Acid-induced pluripotent or even totipotent stem cells, called STAP stem cells, have thrown the stem cell field for a bit of a loop. For more background see my interview with the key public face of STAP, Dr. Charles Vacanti, as well as my review of their paper, my top 5 reasons for skepticism, and some other thoughts. Do you believe in …
Latest developments and scoops on STAP stem cells Read More »
One of the big stem cell-related stories of 2013 was the controversy over the Stamina Foundation in Italy and its potential use of largely untested stem cell products on patients, including mostly children. The winner of my 2013 Stem Cell Person of the Year Award was Dr. Elena Cattaneo and one reason she won was the courage …
Nature Slams Controversial Stamina Foundation: A Dangerous Situation Continues Read More »
The World Alliance Forum held a really great meeting yesterday in SF about the future of stem cells. Below, Johnathon Anderson has a great guest post summarizing the meeting. The collective brain power in the room was pretty staggering. The meeting brought together stem cell leaders from academia, industry, startup incubators and funding agencies. The purpose …
Guest Post on the Future of Stem Cells: World Alliance Forum Meeting Read More »
Stem cell technology is poised to wow the world with biomedical advances in the coming decades and Japan wants to lead the way. They want to forge ahead particularly with applications that focus on a relatively new kind of stem cells called induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells. Japanese researcher, Shinya Yamanaka, first reported production …
Japan Aiming For a Commanding Position on New Stem Cells Read More »
By Dr. Susan Lim A record 4100 delegates attended the 11th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR), held at the Convention and Exhibition Center in Boston from 12-15 June 2013. Co-sponsored by the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, the Meeting featured 7 Plenary sessions including a Presidential Symposium, 20 concurrent scientific …
Delightful overview of ISSCR 2013 by guest blogger Dr. Susan Lim Read More »
Cellular Dynamics, the stem cell company founded by Dr. James Thomson, is filing for an IPO. Hat tip to David Jensen. The company, which will go under the stock symbol ICEL, is focused on iPS cell-produced products. They describe their portfolio as follows: Cellular Dynamics is developing and deploying a number of cell types derived from …
Cellular Dynamics IPO: big money, iPS cell IP rights, trade secrets Read More »
One of my favorite stem cell scientists is Jeanne Loring of Scripps. She does great science and when you ask her questions, she frankly states her opinions and is clearly a gifted educator at heart too. Below is a Q&A interview I did with Jeanne on key issues of clinical translation of iPS cells. You …
Jeanne Loring interview: optimism on clinical translation of IPS cells Read More »
Five legends and a blogger walk into a bar together. The bartender asks the first legend “What can I get for you?” The legend orders their drink. The bartender eventually serves up drinks to all five legends and turns to the blogger, “And what can I get for you?” The blogger replies, “Do you have Wi-Fi? …
My phone has been ringing and my email flowing at an even faster rate than usual over this still breaking story of the reported transplant of iPS cells into human patients by a Japanese scientist, Hisashi Moriguchi , who at some point was a visiting scientist at Harvard, apparently no more recently than 12 years ago. …
My thoughts on the Moriguchi iPS cell controversy Read More »
It has been a big week in very different ways for the stem cell field related to induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. First, we had the Nobel Prize deservedly going to stem cell hero, Shinya Yamanaka. Great news! Congratulations to Dr. Yamanaka. Unfortunately, now, we have a puzzling story that iPS cells have been reported …