Nominations for Stem Cell Person of the Year 2013 closed last night and I ended up with a remarkable list of 30 nominees. I have included a few sentences about each one below, often taking verbiage directly from the nominator. The online voting on these nominees will start soon. The top vote getters will move …
Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg is a stem cell pioneer and has advanced the development of innovative stem cell therapies including those based on umbilical cord blood. She is a faculty member at Duke where she conducts her clinical research. I recently interviewed Dr. Kurtzberg and below is Part 1 of 2 of the interview. Part 2, …
Stem Cell Pioneer Joanne Kurtzberg interview, Part 1 Read More »
It’s Friday. TGIF….although of course the stem cells will be growing, experiments going, the grants and papers continue being written, and data still analyzed on Saturdays and Sundays too in the stem cell field. Stem cells are not a Mon-Fri, 9-5 kind of universe, but most of you reading this blog know that. It seems …
TGIF: musings on recent stem cell headlines: some good, some stupid Read More »
Are MUSE cells for real? Stem cells come in different types that vary in a key property called “potency”, but very few are pluripotent. The more potency, the greater the flexibility of a stem cell to make other cell types. Flexibility in the cellular world is power. The most powerful stem cells generally used are …
Jury is still out on purported adult pluripotent stem cells despite new MUSE paper Read More »
Below, guest blogger, John Carbona gives us his account (including pictures) of Day 2 of the Vatican Stem Cell Meeting, which included a talk by Nobel Laureate John Gurdon. Note, you can read John’s post on Day 1 of the meeting including more great pictures here. Friday, April 12, 2012 The Second International Vatican Adult …
John Carbona on Day 2 of Vatican Stem Cell Meeting including Gurdon Talk Read More »
I’ve been fortunate to interview some of the greats in the stem cell field for this blog and host debates between key players. Please note that just because I have interviewed folks does not mean I agree with them or that they agree with me. The point is to establish dialogue on key issues. As …
An interesting paper just came out in PNAS reporting the apparent presence of a pluripotent stem cell population in the adult breast. The paper is Roy, et al. and is from Thea Tlsty’s outstanding lab at UCSF. I have read the paper and it seems very solid technically to me. The finding has stimulated some …
I recently met the CEO of NeoStem, Dr. Robin Smith, at the 2012 World Stem Cell Summit in Florida. We had a great talk and I invited Dr. Smith to do an interview for my blog. She agreed and has provided very frank answers to my questions, some of which I think were very difficult …
In mid-November the Catholic Church, in fact the Vatican itself, will do something it has never done before in its very long existence. It will hold a conference on stem cells. Perhaps equally unusual and of interest is the fact that the basis for this conference is a $1 million (USD) gamble by the Vatican …
More on the Vatican $1 million gamble on NeoStem and their upcoming conference in Rome Read More »