On President’s Day, let’s think about our country’s leader, Donald Trump. Do we have to? Yeah, sometimes we do. For the first time in my lifetime, I see the President of the United States as a serious threat to overall science & to our country’s democracy. Trump is not well-acquainted with fact-based reality and that’s […]
On President’s Day: Dealing with Reality Trump is Threat to Science & Democracy Read More »
My first job in science was as a lab technician at UCSD School of Medicine and a big part of that job was growing cells called HUVECs or human umbilical vein endothelial cells. We isolated and grew the HUVECs from umbilical cords that we retrieved from the maternity ward of the UCSD hospital, which first
Why we shouldn’t view the human embryo as a gizmo even in the CRISPR era Read More »
Is monkey cloning a good idea? We’re about to find out. A new Cell paper today reports the first cloning of monkeys via somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), raising many questions. The paper from a team led by Qiang Sun is entitled, “Cloning of Macaque Monkeys by Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer.” The highlight bullet points
Is monkey cloning a breakthrough or a bad idea? Read More »
Are you a risk-taker or do you do everything possible to avoid risks? Taking risks in science is necessary, but is there a wise way to take the risks you do? Science and medicine need a certain amount of risk and risk-takers to make transformative leaps forward. The risks in biomedical science can be conceptual
Some thoughts on taking risks in science & medicine Read More »
Today’s post includes a list of firms/products that have self-reported that they have received FDA regenerative medicine advanced therapy designation or RMAT. Sometimes people call these “r mat” with a space. I also include FDA data on RMAT submissions via an FDA RMAT resource page. At this point I have found 125 grant RMATs. I’m
Updated FDA granted RMAT List (125) Read More »
The news that CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing in its current form may not work in a substantial fraction of people due to many of us having immunity to Cas9 came as a shock to many, but if you think about it, maybe it’s not so surprising. I don’t see it as the end of the world. A (preprint) from
Keep calm & CRISPR on: perspectives on report of human Cas9 immunity Read More »
Australian stem cell biotech Mesoblast announced that it has received regenerative medicine advanced therapy (RMAT) designation from the U.S. FDA. This is very good news for the company and an encouraging development for the field. Interestingly, last month the FDA clarified that there is expanded RMAT designation that can include gene therapies too. At the Meeting
Mesoblast gets FDA RMAT; List of 10 total designations so far Read More »
The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, more widely known as CIRM, has accomplished big things over the course of its history of about a decade and sparked a great deal of innovation, but what does the future hold for our stem cell agency? CIRM has a new, respected President and CEO Maria Millan solving one
Update on CIRM future: will it include 2020 measure? Read More »
By Samantha Yammine When our TV stops working, it’s usually because one of the wires has come unplugged. We begrudgingly huff and puff over to the back of the TV, track down the loose culprit, plug it back in, and boom: back to Netflix. If you multiply all those wires in the back of your
I started The Niche blog in largely its current form early in 2010, and now 7+ years later we’ve hit two big milestones recently. First, about a month ago, we reached 10,000 comments made on the blog. Thanks for being involved in the discussion on the Niche blog! Second, we reached 7,000,000 total page views
Two more big milestones for The Niche blog Read More »