Remember that old TV show the Odd Couple with very proper Felix Unger and his polar opposite Oscar Madison who has all kinds of baggage? They’ve cloned it into a remake to be on TV soon here in the US in 2015. It seems only fitting then that actual human cloning research has a new …
The Odd Couple of Cloning Research: Mitalipov & Woo Suk Hwang Unite Read More »
A new piece came out yesterday on the Wellcome Trust Blog, strongly promoting approval of so-called “3-Parent IVF” or Mitochondrial Transfer technology by the UK Parliament. As I written in the past (here and here), my view is that this would be a mistake at this time. There is room for respectful disagreement on this issue between scientists, …
An FDA committee began a meeting yesterday that continues today to consider permitting new assisted reproduction-based “3-parent” technology that could address mitochondrial disorders, a serious human health problem. The technology also raises complex health issues of its own and invokes ethical questions. The goal of the FDA meeting is articulated this way: “the committee will …
Why the FDA should not green-light 3-parent reproduction Read More »
It’s funny how sometimes there are many new articles about one general topic like this week with heritable (and somatic) human CRISPR gene editing and related tech. There are clear reasons for optimism in the somatic arena given advancing trials. Germline editing remains highly questionable in my view even just technically. Then there are loads …
Weekly reads: human CRISPR, MRT risks, private IRBs, skincare Read More »
As I’ve mentioned recently, it’s my busy time for medical school teaching and not long ago we did a GI lab that included one of my favorite structures in the course: taste buds. Taste buds The medical students seem fascinated with taste buds too. I can tell as their professor when something is particularly interesting …
Weekly reads: taste buds, organoids, good news on CRISPR safety Read More »
It’s been a week with a wide variety of regenerative medicine papers and stem cell news. Here’s my earlier take from a few days ago on the Belmonte-led human-monkey chimeric embryo paper in Cell that broke this week. A few days ago I also put up a new video on our Stem Cell YouTube Channel …
The paper of the week reports using base-editing, a kind of gene-editing, to reverse mutations associated with rapid aging syndromes, generally called progeria, but there are a lot of other interesting pubs to recommend for reading this week. I go over it all in this post. Gene-editing to fight premature aging syndromes In vivo base …
Weekly reads & paper of the week: gene-editing vs. aging Read More »
Each year I metaphorically try to look into a crystal ball for stem cell predictions for the coming year and I did so for 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic threw a monkey wrench into my predictions. It actually kind of blew some up. It also raised some interesting questions and dilemmas. For instance, do many …
What’s new this week in terms of reads includes a stem cell/drug combo for diabetic wonderments healing, more documentation of patient harms from stem cell clinics, and a list of recommending papers. Adult stem cells/glaucoma drug combo promotes diabetic wound healing in mice From a team of my UC Davis School of Medicine colleagues led …
Weekly stem cell reads: diabetic wound healing, clinic bad outcomes, pubs list Read More »
Every year in December and early January I do a post predicting some key events for the stem cell and regenerative medicine field for the upcoming year and today’s post contains my predictions for 2020. You can see my past 2019 predictions along with my grades for them here. I gave myself a B+ for …
20/20 vision? The Niche’s 20 stem cell & regenerative medicine predictions for 2020 Read More »