In today’s post, I reviewed a stem cell clinic firm called Docere Clinics. In my opinion, there are some concerning issues here and reasons for caution. One type of procedure at Docere is particularly surprising and raises risks in my view. What is Docere Clinics? | What kind of stem cells does Docere use? | What they […]
Review of Docere Clinics run by Harry Adelson including total-body injections Read More »
Totipotency literally means all powerful, but it refers in biology to specific cells. These cells can make every type of cell in the body of an organism plus the extraembryonic tissues needed for development. This includes humans. So if you could reprogram human cells like blood or skin cells into totipotent stem cells, you might
Weekly reads: gene therapy nod, Nature pub ethics, CRISPR LDL Read More »
David Weinberg over at Science-Based Medicine has his part two of a deep dive into the so-called SCOTS trial, which is a non-traditional pay-for-play study. I highly recommend it. SCOTS trial under the magnifying glass In this piece, Weinberg provides interesting background on the two people running SCOTS. I’ve had many concerns about the SCOTS
Recommended reads: engineered niche, ALS, SCOTS trial, human genome “done” Read More »
Great ideas and talented scientists are not enough as biomedical research needs funding and here in the U.S. that means having R01 grant success. The trends since 1995 are slowly heading the wrong way. The average age of getting your first R01 grant keeps getting older. There is also still a bit of a possible
Weekly reads: R01 grant trends, DPPA4, adult human neurogenesis debate Read More »
The news of the week relates to an interim clinical trial report from gene-editing firm Editas on its CRISPR trial for a form of vision loss. On to that in a minute. What have you been reading the past week? Below, I include our weekly list of recommended reads. However, first I wanted to give
The Niche weekend reads: Editas mess, The Niche updates, papers Read More »
I love stem cell research but experiments that have practical possible future applications in medicine like for vision loss are especially interesting to me. On the other hand basic research on core transcription factor mechanisms like by MyoD also really grab me. We cover some of this stuff and other ground in today’s recommended reads.
Weekly reads: vision, MyoD, liver regen, more Read More »
A human embryo model is a laboratory-produced collection of living cells that has some key things in common with real human embryos. They are made from pluripotent stem cells, which include embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells. This research is both exciting and ethically complicated, raising some difficult questions. Embryo
A new word has been added to the lexicon of human stem cell research – blastoids, aka “blastocyst-like structures.” Unlike the familiar three-layered embryo that emerges during the third week of prenatal development, the earlier blastocyst resembles a fluid-filled soccer ball, with a smear of cells on the interior face destined to develop into the
New lab-grown blastoids are strikingly similar to human embryos Read More »
During the week as I’m doing other stuff I keep my eyes open for interesting things to read, including over the weekend about stem cell research, COVID, CRISPR, and more for The Niche weekly recommended reads. This week a lot was going as we updated The Niche site to our new theme and format. I
Recommended reads: jobs, FDA letter, & The Niche new look Read More »
Today’s The Niche recommended weekly reads post includes both primary papers and also a few media pieces. I’m especially interested in the first piece on making more complex embryo-like structures from ES cells. This is a long way from just making embryoid bodies or EBs. At the end of the post I discuss an article
Weekly The Niche reads: lab-grown embryos & thymus, more Read More »