By Jeanne Loring A stem cell anniversary: 18 years ago today that the US initiated funding of human embryonic stem cell research. August 9, 2001 was a big day for me. George W. Bush was the US president, and it was an understatement to say that I was not very fond of his policies; but that day he defined my career for the next 18 years. That day Bush gave an 11-minute speech (see Youtube of the video below) at his Texas ranch that …Read More
Parkinson’s stem cells
In Parkinson’s Disease patients develop neurological dysfunction as they lose a special kind of brain cell called dopaminergic (or dopamine) neurons. While a number of different approaches to this disease have been studied for decades, nothing has proven particularly successful in slowing its progression. As a result there has been a big need for novel thinking about how to tackle Parkinson’s Disease including via stem cells. One of the most exciting ideas has been to use human induced pluripotent stem cells (hIPSC) or human embryonic …Read More
One of the highlights of Day 1 of #ISSCR2018 for me so far was the talk by Lorenz Studer (Co-Founder of BlueRock) on the use of human embryonic stem cell (HESC)-derived dopamine neurons for Parkinson’s Disease. Note that for this post and if I have time any others on this meeting, they are probably going to be somewhat stream of consciousness notes from the talks and may have some outlined points rather than sentences. I have some questions or notes for myself that I …Read More
By Jeanne Loring There are ten million people in the world who have Parkinson’s disease. 125,000 of these are living in California. People with the disease often have to step away from their jobs because the main symptoms – tremor or freezing up of muscles – make it difficult to get through a whole day of work. Parkinson’s disease is caused by the loss of a specific neuron type in the brain. The dopamine neurons in the region of the brain called the substantia …Read More
ISSCR day one By Heather Main The day of plenary is the most enjoyable in my view. You don’t need to make the choice between sessions and the judgement on the viability of shifting sessions versus staying put and listening to the slightly less relevant. ISSCR 2015 plenary was, as to be expected, full of the big names, the affectionately known Rusty (Fred Gage), Jonas Frisen (one of the smartest MD PhDs I have ever met) and of course Shinya Yamanaka. In deciding which …Read More