A decade ago I wrote an article in the journal Nature Biotechnology about the rise of a new gene editing technology called zinc finger nucleases (ZNF). It was one of those “drumbeat” discoveries: at the time, my sense was it would revolutionize how we deliver genes to cells and tissues, and profoundly change the way […]
Guest Post by Chris Scott–The Great CRISPR Controversy: What’s Next? Read More »
On Thursday here at UC Davis School of Medicine we held our second annual Stem Cell Ethics Symposium. The symposium was organized by Drs. Mark Yarborough and Nanette Joyce as well as me. In this post I report on key take homes from the meeting and summarize the specific talks. As far as I know, this is one of the few
Meeting review of unique stem cell ethics symposium at UC Davis School of Medicine 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 »
Change is in the air for the California stem cell agency, CIRM. It has a new President, Randy Mills, and CIRM is soon going to be like a new agency too. I recently did an interview with Mills that illuminates some of the big changes that are imminent. I also asked him what his favorite
Radical Vision for CIRM Future: Interview with New Prez Mills Read More »
The FDA has issued a warning letter to Cell Vitals, a company that manufactures and sells stem cell face creams. Cell Vitals is apparently owned by Irene Hardy according to the letter and the business has an address in Irvine, CA. A screenshot from their website is shown below. The stem cell creams sold by Cell Vitals
FDA warning letter to stem cell face creams maker Read More »
What are super cells? Guest post by Lisa Willemse Last month, on this blog, Paul wrote an article about loopholes in the clinicaltrials.gov database that allows for-profit companies to advertise their “therapies” under the guise of a registered clinical trial. This is a real concern for our community, especially those among us who have recommended
Super Cells exhibit and why we bother with public outreach Read More »
The STAP cell mess that began in January of this year has in some ways quieted down. In a broader sense, I believe that STAP is now and will be in the future viewed as a scandal that revealed some less than ideal aspects to the world of biomedical science and publishing. Where does this
STAP Cell Update: STAP-like paper, Real Origin of STAP cells Read More »
Here is a link to the Ocata website, marking the start of a new era for what was formerly Advanced Cell Technology or ACT. It’s been a big summer for stem cell biotech Advanced Cell Technology (ACT; stock ACTCD) as it continues what I would call a process of reinventing itself. What’s been happening? ACT recently
ACT reinventing itself with new name Ocata Therapeutics Read More »
Yesterday was a crazy day for the STAP cell situation. We had RIKEN releasing a scathing internal investigatory report and then some folks in the media got all worked up about a single PCR assay result that Dr. Ken Lee posted on ResearchGate. Some of the reporters/science writers hyped their headlines/articles on this situation as though
Dr. Lee STAP Result, Hyped by Media, in Proper Context Read More »
I’m a seismologist at the University of Tokyo, where I’ve been since 1984. I was the first tenured foreign faculty member in the history of our university. If you look at my publication list on the Researcher ID site you can see that my main research recent interests are modeling seismic wave propagation and analyzing
Seismologist from Japan looks at the STAP cells mess Read More »