Another sports stars has been publicly “outed” as having received a non-FDA approved stem cell therapy in a foreign country. First, the big news earlier this year in June was that NY Yankees Pitcher Bartolo Colon had received a stem cell treatment. Then we all heard that Texas Governor and, at the moment, leading GOP […]
Sports stars, Rick Perry, stem cells: how many more people will die? Read More »
What will we define as a success for any given stem cell biotech like ViaCyte? In academia, even if we do pre-clinical, translational kind of biomedical sciences, we still do not often think about what it takes to succeed in industry. Even if we very much want our research to make a difference for patients,
I’ve been lecturing on stem cells as a professor here at UC Davis School of Medicine for many years so I can answer common questions such as “What are stem cells?” The medical students ask many great questions. They are always interested in clinical applications. The goal of today’s article is to help you have
What are stem cells? Definition & applications Read More »
Viacyte is one of the most exciting biotechs in the stem cells for diabetes space. Dr. Kevin D’Amour, Director of Stem Cell Research at Viacyte, gave an excellent, extremely interesting talk Friday morning: Developing an Encapsulated Stem Cell Therapy for Diabetes. Viacyte talk In the talk, Dr. D’Amour gave a very detailed description of their
The best talk today was the keynote address by Dr. George Daley focused mostly on iPS cells. Dr. Daley is one of the world’s experts on iPS cells and pluripotent stem cells more generally. He covered many interesting elements of the iPS cell field including the genetic mutations that seem to occur during the reprogramming
Summary of George Daley talk on iPS cells today in Seattle Read More »
There were three talks today on iPS cells here at the American Society for Gene and Cell Therapy meeting or ASGCT meeting in Seattle. Dr. James Ellis made the interesting case that it may be preferable to make iPS cells using genetic methods (while everyone else seems to be saying that non-genetic methods will be better).
News on iPS cells from some top scientists at ASGCT meeting today Read More »
Six months ago, I published a Top 10 list of questions and predictions for the stem cell field. How did I do? A mixed bag. Below are the questions and predictions from October 2010 (in blue), along with an update as to how my predictions fared. 1) How will Geron’s Phase I Clinical Trial go?
Stem Cell Questions & Predictions: how did I do? Read More »
What are iPS cells? We talk about iPS cells all the time. We are very excited about them. Heck, the web address for this blog is ipscell.com. But what are iPSCs, really? iPS cells definition A simple definition of iPSCs is the following: Embryonic stem cell-like cells that are made from non-stem cells in a
An insider’s guide: what are iPS cells? Read More »
A group of researchers led by Evan Snyder (paper discussed here) published a paper in PNAS on a new type of neural stem-like cell whose pluripotency can be turned ON or OFF by turning the v-myc gene ON or OFF using a conditional system of expression, called a “Tet-ON” system. In this system, tetracycline or its
“Alternative” to IPS cells, ICSP, are very cool, but for now a no-go for the FDA Read More »
It’s been more than 4 years since Shinya Yamanaka published the remarkable finding that his lab could transform or “reprogram” regular cells called fibroblasts into a very unique state that was quite similar to that of embryonic stem cells (ESC). Yamanaka called these new cells “iPS cells” for induced pluripotent stem cells. iPS cells Since
The Inside Scoop on iPS cells early in 2011 Read More »