regenerative […]
Long-term hope on stem cells for deafness Read More »
The biotechs Vertex and CRISPR Therapeutics have an interesting relationship as biotechs. They are partners are multiple levels but also are very different as companies including in size. There’s been a key development in one of their partnerships. Before we jump into that, please check out the video version of my 20 stem cell and
Weekly reads: Vertex & CRISPR Therapeutics, Arnold Caplan death, MS genetics Read More »
Each year I make predictions for the stem cell and regenerative medicine field for the following year. Today’s prediction post is focused on what to expect in 2024. You can also see my stem cell predictions for 2023 and my grades on how I did. I also have made a video version of these predictions so please
20 stem cell & regenerative medicine predictions for 2024 Read More »
Every year I make stem cell and regenerative medicine predictions. Looking at my predictions for 2023, they reflect a wild year but in many ways a good one overall. Below I have graded my 2023 predictions. Overall, my crystal ball gave solid results. Some of the predictions have been condensed to keep things concise, but you
2023 stem cell predictions grades reflect wild year for regenerative medicine Read More »
What is a woolly dog? Is it somehow related to the Woolly Mammoth? Before we get into that and the rest of my recommended reads, note that I’m finalizing my list of contenders for this year’s The Screamers Science Hype Awards. Last year The BBC won The Screamers for an article “Baby’s life ‘probably saved’
Holiday reads: woolly dog vs. mammoth, man eggs, designer B-cells, bluebird bio blues Read More »
Let’s start this week’s digest with a discussion of clonal expansion and mutations during cell and gene therapy development. Here’s the article that brought this to mind. Sickle cell gene therapy process may cause cancer-linked mutations in blood stem cells, Fierce Biotech. Clonal expansion This is a story about a non-CRISPR gene therapy using a
Some folks can view data from early, small clinical trials too skeptically or overly enthusiastically, and maybe that’s going on with some preliminary results from Verve Therapeutics. Good news? Bad news? I’m going to start with two articles about the same news that have very different vibes. What do I think? On the whole, I
Weekly reads: Verve Therapeutics, Casgevy UK OK, GDNF, MYC Read More »
Cell therapy companies face many hurdles. I wrote recently about four cell therapy biotechs that have been really struggling. Blogging here at The Niche for more than a dozen years, I’ve seen many companies even go under. That’s bad news for the field, for patients, and for investors. Today I wanted to highlight some cell therapy
3 cell therapy companies doing well: Vertex, Vericel, & Regeneron Read More »
For me, this was another week of heavy grant writing but also taking on Google again. How? Over how badly its search engine often performs on stem cell queries. I have a new piece at MedPage Today. It’s focused on the problem of Google Search promoting unproven stem cell clinic websites. Google still prefers stem
Weekly reads: Google, CIRM, young Swedish bone marrow Read More »
What’s more important than Woolly Mammoth de-extinction research in the stem cell arena? Only maybe a 10,000 other things. Still, the mammoth de-extinction efforts capture people’s attention much more than the average research story. Mammoth De-extinction update Is de-extinction only a pipette dream? This startup has a big, expensive plan to find out, Popular Science.