Did Celltex just get an FDA warning letter? I’m not sure. We may find out tomorrow as the FDA updates their public warning letter list early in the week. What’s Celltex? Celltex is that famous stem cell company in Sugarland, Texas that gave Guv Rick Perry stem cell transplants. It was inspected by the FDA […]
Did Celltex just get an FDA warning letter? Read More »
The iPS cell field has had a relatively quiet 2012 so far, but one recent paper has drawn particular attention in the last 10 days. I’m talking about the paper from Jaenisch’s lab on iPS cells in Cell. Quite a few people are excited, but also scratching their heads a bit as to what this
Jaenisch’s new, complicated iPS paper in Cell: what the heck does it all mean? Read More »
We live in an ever increasing plasticized world. There are many good things about plastic, but then there are also some very bad things such as the giant whirpools of plastic fragments out in the oceans that are larger than Texas and also some of the chemicals in plastics are dangerous. One particular chemical villain
FDA finally bans poison and carcinogen BPA from baby products Read More »
What are the most important iPS cell papers so far? 1) Yamanaka’s first paper on mouse iPS cells. Revolutionary. Intriguing perspectives presented in day 1 of the iPS cell field. Interesting statements such as Myc is required. Also take a look at those other reprogramming factors that he tested…there’s a tremendous amount there, largely unexamined.
What are the best iPS cell papers so far? Read More »
The leading cause of death in America and many other countries of the world is cardiovascular disease (CVD) including heart attacks and strokes. In fact, CVD kills and disables more people than most often top killers combined including cancer. The myth that CVD is a “man’s disease” only makes the situation worse as in reality CVD
Transdifferentiation meets gene therapy to tackle heart disease Read More »
Humans have big brains, right? In fact, they are downright supersized. But is that always such a good thing? As it turns out, no. Size matters, but bigger is not always better for brains at least. When I was in high school, my biology teacher had us do the requisite frog dissection and offered extra
When it comes to brains, bigger is not always better Read More »
What does the FDA define as “minimally manipulated” when it comes to biologics such as stem cells? You will be shocked to find out, but they include irradiation and treatment with the super toxin/carcinogen, ethylene oxide. In a recent post I discussed the issue of an apparent “minimal manipulation” exception (some might even call it a
Why do people have such a big brain compared to other animals? Vertebrate embryonic development is a highly conserved process, particularly in the earliest phases. (note: you may find this September 2020 post on regulation of bee brain size to be interesting.) A wide variety of vertebrate animals including humans start out with embryonic body plans
Why is the human brain super-sized? Read More »
I’ve now been blogging about stem cells here on The Niche for nearly 2 years, but why do I keep doing it? I’m by no means the only one who blogs about stem cells, but it is just that professors still are reluctant in the stem cell field to blog. Two outstanding blogs that tied
Why I am still blogging here on The Niche Read More »
CIRM, the California stem cell agency, has funded hundreds of grants during its relatively short existence. You can do searches of these grants through a handy dandy web portal that CIRM has made available–it’s a very cool tool and I commend CIRM for making it available. I wish the tool had more options however including
Word Cloud of Every CIRM-funded grant yields some surprising insights Read More »