In the last week, a number of newspapers in California have run articles or editorials about CIRM, some negative. I think in part this attention was stimulated by the Election of a new Chair at CIRM. The new Chair for CIRM is Dr. Jonathan Thomas, who I am confident will do an outstanding job. On …
You know how when people give you bad news they ask “Are you sitting down?” Since I’m going to give you some good news in this post, I ask you now as you are reading this, are you standing up? We are constantly bombarded with news stories about what is bad for us. Some of …
A week ago Jon Huntsman launched his campaign to be the next President of the United States (POTUS). The rumblings going around is that Huntsman, Obama’s former ambassador to China, is too smart and too normal to get the Republican nomination for POTUS. Huntsman even got an early and unexpected endorsement from Senate Majority Leader, …
Is Huntsman too normal to be the Republican nominee? What would he do on stem cells? Read More »
During the Crusades almost a thousand years ago, millions of people were slaughtered predominantly in the name of spreading one religious belief. One could call it an extreme, lethal form of exerting the power of one belief, a sort of power-grabbing proselytizing using weapons such as swords. Those barbaric Crusades seem like a long time …
The anti-stem cell Crusade: how many lives will it cost? Read More »
The CIRM Board is meeting today and will decide on its future Chair via an election. There are two candidates, Jonathan Thomas (nominated by Bill Lockyer, the California state treasurer) and Frank Litvack, nominated by state controller, John Chang. Thomas is described as a Bond financier, while Litvack is an L.A. cardiologist and businessman with …
Two companies, Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) and Geron, both HQ’d here in California, have FDA-approved early stage clinical trials in the works. Geron’s trial has already started and reportedly now has enrolled at least two patients. The trial is of course for the safety of Geron’s GRNOPC1 oligodendrocyte product made from human ES cells for …
Advanced Cell Technology and Geron: allies or competitors? Read More »
I put up a poll recently asking readers for their predictions on where iPS cells as a field will be one year from today. We got a large number of responses to the poll and overall they appear to reflect surprisingly limited optimism. I am not as pessimistic as my blog’s readers, but I think there …
Paul, how can I make money from stem cells? Someone recently asked me this question and more often I get asked “Which stem cell companies do YOU like as a stem cell scientist?” Just today an article went out that said that the global market for stem cell products will be $65 billion by 2015. …
Today, I am launching a new effort called Stem Cell Outreach Program for Education (SCOPE). I think stem cell technology will transform medicine across the globe, but it will take a concerted effort to make certain that stem cell-based therapies do not become a type of medicine only available to the relatively wealthy or predominantly available …
Launching SCOPE: educating the world about stem cells in their own language Read More »
What really happens to cells after they a stem cell transplant into a patient? Once these cells, which have spent weeks in a lab environment, are injected into a person, what happens next? This is arguably the most important question in the regenerative medicine field, but there are few answers. We are literally mostly in …
Stem cells gone wild? What really happens after a transplant Read More »