Happy New Year and get ready for another 364 more days of stem cell excitement and craziness in 2022. In the next day or two I’ll post my predictions for this new year. Recommended reads EO Wilson obit by Carl Zimmer in NYT. Who’s the next EO Wilson or someone like him with such big impact these …
Weekly stem cell reads: COVID kidney, FDA letter, H3.3, EO Wilson Read More »
Americans eat tens of millions of turkeys each year on Thanksgiving, but what the heck is a turkey really? It’s a heckuva of strange bird, isn’t it? They are so big my 110-lb dog Mica won’t go after them. Also, this year during the pandemic we may be eating a lot less turkey collectively so …
Fun, geeky turkey facts for the Thanksgiving dinner table Read More »
What do a Panama stem cell clinic and the Duke Autism Center have in common? More than I might have imagined. It’s a remarkable story that needs telling. Duke Autism Center There is a puzzle when it comes to the controversial idea of using cord blood for autism. Why? Because two of the strongest proponents …
Duke Autism Center has Panama clinic to thank for $10s millions? Read More »
Graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) is counterintuitive In the weeks and months following a transplant, a major concern is the recipient’s immune system rejecting the “foreign” biological material. But in GVHD, the opposite happens: transplanted tissue unleashes a horde of T cells that spark a cascade of inflammation, within 100 days. Typically, GVHD follows a bone marrow …
Mesoblast MSCs Quell Peds GvHD; On Road to FDA Approval? Read More »
Today’s post is a review and fact check of stem cell supplements. What I found now in 2024 on stem cell pills and related supplements is concerning. As a stem cell biologist, I see risks here not only of wasting one’s money (no positive effect), but also of doing some harm. In certain cases, stem …
The perinatal stem cell clinic supplier Liveyon has had many issues recently including an FDA inspection that in my view didn’t go well and which I’ll return to in a minute. First, some background on the company and this troubled industry. E. coli and other pathogens ended up in some of the Liveyon product somehow …
Dissecting Liveyon FDA inspection report & troubled perinatal stem cell industry Read More »
There are many potential causes of erectile dysfunction or ED and a host of ideas about how to treat it. Some approaches to erectile dysfunction are evidence-based and even have been rigorously proven such as the drugs Viagra and Cialis, which increase blood flow to the penis. Depending on the causes of the dysfunction, these …
Sexual Medicine Society on Unproven Regenerative Therapies for Erectile Dysfunction Read More »
One of the reasons I’m a scientist is that I find biology fascinating and admittedly novel biomedical science can really catch my eye, but more recently as a somewhat grizzled researcher, I’ve become increasingly skeptical about some “sexy” research and media coverage of it. A small red flag went up for me as I was …
Perspectives on uncritical NYT coverage of cardiac mitochondrial transplant trial Read More »
Is “snake oil” too harsh a term for some of what is sold at some of the worst stem cell clinics? Is the phrase “stem cell clinics” itself accurate and useful in a broad sense? When we read or write the phrase “stem cell clinics”, most people generally know what we’re talking about, but it …
What should we call “stem cell clinics” & is “snake oil” too harsh for some? Read More »
A new paper from Shoukhrat Mitalipov’s lab on stem cell mitochondria points to a pattern whereby induced pluripotent stem (IPS) cells tend to have more problems if they are from older patients. What does this paper mean for the stem cell field and could it impact more specifically the clinical applications of IPS cells? The new …
New Mitalipov paper on stem cell mitochondria: challenge for IPS cell field? Read More »