What if we could grow new teeth to replace lost ones or fix others that have big cavities via tooth stem cells? While humans and some other animals like dogs have only two sets of teeth — so-called baby and adult teeth — in their lives, other animals aren’t so limited. For instance, alligators and sharks effectively can have a limitless ability to replace lost teeth with new ones. Over millions of years, billions of sharks have been losing teeth and regrowing new ones such …Read More
adult stem cells
In a stunner, Harvard and Brigham & Women’s Hospital reportedly have jointly called for the retraction of 31 papers on heart stem cell research authored by embattled heart stem cell researcher Piero Anversa. The scoop on this by STAT/Retraction Watch written by Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus gives further details on this mess and past travails of Anversa. He was the prime proponent of the idea of endogenous heart stem cells in adults, but things have gone south since his prime time as a …Read More
Sometimes we could all use a jolt of good news and cool science. Those of us in the stem cell field probably get tired at times of all the bad-ish, even if important news (like this from Michael Hiltzik of the LA Times) out there surrounding certain unproven stem cell offerings and also clinics that engage in all kinds of stuff ranging from off-beat shenanigans to really dark stuff. Today’s post is focused mostly on the good news and exciting science. You can see …Read More
Congratulations to Professor Michele De Luca, the winner of The Niche’s Stem Cell Person of the Year Award for 2017! He won the Award from a strong panel of 10 finalists. The award includes a $2,000 USD prize. I chose him because of his exceptional track record in stem cell and regenerative medicine science combined with a long record of advocating for responsible translational science. Dr. De Luca also led an international team that recently published a groundbreaking paper on epidermal regeneration in a …Read More
In December of each year I make a list of stem cell predictions for the coming year, and I made 20 such predictions for 2017 so I’m wondering how I’m doing so far on these now that it’s June. Below is my work-in-progress scorecard for these so far. Positive news from Asterias on trial for stem cell-based therapy for spinal cord injury. Status: Correct, trial looking encouraging. Upbeat news from ViaCyte on stem cell-based therapy trial for diabetes. Status: Correct, raising $10M and things looking promising. More positive news …Read More
Over the years, the Vatican has expressed interest and even invested money in the adult stem cell field. Not surprisingly, they’ve also been critical of embryonic stem cell research. Interestingly their own stem cell meetings have at times stimulated heated debate for various reasons and one was even cancelled with at least part of the reason related to embryonic stem cell research.