Reports are out that a scientist in China has been working to make a CRISPR baby for some time and supposedly has made twin genetically modified babies. I see this work as unethical and dangerous. Just a couple years ago when I published my book GMO Sapiens on potential use of CRISPR in a heritable manner […]
Why CRISPR baby production (if it happened) was unethical & dangerous Read More »
Stem cells are always in the news so what’s up in the last week or two? CIRM News The dialogue over CIRM’s future is picking up a bit of steam. The San Francisco Chronicle did an in-depth piece on CIRM some weeks back and then opined that they didn’t feel supportive of another round of
News bites: CIRM, anti-MSCs, & human eggs from stem cells Read More »
We heard this week about the encouraging news of a new CRISPR-stem cell collaboration between stem cell biotech ViaCyte and CRISPR Therapeutics. The goal of the team is to make genetically engineered pancreatic derivatives from stem cells that would have a unique immune stealthiness. If such an approach was successful, patients would not need to
Quick Q&A with ViaCyte CEO on CRISPR-stem cell work Read More »
What the devil is a vampire facial? I first heard about the vampire facial, sometimes also called a “vampire facelift” when professional celebrity Kim Kardashian reportedly got one. I weighed in on that five years ago here. There was some question in how this procedure was portrayed as to whether it involved stem cells, which
Vampire facial update: Kardashian has regrets, others maybe infections Read More »
Sometimes it seems like a bunch of stuff in one area, like with CRISPR this week, happens all of a sudden in science. A bunch of fairly high-profile gene editing pubs came out. They generated a lot of news reports. Other news in this arena popped up too, all within a few days. In vivo
CRISPR update: lots of new pubs, news, & maybe a patent finale Read More »
What’s Australia like from the science to the country? I enjoyed the ISSCR2018 Annual Meeting in Melbourne on stem cells and regenerative medicine a few weeks back(here is a post on the some of the notable science from Day 1), but I also got a chance to get to know Australia a bit too. Below I have
Fun pictures & 7 observations on the country from Australia trip Read More »
The last few years for the publicly-traded stem cell clinic biz, US Stem Cell, Inc., which goes by the ticker $USRM, have seemed like a rollercoaster to me as an observer. I can see four main areas of news that to me make the future seem uncertain for this firm. First, the US Stem was linked to the
Clinic biz US Stem Cell reports SEC subpoena, adding to uncertainty on its future Read More »
There’s much more to CRISPR-Cas9 than just gene editing and a new paper from the lab of Rudy Jaenisch in Cell highlights that in an exciting way. It reports epigenetic reversal of a Fragile X Syndrome phenotype in induced pluripotent stem cell (IPSC) neurons. Fragile X Syndrome is a neurological disorder in boys resulting from CGG repeat
Journal club: Jaenisch lab paper on epigenetic CRISPR-Cas9 rescue of Fragile X in a dish Read More »
There are now so many clinics selling non-FDA approved stem cell offerings across the U.S. that tens or hundreds of thousands of patients are at risk. How did we get here? What if we had a way of understanding how stem cell clinics spread across the U.S. in the first place? For example, an animated
Animated map video shows wildfire spread of US stem cell clinics lacking FDA approval Read More »
2018 has started quickly on the stem cell and regenerative medicine research front with many interesting new papers and a lot of headlines. You can see my predictions for this year here. Below is a list of some of the more notable papers and striking news headlines. Note that just because I listed a news
Reading list of recent stem cell pubs & headlines Read More »