The past year was all over the place for the stem cell and regenerative medicine field. As you can see in my scoring of my 21 predictions for 2021, quite a few things were surprises in terms of what did and didn’t happen. Here’s an overview of the top stories of the year in our […]
Top stem cell stories of 2021: COVID, diabetes, human embryos, clinics in court Read More »
We’ll begin this week’s recommended reads with some news on two wonderful stem cell scientists. While there are thousands of stem cell scientists, some stand out for their especially creative work. News on stem cell scientists Nobel laureate Yamanaka to retire as director of iPS cell center, Asahi Shimbun. Dr. Yamanaka will spend more time
Recommended reads: stem cell scientists, eggs from blood, Cryo-Cell Read More »
The world of stem cell research and regenerative medicine is unpredictable but it’s fun to be a part of it and try to do predictions. Each year in late December or early January I make prognostications for the coming year for stem cell research and regenerative medicine. I made 21 such predictions for the current
Grading my 21 stem cell & regenerative medicine predictions for 2021 Read More »
A quick review of the publicly-traded stem cell stocks I’ve been following in 2021 finds mostly discouraging news, but a few firms relatively outperformed the other publically-traded biotechs. One had some great news today. In this post, I’m doing a brief overview of how things went this year in the regenerative medicine space. I’m going
2021 scorecard for stem cell stocks: REGN, VCEL, CCEL, LCTX did best Read More »
A type of human cells used in research called HEK cells or 293s has been much in the news lately. This is mainly related to COVID-19 vaccine research. There seem to be many misunderstandings about 293 cells. For that reason, I thought I’d do this post to clear things up. I’ve been working with these
Explainer on 293 or HEK cells and their use in COVID vaccine research Read More »
Joe Rogan first popped up more squarely on my radar screen years ago because of a concerning video that’s out there of him talking with Mel Gibson about stem cells. At the time it was one of the most-watched videos on YouTube on stem cells. I took apart that stem cell video and its claims including
About that Joe Rogan stem cell treatment & clinic promotion Read More »
I’d say the paper of the week is on how PRC2 mediated H3K27me3 can in some sense replace elements of DNA methylation to repress. Very cool. Here it is: Sex-specific chromatin remodelling safeguards transcription in germ cells, Nature. Weird stuff In a merger of opposites, City of Hope to buy Cancer Treatment Centers of America
Weekly reads: PRC2, 2 weird bits of news, pubs, COVID stem cell hype Read More »
A clever idea to try to use AI to make cellular machines has produced something being called xenobots. However, the research is getting overblown in some ways. What does this have to do with Zambonis? Read on. What are xenobots? A xenobot is supposed to be a cellular robot made from frog stem cells. The robot part
Xenobots, Zambonis, and cellular hype Read More »
Part of being a grad student is dealing with technologies related to your projects and their limitations. Sometimes I feel old when I remember the way we used to have to do things in the lab. As a grad student, I manually poured, ran, and read giant sequencing gels. Back then, gene synthesis of a
Weekly reads: grad student life, cell barcoding, diabetes trial, more Read More »
I’ve been concerned that the journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine has been publishing some iffy papers from unproven stem cell clinics recently including from a Panama stem cell clinic called the Stem Cell Institute. Back in 2019, I took the unusual step of raising the question of whether a Stem Cells Translational Medicine paper from Neil Riordan,
Questions remain after Stem Cells Translational Medicine retracts clinic pub Read More »