The regular emails and phone calls I get from patients asking questions about stem cell therapy are a powerful reminder of the fact that research in our field can be very personal. Sometimes individuals who receive experimental stem cell therapy (or other cell therapies) and seem to have a positive outcome can end up becoming […]
Overplaying N=1 in the stem cell therapy world Read More »
If there’s one area of biologics where the FDA has been consistently busy lately it’s the perinatal cell therapy space. The agency has made it clear in the last year that allogeneic birth-related cell products are often drugs requiring premarket approval. This has mainly manifested at a practical enforcement level. We’ve seen actions taken in
End of FDA “grace period” impacted perinatal cell therapy biotechs Read More »
In trying to figure out how unproven stem cell clinics get so many customers, I’ve found that these firms can in part thank Google. I recently wrote a guest piece on STAT News about this problem and called on Google to fix it. However, just this week I stumbled on another case of Google search
Google gets it dangerously wrong on stem cell side effects Read More »
It’s been quite a ride doing this blog on stem cells and other technologies for more than a dozen years. So far it seems like I’ll keep it going. A large part of the reason is because of people needing good information about our field. Those people include scientists and physicians but also many in
Weekly reads: Google, stem cells & MS, VSELs, ‘hairy’ organoids, MYC Read More »
Many firms that generally fall into the category of unproven stem cell or cell therapy clinics have a way of reinventing themselves and I’ve seen this with one formerly named the Lung Institute that is now called Centers for Respiratory Health. First the Lung Institute became the Lung Health Institute. Now that firm has become
Centers for Respiratory Health is new incarnation of clinic Lung Health Institute Read More »
It’s very challenging to be an academic scientist even under normal circumstances so when a government starts going after researchers for things like supposed irregularities in funding disclosures, it can cause serious problems if not carefully overseen. We’ll start this week’s recommended reads with the feds monitoring such disclosures and even making referrals to the
Weekly reads: Yale scientist suspended, WA AG sues clinic, new pubs Read More »
I’m fascinated by the idea of making food from cells grown in a lab and especially the newest idea of lab-grown chocolate. While lab-grown meat has gotten the most attention, (see my recent post on test-tube meat: Not Old MacDonald’s Farm: is the future lab-grown meat?) I’d say that the coolest application of making food from
Biotech California Cultured aims to sell lab-grown chocolate Read More »
Before starting the umbilical cord cell supplier and marketing firm Liveyon, John Kosolcharoen was involved in some alleged health care fraud. The feds brought a case against him related to prescription drugs. Older case coming to a head As Liveyon was having its misadventures in the stem cell clinic sphere, the status of that past
Feds want $3M, prison for Liveyon founder in old fraud case Read More »
The fact that a person for the first time has received a heart transplant from a pig and it was a genetically modified pig made big news this week. Organ transplant waiting lists are a huge problem so if this kind of approach can be proven to be safe and effective, it would be a
Recommended reads: pig heart transplant, lasers, $11K pub fee Read More »
When I read about Elizabeth Holmes and her blood testing startup Theranos I see parallels to hucksters in the arena of stem cells and cell therapy. I’m thinking especially of the unproven stem cell clinics out there. It goes farther than that though too, including people who aren’t hucksters at all but get caught up
Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos, & lessons for the stem cell field Read More »