Out of the blue this past week we lost Kevin McCormack of CIRM to a heart attack. When I first heard, my reaction was that can’t be, but it is. About Kevin McCormack If you aren’t familiar with him, Kevin was officially Director of Patient Advocacy at our state’s Stem Cell Agency. However, he was […]
Weekly reads: Kevin McCormack passes, HSCs & RXR, Ethics Read More »
Stem cell biologist Jacob Hanna has a new startup called Renewal Bio. Its goal is to harvest cells or tissues from human embryo or fetus models for clinical use. I believe that their commercial ambitions have so far outstripped careful thought and discussion in the broader community of researchers. There are major risks here for
‘We don’t want to freak people out’: about that Jacob Hanna human embryo model startup Read More »
Another busy week including on the grant writing treadmill or should I say Mobius strip, but I’m always on the lookout for new reading and this week a lot popped up on regeneration. Also, a paper on healing and scarring. I regularly write about stem cell journals. For a long time, it seems like Cell Stem
Stem cell reads: regeneration, 8C, MYC, CRISPR babies Read More »
The last few years in the stem cell and regenerative medicine arena have been complicated in many ways. Variables like surging stem cell clinics and COVID have made predictions harder. Even so, trying to make predictions is useful and it’s fun to go over past year’s predictions. You can see my scorecard on my 2021
16 predictions for stem cells & regenerative medicine in 2022 Read More »
The world of stem cell research and regenerative medicine is unpredictable but it’s fun to be a part of it and try to do predictions. Each year in late December or early January I make prognostications for the coming year for stem cell research and regenerative medicine. I made 21 such predictions for the current
Grading my 21 stem cell & regenerative medicine predictions for 2021 Read More »
If you celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday I hope you had a nice one and, right before it started a new article popped on the scene about the CRISPR babies. Before we discuss those three gene-edited people, who are now growing up into little kids, we hit a milestone on our YouTube Stem Cell Channel with
Regenerative reads: 3 CRISPR babies, FDA warning, diabetes, pubs Read More »
The paper of the week is from Science on making ovarian follicles and actual eggs from stem cells. It’s just in mice, but this line of work tends to stir people up. We’ll dive into that in a moment. But first some good news. We’re up to 146 subscribers on our stem cell YouTube channel
Weekly reads: stem cells to gametes, no PRP benefit, WHO CRISPR, pubs Read More »
My to-read list this weekend includes a range of papers along with various news & media including a report of two US research groups aiming to get CRISPR baby patents. More on that below. At long last a trip + fun thing to do in NYC Last week I took my first trip in more
Weekly reads: escape to New York, CRISPR baby patents, ISSCR guidelines, pubs Read More »
It was a couple of years back that researcher He Jiankui claimed he made three “CRISPR babies.” No one would think about doing any kind of rogue gene-editing again, right? Not even somatic gene edits. After all, as far as we know he’s in jail. We still don’t know the health risks that these three
Ukraine clinic plans to sell CRISPR enhancements: hair color, skin, & breast size Read More »
A new Cell paper from an international team led by Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte pushes human embryo chimera embryo research further than ever before. It is both exciting work and raises many complex bioethics questions at the same time. What is a human embryo chimera? By way of background, chimeric human embryos contain a mixture
Monkey human embryo chimera Cell paper: exciting, ethically complex direction Read More »