There’s a lot of questionable “stem cell” injections these days involving purported amniotic stem cell or other perinatal (birth-related) material. Regulators are taking note including the FTC, which took some unprecedented action last year on this front. Now the FTC has announced that more than half a million $USD have been returned to consumers who […]
It’s been a cool week for stem cell and other associated kinds of research. In this post I have a series of links to a variety of interesting developments and papers. Gene therapy cures bubble boy infants. William Wan over at the WaPo on this good news. Nope, this wasn’t done with CRISPR, but rather
Maybe the announcement that Commissioner Scott Gottlieb will be leaving the FDA soon shouldn’t have caught us all off-guard, but it did. Gottlieb isn’t a perfect Commissioner, but he brought a sensible, open approach to running the FDA that was very refreshing. Amongst all the top leadership in the Trump administration, Scott Gottlieb stood out
Scott Gottlieb leaving FDA: possible reasons, impact on stem cell field, & more Read More »
Stem cells for MS? How promising is that? A new paper gives stronger reason for hope, but unfortunately this story is more complex than it seems on first glance. New Paper The idea of using a stem cell-related approach to treat multiple sclerosis (MS) has been around for a long time holding major promise, but
Upbeat Burt team pub on stem cells for MS comes with uneasy back story Read More »
For a long time at the end of each year, I’ve been making stem cell predictions for the coming year. Most often I’ve been making a “top 20” list of predictions and today’s post has my list for 2019. You can see how I did for 2018 here, which might have been my best year
20 stem cell & regenerative medicine predictions for 2019 Read More »
State involvement in reining in predatory stem cell clinics has never been more important, which is why it’s such good news that the Medical Board of California has a task force in the works to investigate such firms. According to a new NBC7 report (linked to above) focusing both on this news and on their own investigation
Medical Board of California Task Force to Investigate Stem Cell Clinics Read More »
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took some strong action against specific stem cell clinics today and the physician behind them. I see this as really good news and it’s something I’ve been pushing for years. The clinics in question in part marketed unproven stem cells for sick kids. Frankly, iffy for-profit stem cell “treatments” for
101-year old lady cured? Groundbreaking FTC Action on Stem Cell Clinic Marketing Read More »
Over the weekends I try to catch up on more diverse reading and sometimes come up with a list of stuff I want to get to during this time, but I also put together weekend reads usually on Fridays as a kind of TGIF on The Niche for the wider audience here. So here’s the
TGIF weekend reads: senolytics, new CRISPR, stem cells, & 3 wacky things Read More »
This past week’s coverage of unproven stem cells exhibited a wide range both in tone and in topics including golfer Jack Nicklaus. There were the three critical articles on clinics that I blogged about earlier and then there was a CNN puff piece by Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Roni Selig mostly focused on Nicklaus. Note that
Divots fly from CNN puff piece on Jack Nicklaus & unproven stem cells Read More »
Australian stem cell biotech Mesoblast announced that it has received regenerative medicine advanced therapy (RMAT) designation from the U.S. FDA. This is very good news for the company and an encouraging development for the field. Interestingly, last month the FDA clarified that there is expanded RMAT designation that can include gene therapies too. At the Meeting
Mesoblast gets FDA RMAT; List of 10 total designations so far Read More »