The recent news of Vertex Pharma buying small stem cell biotech ViaCyte and Doug Melton moving to Vertex brought to mind an old stem cell biotech called Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) and its leader, stem cell biologist Dr. Robert Lanza. Years ago, big pharma firm Astellas bought ACT and Lanza moved to be a leader of regenerative …
The last few years in the stem cell and regenerative medicine arena have been complicated in many ways. Variables like surging stem cell clinics and COVID have made predictions harder. Even so, trying to make predictions is useful and it’s fun to go over past year’s predictions. You can see my scorecard on my 2021 …
16 predictions for stem cells & regenerative medicine in 2022 Read More »
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 »
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 »
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 »
If you celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday I hope you had a nice one and, right before it started a new article popped on the scene about the CRISPR babies. Before we discuss those three gene-edited people, who are now growing up into little kids, we hit a milestone on our YouTube Stem Cell Channel with …
Regenerative reads: 3 CRISPR babies, FDA warning, diabetes, pubs Read More »
Clade Therapeutics has been pursuing the idea of using gene-editing to make universally compatible cells. The potential here is big. What if you could make cloaked stem cells that could be used to produce cellular therapies that could be given to most patients without fear of immune rejection? Clade Therapeutics Boston Business Journal covers the …
Clade Therapeutics pursues universal cells for cancer therapy Read More »
It’s hard in the cell therapy field not to get excited even with bits of seemingly encouraging news but with N=1 reports we have to be very cautious and that’s the case with news from Vertex on their 1st stem cell therapy for diabetes trial participant. Vertex stem cell therapy for diabetes VX-880: N=1 This …
Vertex upbeat on 1st stem cell therapy for diabetes trial participant Read More »
The idea of stem cell therapy for diabetes is both exciting and in a way practical. By that I mean that there’s a good common sense foundation here. The idea of stem cell therapy for diabetes What do I mean? If medical researchers can replace lost beta cells in the pancreas using stem cell-produced beta …
Stem cell therapy for diabetes updates: expected IPO, CRISPR, new pubs, more Read More »
What are embryonic stem cells and how do we scientists obtain them? My lab here at UC Davis School of Medicine has been doing research on embryonic stem cells for more than 14 years. You’ve come to the right place for expert answers on these very intriguing cells. What’s in this article Where do embryonic …
What are embryonic stem cells & where do they come from? Read More »