As long as I’ve been writing The Niche as a professor here at UC Davis School of Medicine, people have been asking me about stem cell therapy for COPD. There is a lot of misinformation out there in this space. Let’s clear things up as to where the biomedical science stands today in late 2023 …
Is 2022 going to be any better than 2020 or 2021 when it comes to things in general or for biomedical science? Related to the pandemic? It’s too soon to say but if I had to guess right now I’d venture an optimistic view that overall it’s going to be somewhat better by the end …
Weekly science reads: senescence, alt CRISPR, sickle cell update 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 »
The world of stem cell research and regenerative medicine is unpredictable but it’s fun to be a part of it and try to do predictions. Each year in late December or early January I make prognostications for the coming year for stem cell research and regenerative medicine. I made 21 such predictions for the current …
Grading my 21 stem cell & regenerative medicine predictions for 2021 Read More »
A quick review of the publicly-traded stem cell stocks I’ve been following in 2021 finds mostly discouraging news, but a few firms relatively outperformed the other publically-traded biotechs. One had some great news today. In this post, I’m doing a brief overview of how things went this year in the regenerative medicine space. I’m going …
2021 scorecard for stem cell stocks: REGN, VCEL, CCEL, LCTX did best Read More »
Occasionally a reader of The Niche will ask me about stem cell therapy for hair loss and getting a stem cell hair transplant. I’m interested in this research because I’m fascinated by stem cells. Admittedly I don’t have as much hair as I used to so that’s sometimes on my mind too. So where do …
Review of stem cell hair transplant for baldness Read More »
When I first learned about the multi-$10 million cord cell clinic deal between Duke and Cryo-Cell I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Duke’s involved in this? The problem: marketing unproven cells for kids Yes, this wasn’t some stem cell clinic operating out of a strip mall seeking to make big money off of injecting …
Vice tackles dicey Cryo-Cell Duke mega-million peds clinic plan Read More »
It’s great when an idea like stem cells for osteoporosis just makes so much common sense, but it still requires data. A logical hypothesis is not enough. The point of today’s post is to fact-check the idea of using stem cells for such bone loss. A femur to stand on? Unfortunately, the take-home message is …
Boning up on stem cells for osteoporosis: good idea, little data so far Read More »
The push for de-extinction of woolly mammoths is a perfect example of when one notion can be both fun and a rotten idea. You can’t let the coolness push you down a bad path. You can see my new YouTube video covering the main points of this post from our YouTube channel further down. Please …
Why De-extinction of Woolly Mammoths is Still a Bad Idea Read More »
The other day I gave a talk in part about stem cell hype and mentioned as an example how the idea of already doing stem cell therapy for autism seems so misguided to me now. On the whole, in my view there are major downsides and risks for autistic kids whose parents are already having …
Fact-checking stem cell therapy for autism: still a risky idea Read More »