A piece on human tails and how we lost them caught my eye so I’ll start my weekly reads with that. This week I had the fewest Zoom meetings in ages, which allowed me to get more work done in my own lab and more reading. How about that? I even had some in-person meetings […]
Recommended reads: a tale of human tails, heart reprogramming, pericytes, microglia Read More »
I’ve been following the research related to human cloning now for more than a decade. Is human cloning more possible at this point? How do we even define such cloning? Did you know there are two types? The goal of this post is to educate you and in the process answer such questions. What’s in
Human cloning is more likely now but would you take the big risks? Read More »
Although in my years as a stem cell biologist I haven’t yet been in a leadership role at the International Society for Stem Cell Research or ISSCR, unproven stem cell clinics have claimed that I somehow speak for ISSCR. I am just a standard member of the group like thousands of other researchers. In fact,
Recommended reads: ISSCR guidelines pushback, TB outbreak from regen product, pubs Read More »
Professor Joanne Kurtzberg’s clinical work at the Duke Autism Center on umbilical cord blood for autism and cerebral palsy (CP) involves a partnership with a publicly-traded cord blood banking firm called Cryo-Cell. Kurtzberg is also the Medical Director at the firm. In addition they have intellectual property in this area. The Duke team’s efforts, including
Duke & Cryo-Cell plan big clinic for unproven infusions of kids Read More »
I got some great entries for our The Niche stem cell picture contest. While I expected many bright colorful images, every year some of the pictures surprise me in certain ways. There was another surprise in that two entrants in the contest, both Assistant Professors, are sisters. A talented family! You can see the previous
The Niche stem cell picture contest winners: gut & astrocytes Read More »
It’s been a week with a wide variety of regenerative medicine papers and stem cell news. Here’s my earlier take from a few days ago on the Belmonte-led human-monkey chimeric embryo paper in Cell that broke this week. A few days ago I also put up a new video on our Stem Cell YouTube Channel
Every so often here on The Niche, I run some contests just to make things fun and today I have a new one to announce. The contest is for the best stem cell research images. Most often what people send in as entries are microscopy pictures, but you can use your imagination. You can see
The Niche 2021 stem cell picture contest: win $100 or swag Read More »
This was an unusual week in that three papers in a sense collided together related to embryo production and growth, raising new research possibilities but also serious ethical questions. New research: what is an embryo & what is not? The first two Nature papers reported generating the most realistic models of human embryos from scratch
Weekly reads: embryo pubs stir things up, organoids crying, & more Read More »
Those of you following the arena of unproven stem cells might recognize the name Dr. Joseph Mercola. He’s a promoter of alternative medicine. Over the years his name has also popped related to the marketing of unproven stem cell offerings in various ways. Now the FDA has warned Joseph Mercola on what it says are unapproved
FDA warns Joseph Mercola on COVID-19 claims Read More »
A grand jury indicted Missouri state representative and assistant physician Patricia Derges for allegedly selling and injecting patients with fake stem cells. The injection was reportedly just of amniotic fluid, but Derges allegedly claimed it was a stem cell treatment. NBC News was one of several media outlets that broke the story here after the
Lawmaker indicted for selling fake stem cells for COVID & more Read More »