What is Harvard’s role in the STAP cell mess? If you have been living in a cave somewhere for the last 6 weeks, to catch you up to speed, an international collaborative team published two papers in Nature reporting the creation of powerful stem cells–so-called STAP stem cells–via a simple method of stressing ordinary differentiated […]
Harvard’s Role in STAP Cell Debacle 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 »
I’ve been researching the issue of how intellectual property (IP) and patents to induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell will influence the field. It’s a complicated, worrisome picture in terms of getting this technology to patients to help them. I’m concerned there may be an all out patent war. Even for those who do not go
Sky’s the limit on iPS cell licensure cost from Academia Japan Read More »
By Jeanne Loring. On Wednesday afternoon at the ISSCR meeting in Boston, Jamie Thomson gave a talk about the history of human pluripotent stem cells. There were probably only a dozen people in the audience of around 3,000 who were working on human ES cells around the same time that Jamie and Joseph Itskovitz-Eldor were
Jeanne Loring’s Thought-Provoking Guest Post on Jamie Thomson’s ISSCR Talk Read More »
Remember Stemage? They are the cosmetic company with Kathy Ireland as their spokesperson whose anti-aging cream includes extracts from human stem cells. In Part 1 of this blog series on Stemage I gave some key background and raised some important questions. I also sent some questions to the company and now more recently to the
Stemage Stem Cell Anti-Aging Cream 2.0: Interview with Dr. David Scharp Read More »
Cellular Dynamics, the stem cell company founded by Dr. James Thomson, is filing for an IPO. Hat tip to David Jensen. The company, which will go under the stock symbol ICEL, is focused on iPS cell-produced products. They describe their portfolio as follows: Cellular Dynamics is developing and deploying a number of cell types derived from
Cellular Dynamics IPO: big money, iPS cell IP rights, trade secrets Read More »
Remember the electric StemCell Bra? This innovation is hoped by the creators to grow bigger breasts for women via the power of electricity and stem cells. Could this work? How would it work? Is it safe? Are there clinical trials ongoing? Who is the team and what is the rationale behind this technology? I’ve emailed
The StemCell Bra interview with Howard Leonhardt Read More »
One of my favorite stem cell scientists is Jeanne Loring of Scripps. She does great science and when you ask her questions, she frankly states her opinions and is clearly a gifted educator at heart too. Below is a Q&A interview I did with Jeanne on key issues of clinical translation of iPS cells. You
Jeanne Loring interview: optimism on clinical translation of IPS cells Read More »
Dr. Steven Victor, CEO of Intellicell, seems to have made two comments on a recent blog post I did on stem cell sports medicine (see below). Victor and Intellicell received a warning letter from the FDA in March 2012 with the FDA. I’m not aware of Intellicell publicly addressing the FDA issues. If you have, Intellicell, please
Dr. Steven Victor of Intellicell Comments on its Stem Cell Treatments Read More »
In my series eight simple reasons to pause before getting an unlicensed treatment from a non-compliant clinic I have covered the first five: (1) potential loss of insurance coverage for negative outcomes that could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, (2) failure of patient follow up by the doctors and clinics, (3) exclusion from future clinical trial participation, (4) undesired