It has been a week to think about mentors and I posted somewhat autobiographically on how to find and be a good mentor a few days ago. Also along these lines, I asked one of the great mentors of all time, Irv Weissman, about his early career and who were the mentors that made the […]
I have in the past posted advice to new faculty and also top 10 advice list for the academic job hunt, but today I wanted to specifically talk about mentoring. Also, stay tuned for a special post later this week with an autobiographical section from Irv Weissman on his early career and who his key
How to find and be a good mentor? Read More »
The Susan G. Komen Foundation is an awesome organization. It has raised nearly $2 billion dollars in less than 2 decades for breast cancer research. It also has a variety of educational programs. This is an organization that has likely saved hundreds of women’s lives and I think will save thousands of lives through its
Trying to understand the Catholic ban on the Komen Charity Read More »
A year ago I did a post on scientific peer review and the dreaded Dr. No, but have things gotten any better? No. From everyone I have talked to, the answer would seem to be quite the contrary–things continue to move in the wrong direction. If you are not a scientist, but care about stem cell
I Still Hate Your Paper: Dr. No and the Editors that are ruining Peer Review Read More »
Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) announced today that it has treated two patients in its clinical trials: one for Stargardt’s Macular Dystrophy (see official trial page for a lot more info) and one for Dry Age-Related Macular Degeneration (see official trial page here for a lot more info). The patients underwent the treatment at UCLA and each
The latest scoop on ACT and Geron Read More »
There has been a largely media-fed hullabaloo about the salary for the new Chair of CIRM, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, $400,000. Now don’t get me wrong, that sounds like a lot of money to me personally, but we need to put it in perspective and when we do, the salary is reasonable and
California pays its sports coaches alone more than the entire payroll of CIRM Read More »
Podcast for Week of July 5 Topics –Stem Cell Tourism in the U.S. –CIRM –Article in the Hill by stem cell opponent –Stem cell hype on aging Podcast for Week of July 11 Topics: –two papers on stem cell-based tissue engineering and one on stem cell treatments for heart disease, –the Republican candidates for
Recently I posted a poll to my readers asking them how they felt about the FDA and stem cells. The results (See above) are in and our readers largely agree with each other. Their take home message to the FDA? Move faster, please! A surprising 83% of respondents want the FDA to move faster, and
Take home message from our FDA poll: please move faster! Read More »
In the last week, a number of newspapers in California have run articles or editorials about CIRM, some negative. I think in part this attention was stimulated by the Election of a new Chair at CIRM. The new Chair for CIRM is Dr. Jonathan Thomas, who I am confident will do an outstanding job. On
Why I am super optimistic about CIRM’s future Read More »
As I am writing this, a revolution in medicine and science is building up steam around the world called Genomics. Let me clue you in so you do not miss the boat on this dramatic change coming in our lives. Genomics means the study of genomes. A genome is the complete sequence of an organism’s DNA,
The Genomics Revolution: move over blood type, here comes your genotype Read More »