I’ve seen many crazy things over the years doing this blog including exploits of Haruko Obokata . There was the Moriguchi IPS cell fraud, the electric stem cell bra, the stem cell supermodel case, the stem cell soup No. 7 aphrodisiac, the STAP cell scandal….and the craziness goes on. Today there’s a new one that even […]
Haruko Obokata 小保方 晴子-like Game Character Conducts ‘Dangerous Research’ Read More »
This is a guest post on Cancer stem cells By Aaron Goldman Much like the winter weather we’ve been enduring on the east coast, cancer research is advancing at a rapid clip! For decades, researchers have considered pools of “cancer stem cells” (CSC) as the subsets within a tumor which both initiate progression and underpin
What is the best Stem Cell Conference? Dr. Christopher Fasano, principal investigator at the Neural Stem Cell Institute and creator and host of THE Stem Cell Podcast founded a unique stem cell meeting in 2013. In this short interview I find out about The Next-Gen Stem Cell Conference (to be held this year on May
The Scoop on Next-Gen Stem Cell Conference Read More »
A cool new paper is out in Stem Cell Reports describing long-term tumorigenicity of human induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSC or IPS cells). See graphical abstract. The potential tumorigenicity of IPSC is a major concern when teams around the world are translating IPSC technology to the bedside. Past studies including one from my own lab have
Lessons from New IPS Cell Study Showing Tumors 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 »
The FDA mandate to regulate drugs and devices often invokes a term called “interstate commerce”. Like many people I thought I knew what that meant, but probably like most people I was wrong. After a great discussion on an original post on various key issues related to the many stem cell clinics doing non-FDA approved
I like football and for the 2nd year in a row, my favorite team the Seahawks are playing in The Super Bowl after their miracle finish against the Packers. I don’t believe in stem cell miracles for the most part, but I do wonder how many players on the two teams tomorrow have had “stem
Super Bowl full of stem cells? Read More »
A new piece came out yesterday on the Wellcome Trust Blog, strongly promoting approval of so-called “3-Parent IVF” or Mitochondrial Transfer technology by the UK Parliament. As I written in the past (here and here), my view is that this would be a mistake at this time. There is room for respectful disagreement on this issue between scientists,
Big push for 3-parent IVF technology in UK Read More »
A new stem cell clinical trial for Multiple Sclerosis (MS) in Canada is raising hopes amongst patients and researchers. According to the Ottawa Citizen, the trial will be led by Dr. Mark S. Freedman (pictured, photo from Ottawa Hospital), director of the multiple sclerosis research unit at The Ottawa Hospital and “The Canadian trials which
Landmark New Stem Cell Trial for Multiple Sclerosis Raises Hopes Read More »
It seems hard to believe it was a year ago that the STAP cell Nature papers came out to much fanfare on January 29, 2014. These now discredited and retracted papers reported a supposed new method to easily make reprogrammed powerful stem cells, a finding touted as a Nobel Prize-worthy discovery. Now a year later on
Personal Reflections on STAP Cell Mess On 1-Year Anniversary Read More »