Search Results for: china

Cell therapy trials for COVID-19 accelerate & some early reports

MultiStem-Athersys-cell-therapy-COVID-19

Could various kinds of cell therapy help patients with COVID-19? A variety of cell therapies, mostly focused on mesenchymal stromal/stem cells (MSCs), have gotten cleared quickly in the U.S., China, and Israel and possibly other countries to be tested in patients with the novel coronavirus. I hope at least one proves helpful. It’s mostly a […]

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Patient Q&A#2: Are autoimmune or stem cell transplant patients at higher risk from COVID-19?

COVID-19

I’m continuing my stem cell patient Q&A series and today’s Q&A#2 post is focused on whether autoimmune patients generally or specifically those who have received chemo and hematopoietic stem cell transplants (HSCT) are at higher risk from COVID-19? Multiple patients have asked me this. It’s a great question and obviously urgent right now during the

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Athersys & Mesoblast stem cells for COVID-19?

2019-nCoV-COVID-19-Pasteur

Could two stem cell biotechs Athersys and Mesoblast help in the battle against the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19? Stem cells, ARDS, and COVID-19 I’ve already written two pieces about the idea of using stem cells to battle COVID-19 (here and here), the sometimes fatal disease that arises from infection with the novel coronavirus. Older patients

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‘We Cannot Stick to the Rules’: claims of stem cells saving COVID-19 patients

stem-cells-for-COVID-19

I’ve been watching as the number of registered stem cell-related clinical trials for the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) disease COVID-19 continues to spiral upward, mostly in China. During the last two weeks, I’ve been trying to carve out a bit of time to look at these actual trials in more depth, but I admittedly haven’t gotten

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Heads up on Hui Yang, another potential aspiring CRISPR baby researcher

-Yui-Hang

Making a CRISPR baby is a controversial idea to even propose now for many reasons, yet even after He Jiankui’s train wreck some people have seemed eager to try it including apparently a scientist whose name perhaps many readers here are not so familiar with in this context: Professor Hui Yang. ‘CRISPR baby guys’ Is

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B+ on my report card on my 20 stem cell predictions for 2019

stem-cell-crystal-ball-predictions-1

Last year around this time I took my annual plunge to make 20 predictions for the coming year for the stem cell and regenerative medicine field. I even made a crystal ball graphic to highlight the complexity of the stem cell ecosystem into which these predictions were embedded (see image) for 2019. How’d I do?

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Monkey-pig chimeras pub discouraging for similar human research toward organ transplants

pig-monkey-chimera-that-was-born-but-died

Michael Le Page over at The New Scientist reports on a new paper describing the birth of monkey-piglet chimeras. Unlike most such primate embryo chimeras formed in research in the past, these were allowed to be born. A litter of ten from the new monkey-pig research, two of which were chimeras, all rather quickly died

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Stem cell & regenerative medicine meetings for you to go to in 2019

Stem-Cell-Meetings-2019

I keep a yearly hub of stem cell & regenerative medicine meetings here on The Niche. Below I’ve pasted the list for 2019, which continues to grow. If you don’t see yours listed, send me an email with the info including a link (knoepflerATucdavisDOTedu). These meeting listings are not endorsements and I try to make

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Counterpoints to Lovell-Badge & Daley’s CRISPR baby rationales

CRISPR-baby

Two prominent scientists, Robin Lovell-Badge and George Daley, have been amongst the most outspoken proponents of leaving the door open to heritable human genetic modification via CRISPR. While they each have articulated their reasons in somewhat different ways at times, their core reasons arguing in favor of future heritable CRISPR appear largely the same. In

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