One of the biggest stem cell news stories of 2016 has been the REGROW Act, a bill intended to accelerate investigational stem cell and regenerative medicine therapies to patients by lessening FDA oversight, but in the last couple months REGROW has mostly disappeared from the news. Will REGROW do a reappearing act like some kind […]
REGROW Act to do reappearing act? Read More »
Editor’s note: this is a guest post from Dr. Semenow on her new educational DNA game that also invokes stem cells. She has the remarkable distinction of having been the first woman who was a science Ph.D. student at Caltech. Stay tuned for my coming interview with her on her experiences in science. Her Kickstarter campaign
DNA Ahead Game & More Struts Its Stuff Read More »
In the past year there has been a great deal of attention given to the potential use of CRISPR-Cas9 for gene editing in human embryos. An important recent development, described in a new NPR article by Rob Stein, is the use of CRISPR-Cas9 in healthy human embryos for developmental biology research by assistant professor Fredrik
Interview with Fredrik Lanner who is CRISPR’ing healthy human embryos Read More »
Cynata Therapeutics Limited has received approval from UK regulators to start a first-of-its-kind allogeneic IPSC-based trial of MSCs for graft versus host disease (GVHD). Cynata also had some big news a couple weeks back with a deal with Fujifilm. The company is aiming to recruit 16 patients to test whether the MSCs (a type of adult
Cynata approval for 1st ever allo trial of IPSC-derived MSCs for GVHD Read More »
The FDA issued a warning letter not long ago to Amniotic Therapies, LLC, a supplier of amniotic products including to one or more stem cell clinics, but now a federal judge in Texas has reportedly mostly blocked the FDA action in terms of the shutdown. The law firm representing Amniotic also issued a PR about the
Federal judge blocks FDA action on Texas amniotic supplier Read More »
A stem cell/regenerative clinic firm called the Lung Institute is facing a filing of a proposed class action suit. Update: Note that this firm also goes by the name the Lung Health Institute and now as of 2019-2020 it does not appear to offer stem cells anymore, perhaps focusing on PRP. You might also find
Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Clinic Lung Institute Read More »
Last year I heard from several sources that there somewhere between 3-5 unpublished manuscripts reporting the use of CRISPR gene targeting in human embryos being shopped around at various journals in addition to the one that had been published. Since that time we’ve seen a grand total of one additional paper reporting on CRISPR of human
Where are all the new CRISPR human embryo papers? Read More »
After six and a half years blogging here, I’ve seen so much weird stuff. Not all of it was even “bloggable” due to its crazy, not-safe-for-work nature. For TGIF this week, here are 10 of the weirdest posts from this blog over the years. Where’s the Beef? Reality Check on Stem Cell Test Tube Burger
Some weird posts: testicle soup, Kim Kardashian, zombies Read More »
When potentially game changing new technologies are reported such as NgAgo gene editing, both scientists and the public get excited, but especially if such new reports stem from a single paper it is wise to take a cautious approach for a while. The key question is whether the new findings will turn out to be
Nature Biotechnology looking at NgAgo paper amidst reproducibility concerns Read More »
The REGROW Act is a bill that seeks to lessen the regulatory burden to accelerate getting stem cells to patients more quickly, but it over-reaches so much that it would almost certainly do harm to patients and maybe to the stem cell field as a whole. The REGROW Act, which is sponsored by Senator Mark
REGROW Act 2.0 still no-go with big risks to patients & field Read More »