Near-billionaire Bryan Johnson apparently does not like getting old and he’s trying to do something transformative about it. He and his team are experimenting in a big way. As a 55-year-old myself, I can’t blame him for wanting to fight aging in general. However, his anti-aging project includes some extreme stuff. Will some in the […]
Skepticism on the Bryan Johnson anti-aging extravaganza Read More »
Have you had the chance to play around on ChatGPT, the open AI? It can “talk” to you in text kind of like a person. I have tried it out. It’s quite interesting to type in scientific questions and see what pops out. Often it is high-quality text and solid ideas, but not always. You
Weekly reads: ChatGPT as author, COVID pub concern, CRISPR kit Read More »
About ten years ago I ran across the organism called the immortal jellyfish. Luckily I didn’t get stung because it wasn’t an in-person encounter like while swimming. Rather, I came upon the idea that these guys lived forever. Someone was even selling an immortal jellyfish extract. They claimed it would reverse aging in people. That
Are immortal jellyfish actually mortal? Read More »
It’s always exciting when your lab has a new paper and my team just published a study knocking out the H3f3a gene in mice, which codes for histone H3.3 protein. We found that loss of this gene leads to lethality at a late stage of embryonic development. There were also indications of more specific phenotypes
Weekly reads: H3.3 on the brain, Texas bill, HSCs Read More »
Let’s start with a couple of new pieces on in vivo reprogramming. The idea here is to do something like making iPS cells but doing it inside organisms and not quite pushing cells all the way back to pluripotency. Just younger, healthier cells. Why do that? The goal is to achieve a kind of anti-aging
Weekly reads: reprogramming aging, astrocytes, cartilage, ChatGPT Read More »
The FDA seems oddly slow in oversight of unproven stem cell clinic-related firms like one here in California called Invitrx Therapeutics. I’ve written before about Invitrx, but interactions between them and the FDA have continued including a new warning letter. It’s become a puzzling situation. More broadly, the FDA has done relatively little in the past
3rd Invitrx warning highlights FDA oversight weakness Read More »
I tend to perhaps over-focus on human CRISPR or gene editing, but other applications including in agriculture are definitely going to be huge. CRISPR in agriculture One that I’ve been following for a long time is the use of CRISPR to prevent cows from growing horns. Why is that a big deal? Just in the
Weekly reads: CRISPR chicks, HSCs, sequencing Mendel Read More »
I started The Screamers a few years back as a biomedical science hype award. It’s kind of in the spirit of an Ig Noble Prize in the sense of an alternative “award”, but in this case for hype. In 2020, sadly the FDA Commissioner at the time Stephen Hahn won The Screamers award for a
2022 The Screamers Science Hype Award goes to The BBC Read More »
Out of the blue this past week we lost Kevin McCormack of CIRM to a heart attack. When I first heard, my reaction was that can’t be, but it is. About Kevin McCormack If you aren’t familiar with him, Kevin was officially Director of Patient Advocacy at our state’s Stem Cell Agency. However, he was
Weekly reads: Kevin McCormack passes, HSCs & RXR, Ethics Read More »
There have been rare instances like with scientist James Wilson where researchers were involved in what I would call major misconduct but somehow managed to bounce back. In a sense, they were given second chances in part by regulators but also by other scientists or supporters. However, after extraordinary misconduct, especially contributing to the death
2nd chances after big misconduct? He Jiankui, James Wilson, others Read More »