Search Results for: George Church

Weekly reads: George Church’s stem cell startup GC Therapeutics, coral for knees, blast from the past

Parastoo Khoshakhlagh, Alex Ng, GC Therapeutics

It’s always fun to see startups with cool ideas in the regenerative medicine space and a new one called GC Therapeutics got some nice coverage this week. What do you think the name of this firm stands for? I have one main idea I mention below. Before we jump into it, I want to introduce […]

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George Church on Germline Human Genetic Modification

George-Church

I recently interviewed leading genomics scientist George Church on the ways that trends in genomics are changing our world. We also discussed the possibility of heritable human genetic modification. These days we more often call this “CRISPR babies.” His answers suggest that genomics and gene editing are poised to radically change our world. They could literally

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What do you think of the whole George Church Neanderthal Cloning Media Debacle? Take our poll

It’s been a crazy week with a story about Harvard Geneticist George Church supposedly in his new book and in a magazine interview promoting the idea of cloning Neanderthals and possibly people too. I blogged about it here. The German Magazine Der Spiegel did interviewed Church (English version of interview is here) and many things

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George Church: ‘Adventurous’ woman sought to carry Neanderthal baby

The headline quoting George Church reads: ‘Adventurous’ woman sought to carry Neanderthal baby Supposedly Harvard Geneticist George Church, according to Der Spiegel magazine (and gazillions of other mainstream media outlets that translated the German piece including here), wants to clone a Neanderthal baby using an unholy combination of stem cell and genetics technologies. The only problem

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Weekly reads: Beth Shapiro & de-extinction, mice with two dads, stem cell patches

Beth Shapiro, De-extinction

Biologist and ancient DNA expert Beth Shapiro is becoming more well known for doing de-extinction research. Yet Shapiro used to be a de-extinction skeptic. Ten years ago she wrote “How to Clone a Mammoth.” In the book she mentioned serious challenges related to de-extinction. Now she is the CSO for a firm trying to make

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Unapologetic He Jiankui eager for more human germline gene editing with help from tech bros

He Jiankui lab, He Jiankui

For a few years, biophysicist He Jiankui might have been one of the most recognizable scientists on the planet. He made three “CRISPR babies” or gene edited people. However, his gene editing went badly and as best as we can tell his efforts did not result in precision edits. It’s unclear if he had institutional

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Is Liz Parrish the world’s most genetically modified person? Why it might not be such a good thing

Liz Parrish, BioViva

Some recent claims had me wondering whether Liz Parrish is the world’s most genetically modified person. She and her firm BioViva are making that claim. It’s an important question but maybe not for the reason many of us first might think. This is not really about one person. Instead, this is a weighty question because

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Weekly reads: elephant stem cells, RIP Connie Eaves, AI cell biology

elephant stem cells

Last week one of the most popular stories was about a preprint from a mammoth de-extinction research group led by George Church having made elephant stem cells. I finally got a chance to look carefully at their preprint. Elephant stem cells preprint and mammoth de-extinction The elephant stem cells preprint has solid data. It looks like

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