Out of the blue this past week we lost Kevin McCormack of CIRM to a heart attack. When I first heard, my reaction was that can’t be, but it is. About Kevin McCormack If you aren’t familiar with him, Kevin was officially Director of Patient Advocacy at our state’s Stem Cell Agency. However, he was […]
Weekly reads: Kevin McCormack passes, HSCs & RXR, Ethics Read More »
We’ll start with a story related to possible research misconduct, Stanford’s President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, and Science Magazine. In some ways the news on Science itself could be the bigger long-term story. Marc Tessier-Lavigne pub investigation, Science oops moment Here’s some of the coverage: Stanford investigates potential misconduct in president’s research, Science. Multiple publications of Marc Tessier-Lavigne
Weekly reads: Marc Tessier-Lavigne probe, Neuralink on the brain, Ras unchained Read More »
Hematopoietic stem cells have many clinical applications and a company called Gamida Cell has an interesting product in this area called Omidubicel that may have several applications. I’m going to start the weekly reads with news there. Gamida Cell and the FDA A recent piece discussed how Omidubicel is progressing with the FDA. FDA extends
Weekly reads: Gamida Cell, Siddhartha Mukherjee, CRISPR in viruses Read More »
I get a lot of questions about stem cells for ALS and more recently people have been specifically interested in NurOwn from BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics. Recently, the FDA denied BrainStorm’s request for a BLA for NurOwn. The company felt its Phase III trial was encouraging. It sounds like they will move forward with a follow-up
Weekly reads: NurOwn, key gene screen, MS, Croce mess Read More »
As both a scientist who works on stem cells, cancer, and CRISPR, and a research advocate I’ve been fortunate to meet many patient advocates over the years. Some have been participants in clinical trials themselves. Benefits & risks of clinical trial participation It is very sobering to find out that a clinical trial participant has
Weekly reads: death in CRISPR trial, sickle cell, nose picking & dementia, epilepsy Read More »
If you’ve never heard of the KRAS G12C mutation, it’s a particularly frightening mutation present in numerous cancers. Like the MYC oncogene, many people view mutations in RAS as undruggable, but new efforts show some glimmers of hope. The drug Sotorasib has been approved by the FDA to target the KRAS G12C mutation. Here’s a
Weekly reads: KRAS G12C, eLife journal controversy, bird iPSCs Read More »
The National Academy of Medicine elected a cohort of new members including three stem cell researchers. It’s great to see our field and these great scientists get recognition. The new NAM stem cell researchers include Sally Temple, Connie Eaves, and Tippie MacKenzie. Here’s a little bit about each of them. Dr. Temple is a stem cell biologist
Weekly reads: NAM dubs 3 stem cell researchers, kick the 2 buckets, stem cell homing Read More »
When you are a stem cell biologist and especially if you do a blog, you sometimes run across very strange things like a chimera cat. In this case, I stumbled on the whole topic of chimeric cats because I was searching for info on chimeric rats on Google. Of course, I was. It’s kind of
Weekly reads: chimera cat vs. chimeric rat, cheap sequencing, more Read More »
It’s always great to read about stem cell clinical trials that are looking encouraging. Stem cell clinical trials Proving a new therapy is safe and effective is so challenging. Remarkably, there are more than 9,300 stem cell clinical trials listed for a “stem cell” search on Clinicaltrials.gov. Of course, not all of these are actual
When people find out that I’m a stem cell researcher, a common question is whether there’s something they can take that is a stem cell activator. I’ve written before about whether there are stem cell boosts that one can do to try to be healthier. Sleep, stem cell activator and clonality Mostly when I bring
Weekly reads: stem cell activator, sleep & stem cells, clonal hematopoiesis Read More »