Search Results for: cancer stem cell

Weekly reads: big CRISPR mtg, Mesoblast good news, Neuralink spiked

March 11, 2023 / By / 1 Comment
Victoria Gray, CRISPR meeting

Where do things stand with potential applications of CRISPR and other gene editing technologies in patients? Overall, things are looking very positive. CRISPR human trials This week the third big international human genome editing meeting took place in London. The summit addressed numerous potential clinical applications. It was good to see the agenda included quite …

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Skepticism on the Bryan Johnson anti-aging extravaganza

July 9, 2023 / By / 1 Comment
Oliver Zolman, Bryan Johnson

Near-billionaire Bryan Johnson apparently does not like getting old and he’s trying to do something transformative about it. He and his team are experimenting in a big way.  As a 55-year-old myself, I can’t blame him for wanting to fight aging in general. However, his anti-aging project includes some extreme stuff. Will some in the …

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Weekly reads: reprogramming aging, astrocytes, cartilage, ChatGPT

January 30, 2023 / By / Leave a Comment

Let’s start with a couple of new pieces on in vivo reprogramming. The idea here is to do something like making iPS cells but doing it inside organisms and not quite pushing cells all the way back to pluripotency. Just younger, healthier cells. Why do that? The goal is to achieve a kind of anti-aging …

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Weekly reads: CRISPR chicks, HSCs, sequencing Mendel

December 31, 2022 / By / 1 Comment
CRISPR chicks

I tend to perhaps over-focus on human CRISPR or gene editing, but other applications including in agriculture are definitely going to be huge. CRISPR in agriculture One that I’ve been following for a long time is the use of CRISPR to prevent cows from growing horns. Why is that a big deal? Just in the …

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Weekly reads: Kevin McCormack passes, HSCs & RXR, Ethics

December 17, 2022 / By / 3 Comments
Kevin McCormack, Paul Knoepfler, stem cell research

Out of the blue this past week we lost Kevin McCormack of CIRM to a heart attack. When I first heard, my reaction was that can’t be, but it is. About Kevin McCormack If you aren’t familiar with him, Kevin was officially Director of Patient Advocacy at our state’s Stem Cell Agency. However, he was …

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What is Mastodon & why so far it’s a clunky alternative to Twitter

November 7, 2022 / By / 4 Comments
Mastodon

Lately it seems like something called Mastodon is on the minds of many a Twitter user. There is a wave of people tweeting “let’s dump Twitter and go to Mastodon now that Musk has taken over!” However, so far I don’t see Mastodon as a solid alternative to the admittedly annoyingly musky Twitter. I do …

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Weekly reads: KRAS G12C, eLife journal controversy, bird iPSCs

October 29, 2022 / By / 2 Comments
KRAS mutations, KRAS G12C

If you’ve never heard of the KRAS G12C mutation, it’s a particularly frightening mutation present in numerous cancers. Like the MYC oncogene, many people view mutations in RAS as undruggable, but new efforts show some glimmers of hope. The drug Sotorasib has been approved by the FDA to target the KRAS G12C mutation. Here’s a …

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What is HSCT & its possible roles in MS treatment?

September 20, 2022 / By / 4 Comments
Selma-Blair-HSCT

Patients regularly reach out and ask me about something called HSCT. “What is HSCT?” and is it proven as a therapy? Often the patients asking about this have multiple sclerosis (MS) or some other autoimmune disease. I’m not a physician so I can’t give medical advice, but as a stem cell biologist here at UC …

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FDA leader Stephen Hahn was pressured to aid Texas firm Direct Biologics

November 23, 2022 / By / 3 Comments
Former FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn.

An FDA FOIA dump of text messages of former Commissioner Stephen Hahn suggests that a Texas regenerative firm called Direct Biologics benefited from political pressure on him in mid-2020. Then he was asked again to help in early 2021. This was shortly before he resigned at the start of the Biden Administration. The push came from …

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Fact-checking exosome therapy: costs, risks, & lack of data

November 27, 2022 / By / 5 Comments
model of an exosome, exosome therapy

Exosome therapy is a still-experimental cell therapy approach aimed at treating specific diseases using secretions from cells. It’s novel since most attention on cell therapies has been given to using the actual cells themselves. In addition, this approach is a newer idea than using cells as the drug to treat diseases. Interestingly, the term “cell …

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