The last few years in the stem cell and regenerative medicine arena have been complicated in many ways. Variables like surging stem cell clinics and COVID have made predictions harder. Even so, trying to make predictions is useful and it’s fun to go over past year’s predictions. You can see my scorecard on my 2021 …
16 predictions for stem cells & regenerative medicine in 2022 Read More »
The amount of biomedical science hype out there is mindboggling at times, but some media or other items really take the cake for being exceptionally bad. Today’s post highlights the worst of the year 2021 as the candidates for my annual The Screamers science hype award. Click on the link in the previous sentence to …
Part of being a grad student is dealing with technologies related to your projects and their limitations. Sometimes I feel old when I remember the way we used to have to do things in the lab. As a grad student, I manually poured, ran, and read giant sequencing gels. Back then, gene synthesis of a …
Weekly reads: grad student life, cell barcoding, diabetes trial, more Read More »
I’ve been following the research related to human cloning now for more than a decade. Is human cloning more possible at this point? How do we even define such cloning? Did you know there are two types? The goal of this post is to educate you and in the process answer such questions. What’s in …
Human cloning is more likely now but would you take the big risks? Read More »
Our mission here on The Niche is primarily educational. We aim to make a transformative difference in educating readers across the globe about stem cells, regenerative medicine, and innovative biomedical science more generally including CRISPR gene editing. A major part of that mission involves fact-checking various medical claims about stem cells and other biologics like …
Our Educational Mission on The Niche Stem Cell Site Read More »
Something called, “The International Commission on the Clinical Use of Human Germline Genome Editing” has issued a new report on heritable human genome editing (HHGE). The Commission was convened by the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the U.K.’s Royal Society. This post is my initial take on the summary of …
New human genome editing (HHGE) academy report: solid, but key gaps Read More »
Today’s post is a review of Unnatural Selection, the new Netflix science docuseries focused on CRISPR and other disruptive genetic and reproductive technologies. The show is an interesting mix of personalities and stories from patients, scientists, biohackers, and more. One patient thread is the story of a wonderful little boy named Jackson Kennedy. He wants …
Unnatural Selection review: captivating mind-bender but needed more science Read More »
Each year I make a list of stem cell predictions for the following year and I’ll release my predictions for 2019 soon, but first I’m grading how my 20 predictions for 2018 turned out. It seems I did better than usual predicting what would happen this year. I only got a couple partial credit or …
Good final grades on my 20 x 2018 stem cell predictions Read More »
When I say “gene edit” or “genome editing”, what’s the first thing that pops in your mind? It will depend on who you are. For many lay people until a few weeks ago when the world heard about He Jiankui‘s claim of CRISPR’d babies they may not have had anything pop in their heads when …
Context for my Nature piece on redefining “gene edit” to be more precise Read More »
Did Chinese researcher He Jiankui really CRISPR gene edit the CCR5 gene in two embryos producing twin baby girls? In my opinion the answer is “no”, but probably not for the reason you might think at first. He proclaims gene edits He claimed he had made twin baby girls with “gene edits”, which I feel is unethical …
He Jiankui didn’t really gene edit those girls; he mutated them Read More »