Hockey legend Gordie Howe had a devastating stroke last fall and supposedly a stem cell treatment in Mexico from for-profit stem cell businesses, Stemedica and Novastem, caused a remarkable recovery in Howe. It has been one of the most hyped stem cell stories in history. What really happened? Today a new article on a fresh investigation into this story […]
Gordie Howe family reportedly invested in Stemedica Read More »
A new biotech startup, Semma Therapeutics, announced that it seeks to fight diabetes via translating technology from the lab of Doug Melton at Harvard to the clinic. Update: Note that the firm was recently acquired by Vertex. Another major player in cell therapy-based arena for Diabetes is most likely good news for patients. Quoted in the Boston
New biotech Semma Therapeutics stem cell diabetes arena Read More »
A lot has happened in 2014 in the stem cell and regenerative medicine field and so much of it has been good news so let’s focus on the positive. These positive developments are often the result of many years of creative, hard work by amazing teams of researchers. Here is my top 10 list of
Positive Stem Cell Developments in 2014 Read More »
There is more good news from leading stem cell biotech Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) on preclinical rodent studies using stem cells to treat mice with an MS-like condition. They published a new paper in the journal Stem Cell Reports entitled “Human ESC-Derived MSCs Outperform Bone Marrow MSCs in the Treatment of an EAE Model of
Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) Revs Up Pre-Clinical Studies for MS Read More »
What happens if we start using induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells clinically in humans? A cool new paper recently came out that gets us closer to being able to predict an answer. It’s an important question as iPS cell-derived cellular products are getting closer to clinical use. For example, the first iPS cell-based clinical trial
Cool, encouraging new preclinical study on monkey stem cells Read More »
A paper has been published reporting that repeated attempts to make so-called “acid bath stem cells” have failed. At the end of January it was claimed in two Nature papers that a mild acid treatment created pluripotent or even totipotent stem cells that that the authors termed “STAP cells” or “STAP stem cells” (collectively referred
Perspectives on Lee Lab F1000 Paper that STAP Cell Method Does Not Work Read More »
Tonight, President Obama will give his “State of the Union” annual address on how our country is doing. I’m guessing he will say the state of the union is positive, but with challenges. What is the state of the union for stem cells in America today? Overall I think it’s extremely encouraging and the field
Stem Cell State of the Union Read More »
Every year I do predictions for the stem cell field for the coming year. You can see my full post on my predictions for this year here. Stay tuned soon for my predictions for 2014. How’d I do for 2013 with my predications? Each prediction for this year that I made last year is bolded
How’d stem cell predictions for 2013 fare? Read More »
Where do things stand with some players in the for-profit world of stem cell and cellular medicine companies? Here are a few brief news items with quick analysis. Mesoblast is dominating the news of late. Mesoblast reported good news from its Phase II safety trial for its mesenchymal progenitor cell (MPC) product in patients with
Stem Cell & Cell Med Industry Briefs Read More »
Osiris, a cellular therapy biotech, recently received a so-called “untitled letter” from the FDA. The text of the letter seems on the whole negative in my opinion, while the company’s public reaction to the letter on the other hand could be seen paradoxically as rather cheery. What’s going on here? With Halloween coming, one has
Osiris FDA Letter: Trick or Treat? Read More »