I blogged recently about how Sacramento has a new stem cell clinic using amniotic stem cells called Nervana Stem Cell Center. Its website currently offers no details on the people behind the company that I could find. I sent Nervana a message on their website to try to learn more based in part on a commenter on […]
More on Nervana Stem Cell Clinic in Sacramento Read More »
Traditional clinical trials have four phases. Each phase plays an important, unique role in testing whether new drug products are safe and effective as well as how they compare to the standard of care. Today in the stem cell field across the globe, the Phase III is under fire including what some might call friendly
Important, endangered species in stem cell medicine: the phase III trial Read More »
There has been much attention to the link between Zika and microcephaly. How does Zika cause microcephaly or does it even directly cause microcephaly. Has the latter been concretely proven? There are even more questions. A cool new Cell Stem Cell paper gives us some key insights. The manuscript from a team led by Guo-Li
Zika infects and zaps human brain stem cells Read More »
What are stem cell exosomes? There’s been an explosion of interest in the biomedical world around a recently characterized cell-to-cell communication system that most cells use to talk to one another, including stem cells. In fact the first patient has been successfully treated in Germany with exosomes derived from mesenchymal stem cells for refractory graft
What are exosomes and can they be used for therapy? Read More »
The FDA has delayed the planned big April public meeting on stem cells until later this year. Basically, the reason given is that more time is needed for stakeholders to comment. It will be interesting to see if the FDA expands the meeting beyond the 1-day format, which was going to allow each speaker only
Breaking: FDA postpones big stem cell public meeting Read More »
Should we be injecting bone marrow cells into someone’s eyes? it seems like a terrible idea to me based on what we currently know. Whenever I see a stem cell headline like this one from a recent Baltimore Sun piece, it raises many questions: Stem cells apparently reverse woman’s blindness. First of all, is the reporter,
Study injects marrow cells into eye, charges $20K Read More »
Here are some cool science reads to enjoy this weekend. Lab-grown sperm made from stem cells can’t swim, but are able to fertilize eggs, reports Eric Boodman over at STAT. Mouse-human neural crest chimeras: Not only a matter of black and white. Clever title. Antonio Regalado writes about a DNA App Store coming soon to a
Weekend reads: sperm, stem cells, chimeras, STAP, DNA Apps Read More »
Medical News Today (MNT) published an article yesterday on a stem cell clinic in Mexico that caused a lot of concern because to many of us it came off as unbalanced and even promotional of the clinic. You can read my post from yesterday on this situation. In response, MNT has now revised their piece and included this
Revised Medical News Today Stem Cell Article Improved But Still Unbalanced Read More »
A new article by Honor Whiteman in Medical News Today (MNT) on a Mexico stem cell clinic really takes the prize so far in 2016 amongst media pieces that engage in stem cell hype. Update; Many on Twitter are calling for retraction of this MNT article. The MNT article entitled “Stem cell therapy: is the US
Medical News Today article reads like an ad for Mexico stem cell clinic Read More »
Over the years some scientists including yours truly have expressed concerns about the possibility that mutations could crop up during the reprogramming process to make induced pluripotent stem cells (IPS cells or IPSC). How concerned should we be about IPS cell mutations? A cool new paper, Bhutani, et al, in Nature Communications from a team led by
For IPS cell mutations, some reassuring new data but validation still key Read More »