Search Results for: Multiple Sclerosis

Long prison sentence for another stem cell fraud

Fox News reports (and the Las Vegas Review-Journal too) that convicted stem cell fraud Alfred Sapse (see more on him & this case here and here) has been sentenced to 17 years in federal prison and ordered to pay more than $1 million in restitution. Sapse along with pediatrician Ralph Conti (see image above from the …

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Contemplating patients contacting me about stem cells

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Lately on average patients or patient relatives contact me about stem cells more than once a week. That’s about 50 times a year. The patients or their parents have questions about stem cells most often. Sometimes they have comments about this blog. Other times they ask for medical advice from me. Because I am a …

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Stem Cells An Insider’s Guide: More on My New Book

In about a month my new book, Stem Cells: An Insider’s Guide, should be available as an e-book from the publisher and from Amazon. It’s available for pre-order now at Amazon here. The “real” book (i.e. the one made of paper) should be available in September. The book costs $29. Any writers out there interested in doing …

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Short-term safety of lab-grown stem cells for arthritis: encouraging, but key caveats

A new paper suggests a hopeful short-term safety profile of laboratory-grown stem cells for treatment of arthritis, but there are some important limitations to the study too. A debate continues to bubble over whether to classify laboratory-propagated stem cells as biological drugs. A persistent issue has been whether the growth of stem cells in culture …

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Jeanne Loring interview: optimism on clinical translation of IPS cells

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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 …

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Wat is een stamcel?

Dutch Wat zijn stamcellen? Het menselijk lichaam bestaat uit honderden verschillende celtypes welke stuk voor stuk essentieel zijn voor onze gezondheid. Deze cellen zijn ervoor verantwoordelijk dat ons lichaam gezond functioneert door onze hartslag te reguleren, onze hersenactiviteiten te reguleren, onze huid kan afschilferen, etc. etc. De unieke taak van stamcellen is dat ze elk …

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Transdifferentiation makes a major advance: direct reprogramming of fibroblasts to oligodendrocyte progenitors

Back-to-back papers (here and here) in Nature Biotechnology report the transdifferentiation (now often simply referred to as “direct reprogramming”) of plain old fibroblasts into brain cells called oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs). OPCs are a remarkably useful kind of brain cell that generates myelin, which insulates nerves. OPCs are thought to have great therapeutic potential for …

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Guest blog from inside Vatican Stem Cell Meeting by John Carbona: Day 1

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The Vatican Stem Cell Meeting 2013 has started. We are fortunate to have a guest blogger, John A. Carbona, CEO of BioLife Cell Bank, who is in attendance and kindly is giving us inside coverage of the meeting. Below is a guest blog from John on Day 1 of the meeting. We even have pictures. …

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Critically reading science papers: response to patient on MS stem cell literature

One of the most important elements of science is critical reading of papers. Most of us come into science as undergrads feeling somewhat naive about what we read in papers. Our default tendency is to believe most or all that we read as “true”. As we get more experienced, we realize that in fact if …

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