Ever heard of woolly mice? I hadn’t either until recently. The story begins with de-extinction research. De-extinction can be both cool and arguably a colossal waste of research dollars. The specific effort to de-extinct woolly mammoths fits that dual classification. Woolly mice on the road back to mammoths? Let’s dig into this with some news: […]
I recently looked at the organizational chart at the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research or CBER. Why? I have been anticipating some possible big changes there with the new administration. After all, with HHS Secretary RFK Jr. having previously claimed that the FDA was suppressing various unproven things including at least two kinds
Weekly reads: CBER changes, Parkinson’s, 2-dad mice, NIH woes continue Read More »
In all the time I’ve been a scientist I never worried about American science until the last month. Even during the first Trump administration, while there were challenges, I felt like things would generally be okay. Research continued. One of my daughters and I went to the Science March in 2017 in Sacramento. We bumped
Weekly reads: blowtorch to American science, stem cells for teeth & stroke Read More »
It’s been an exhausting week for anyone who cares about the NIH and biomedical research, but in today’s weekly reads I want to talk about another kind of fatigue: stem cell exhaustion. Please subscribe to The Niche Before we get into that, I’d like to ask a favor: please subscribe to this site, The Niche.
Weekly reads: stem cell exhaustion, Lineage Cell trial, Iowa AG wins vs. clinics Read More »
When I think of so-called aging supplements, visions of snake oil dance in my head. Possible benefits of supplements more generally have mostly not held up to long-term research. Supplements have risks too and so do purported longevity supplements. These pills claiming to fight aging are more in the realm of stem cell supplements that
Weekly reads: Altos Labs aging supplements pub, destructive NIH cuts, FDA warning, HSCs Read More »
Biologist and ancient DNA expert Beth Shapiro is becoming more well known for doing de-extinction research. Yet Shapiro used to be a de-extinction skeptic. Ten years ago she wrote “How to Clone a Mammoth.” In the book she mentioned serious challenges related to de-extinction. Now she is the CSO for a firm trying to make
Weekly reads: Beth Shapiro & de-extinction, mice with two dads, stem cell patches Read More »
RFK isn’t even confirmed as HHS Secretary and things are going south already with an NIH freeze. What do I mean? NIH freeze could do lasting damage to biomedical research The Trump Administration has frozen many NIH processes including meetings such as study sections that evaluate grant proposals. No study sections means almost no new
How will things change at the FDA under the second Trump Administration? It’s a key question for our field but not easy to answer. Most likely there will be more instability at the agency. Some leaders, like of CDER, have already left. in my overall regenerative medicine predictions for 2025, I’ve included more predictions about
Weekly reads: FDA modernization, TFs on the brain, mortality timer, pluripotent trials Read More »
If you tell a scientist that they should be growing a spine, they might take you literally. For instance, if you say this because you want a scientist to show some courage and speak out about something difficult, instead they might try to make an actual human spine in a lab. We’ll start there this
Weekly reads: grow a spine, China clears MSCs, Denise Richards, stem cell soups Read More »
How close are we to having new stem cell therapies that work? The field is nearly there on several fronts, but we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. Last week I noted the “soon” in a Nature News headline “Stem cells head to the clinic: treatments for cancer, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease could soon be here.”
Weekly reads: stem cell therapies that work, exosomes, H3.3 K27M, Joe Rogan Read More »