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Northwestern abruptly ending Burt HSCT autoimmune trials

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Selma-Blair-HSCT

“HSCT Chicago Clinic Closing!” is the startling header in all caps on a patient-run Facebook page about a stem cell therapy clinical trial program at Northwestern University. What’s going on? Unfortunately, the promising field of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) for multiple sclerosis (MS) and other autoimmune diseases seems to have suffered an unexpected setback […]

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Recap & Thoughts on Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 3 (lots of spoilers so beware!)

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Game-of-Thrones-Season-8-Episode-3

This post is a recap of some major points of Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 3 and The Battle of Winterfell. Before you go on, there are tons of SPOILERS ahead so stop and leave now if you don’t want to see them. Really, many SPOILERs so go away if you don’t want to

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4 possible roles for stem cell therapy besides cell replacement

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stem-cells-drug-delivery

Historically, the main route of proposed healing via stem cell therapy was cell replacement. In this way of thinking the transplanted cells engrafted (took up home) in the patient’s tissue and replaced dead or diseased cells. However, interest continues to grow in other possible modes of healing by stem cells that don’t rely on cell

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Context for my Nature piece on redefining “gene edit” to be more precise

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CRISPR-gene-edit-vs-mutation-1

When I say “gene edit” or “genome editing”, what’s the first thing that pops in your mind? It will depend on who you are. For many lay people until a few weeks ago when the world heard about He Jiankui‘s claim of CRISPR’d babies they may not have had anything pop in their heads when

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He Jiankui didn’t really gene edit those girls; he mutated them

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CRISPR-gene-edit-vs-mutation-1

Did Chinese researcher He Jiankui really CRISPR gene edit the CCR5 gene in two embryos producing twin baby girls? In my opinion the answer is “no”, but probably not for the reason you might think at first. He proclaims gene edits He claimed he had made twin baby girls with “gene edits”, which I feel is unethical

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Trying to connect the dots on CRISPR baby story paints a dark, cloudy picture

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connect-the-dots

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

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Why CRISPR baby production (if it happened) was unethical & dangerous

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Jiankui-He-who-claims-CRISPR-baby-production

Reports are out that a scientist in China has been working to make a CRISPR baby for some time and supposedly has made twin genetically modified babies. I see this work as unethical and dangerous. Just a couple years ago when I published my book GMO Sapiens on potential use of CRISPR in a heritable manner

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