I have a soft spot for fibroblasts, perhaps because one of the first immortalized cell lines I ever grew was NIH3T3. These are mouse fibroblasts that have been immortalized. They are very useful for a variety of experiments. I used them to study an oncogene called E2A-PBX1. Experience with fibroblasts including 3T3s I was amazed […]
Weekly reads: fibroblasts, gene-editing, Mitalipov, personhood, embryos Read More »
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 »
The idea of stem cells outright curing diseases is exciting and has powerful appeal, but media need to be careful about using the word cure in headlines and articles as we saw this week related to a possible HIV Cure. HIV cure via stem cells and chemo? The big news of the week was that
Weekly reads: possible rare HIV cure, stem cell chicken, FDA commish Read More »
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 »