Scientist He Jiankui(贺建奎) has been sentenced to 3 years in prison by Chinese authorities. Two collaborators also will go to jail. A piece in Science by Dennis Normile on the sentencing of He Jiankui ID’d the other two: “His collaborators were identified as Zhang Renli, of a medical institution in Guangdong province, and Qin Jinzhou, from a Shenzhen …
Perspectives on CRISPR baby guy He Jiankui (贺建奎) going to jail Read More »
Masayo Takahashi is a leading stem cell researcher doing translational and clinical research on vision. She’s doing pioneering work on using pluripotent stem cells as a basis for helping patients with vision loss such as due to macular degeneration. She won The Niche’s Stem Cell Person of the Year Award in 2014 and a number …
Masayo Takahashi (高橋 政代): exciting vision work advancing including with photoreceptors Read More »
Washington Post reporters William Wan and Laurie McGinley have a new piece on the unproven regenerative clinic firm the Lung Health Institute. This article has a number of surprises and new insights. Previously the Lung Health Institute was called just the Lung Institute. It was recently acquired by the publicly-traded company H-CYTE, stock symbol HCYT. In the …
‘I’d need a drink’: WaPo deep dive on clinic firm Lung Health Institute Read More »
ViaCyte is one of the most exciting stem cell and regenerative medicine biotech companies so I like to try to check in with them regularly. Today’s post is my new interview with ViaCyte leader Paul Laikind on recent developments. We had a great chat about the science and how things are looking upbeat for the …
ViaCyte Q&A: CRISPR Tx quick progress, ongoing diabetes trial, & more Read More »
Asilomar is known in the field of biomedical sciences as a great place to go for small meetings. I was there recently for the First Annual Bay Area Stem Cell Conference, which I helped to organize. It was an exciting meeting and all the presenters (except keynoters) were trainees. The amount of great stem cell …
Asilomar: great science plus shells, flowers on the beach Read More »
Could He Jiankui have faked part or all of his CRISPR babies story? If so, how? Why? Or to put it another way, almost everyone seems to be assuming the story is real, but should we be more skeptical? Should we flip things around and assume the story isn’t entirely kosher until proven otherwise? I once …
History tells us to be more skeptical of He Jiankui’s CRISPR baby story Read More »
When I was a little kid I played this game called “connect the dots” or “dot-to-dot”, where you draw a line from dot-to-dot in numerical order and at some point a picture starts to emerge. I think kids and even some adults still play this today. They even come in extreme versions with hundreds or …
Trying to connect the dots on CRISPR baby story paints a dark, cloudy picture Read More »
Magenta Therapeutics is a biotech company with a portfolio including stem cell products. Their most well known investigational drug product is an expanded umbilical cord stem cell product called MGTA-456, an “ex-Novartis” product. Magenta just released new trial data on MGTA-456, which I see as a case of good news-bad news, and investors seem to …
Magenta Therapeutics Good News-Bad News Trial Data Read More »
There’s a new paper in Cell Stem Cell on esophageal organoids that has really caught people’s attention. It is entitled, “3D Modeling of Esophageal Development using Human PSC-Derived Basal Progenitors Reveals a Critical Role for Notch Signaling.” It comes from a team led by Jianwen Que. Update: I didn’t realize when I first did this post that …
Time to sell exosome therapies to patients? No. Some stem cell clinics and related firms are looking for new ways to make profits and toward that goal a few have latched onto the legitimate buzz around exosome research. What are exosomes? Imagine if you could bubble up a pea-sized sphere off your skin full of …
As exosome work advances, clinics pitch unproven therapies to patients Read More »