Very small embryonic-like stem cells aka VSELs are reported to be tiny adult stem cells that are pluripotent or non-existent depending on whom you talk to most recently or which paper you just read. These very controversial cells (which I once compared to the Sasquatch) have a wildly fluctuating history with their existence on multiple occasions […]
Wild History of VSELs Predicts Future of STAP Cells? Read More »
Dr. Charles Vacanti is scheduled as a special guest speaker on April 1 at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He’ll be speaking on STAP cells. See image below of the announcement. The title of his talk is “Tissue Engineering and STAP Cells”. It is part of the Brigham and Women’s “Leaders in Regenerative Medicine Seminar Series”. Online
Vacanti to Speak on STAP Cells at Harvard on April 1 Read More »
STAP cells, also known as STAP stem cells, have generated a lot of discussion and debate. It seems there are strong opinions on all sides. What do you think? Please take our poll.
Do You Believe in STAP Cells: Week 6 Poll Read More »
I’m a seismologist at the University of Tokyo, where I’ve been since 1984. I was the first tenured foreign faculty member in the history of our university. If you look at my publication list on the Researcher ID site you can see that my main research recent interests are modeling seismic wave propagation and analyzing
Seismologist from Japan looks at the STAP cells mess Read More »
I’ve been doing a weekly-ish poll on people’s sentiments about STAP cells. It’s not scientific but many people have told me they find it interesting. Week 4’s poll is done with more than 500 votes and it is even more discouraging than week 3. See the purple line in the graph as that is the
Week 4 poll: few hopeful about STAP cells anymore Read More »
Today may be a turning point for STAP cells. Nature itself opened up in a newsy piece about the events that have occurred in the past couple weeks since they published two related papers on acid/other stimulus-induced powerful pluripotent or totipotent stem cells (aka STAP stem cells). Update: Science also published a news piece on
STAP cells update 2.0: method isn’t working so far, investigations & more Read More »
I’m tracking opinion in the world of stem cells on STAP cells, those acid-induced stem cells reported in Nature. I’m hoping to capture potential dynamic changes in people’s views as the STAP stem cell situation evolves. Even if you’ve voted in my past polls, this is a new one so you can (and please do)
Do You Believe in STAP Cells: Poll Week 3 Read More »
I’ve been doing polling on people’s views about STAP stem cells. You can see the week 1 poll results here. I’ve just closed the week 2 polling and the results are above. In week 1 while there was a significant split between respondents, the polling leaned clearly toward people being more positive about STAP stem
STAP cells week 2 poll results: more uncertainty Read More »
It is important for the stem cell field to gain clarity on STAP cells. For this reason it is reasonable and at times helpful to critically discuss the data, past findings, concerns about elements of publications, and such. However, it is not helpful and is in fact against the policy of this blog to engage
Note on policy on commenting and how it relates to STAP cells situation Read More »
Acid-induced pluripotent or even totipotent stem cells, called STAP cells, have thrown the stem cell field for a bit of a loop. For more background see my interview with the key public face of STAP, Dr. Charles Vacanti, as well as my review of their paper, my top 5 reasons for skepticism, and some other thoughts. Do you believe in STAP?
Latest developments and scoops on STAP cells Read More »