How does one go about cheating death? As I get older, fighting aging seems more relevant. Having battled a potentially fatal cancer also gave me a taste of mortality. In biomedical research, it seems like living longer has become an obsession for some recently. Cheating death with cell therapies or other regenerative approaches? Could stem […]
Cheating death via regenerative medicine or stem cells? Read More »
Parabiosis refers to the joining together of two animals, typically rodents in research. They become one interconnected living system that shares blood. Research on mouse parabiosis has sparked much interest in anti-aging therapies. These might utilize “young” materials to help older people. Our first recommended read is a parabiosis paper. Before we jump into that,
Weekly stem cell reads: parabiosis, UC Davis trial, HeLa lawsuit, gray hair Read More »
The Pink Sheet just broke the story that the FDA may change up its oversight of the cell therapy space. This possible shift could drop the oversight bar somewhat for certain products. Most likely it’d be those with lower anticipated risks. The Pink Sheet piece by Sue Sutter is titled US FDA To Explore New Regulatory Pathways
One size doesn’t fit all? FDA may soften some cell therapy regs Read More »
The news just keeps getting worse for Missouri state lawmaker Patricia Derges, who was indicted last year by the feds for an alleged stem cell scheme. She is now also being sued by a former patient. Derges, who is not a physician but rather an assistant physician, was providing supposed stem cell or related biological
Over the past dozen years as I’ve written about stem cell clinics here on The Niche I’ve gotten to know many of those running the clinics including Dr. Mark Berman of Beverly Hills. It was therefore kind of a shock to learn that Berman died of last month. Michael Hiltzik of the LA Times reported
Thoughts on death of stem cell clinic leader Dr. Mark Berman Read More »
The regular emails and phone calls I get from patients asking questions about stem cell therapy are a powerful reminder of the fact that research in our field can be very personal. Sometimes individuals who receive experimental stem cell therapy (or other cell therapies) and seem to have a positive outcome can end up becoming
Overplaying N=1 in the stem cell therapy world Read More »
Some people consider the brain to be equivalent to a living computer and in that sense it’s too bad that computers don’t have the equal of neural stem cells to help them fix themselves. Is the internet one big neural network-like web? There was a quake in the stem cell internet as CIRM’s main website
Weekly reads: neural stem cells, CRISPR brain, Vertex, cytoplasm surprise Read More »
A planned change to the Google ads policy will allow some ads for unproven cell and gene therapies. This shift, allowing educational ads, was just announced. I have a few concerns about this change that will start in July. Google ads policy and stem cells This move seems to be a refinement of their “ad ban” policy
Google ads policy change to allow unproven cell & gene therapy educational material Read More »
I remember the first time I ever witnessed human cell division first hand and it was really excitement. I was working as a part-time tech in the Lane Lab at UC San Diego School of Medicine. We studied heart disease and grew human umbilical cord endothelial cell cultures. It was striking to see a plate
Weekly reads: Vertex hold, new type of cell division in fish, CAR-T Read More »
If there’s one area of biologics where the FDA has been consistently busy lately it’s the perinatal cell therapy space. The agency has made it clear in the last year that allogeneic birth-related cell products are often drugs requiring premarket approval. This has mainly manifested at a practical enforcement level. We’ve seen actions taken in
End of FDA “grace period” impacted perinatal cell therapy biotechs Read More »