January 26, 2018
(PhysOrg) – In a milestone achievement for better understanding the development and function of the human placenta, scientists have derived and grown trophoblast stem cells for the first time. The project was led by Takahiro Arima, a professor of informative … Read More
January 26, 2018
(NPR) – Today, 14 years and billions of dollars later, that California agency is running out of money, and backers of stem cell research plan to ask voters in the state to pony up for round two. The projected ask … Read More
January 24, 2018
(Retraction Watch) – An investigation by Kyoto University in Japan has found a researcher guilty of falsifying all but one of the figures in a 2017 stem cell paper. Yesterday, Kyoto University announced that the paper’s first author, Kohei Yamamizu, had … Read More
January 17, 2018
(Vancouver Sun) – About 10 British Columbians with Type 1 diabetes will be surgically implanted with packets containing lab-grown cells that are coaxed into behaving like true insulin-producing pancreatic cells in hopes of reversing their disease. The first patient to … Read More
January 15, 2018
(NBC News) – A recent scientific development could lead to new infertility treatments and bring same-sex couples one step closer to conceiving a child with both their DNA. Dr. Azim Surani, a prominent scientist at the University of Cambridge, said … Read More
January 10, 2018
Developing World Bioethics (vol. 17, no. 3, 2017) is available online by subscription only. Articles include: “From Ethical Exceptionalism to Ethical Exceptions: The Rule and Exception Model and the Changing Meaning of Ethics In German Bioregulation” by Kathrin Braun “The Italian … Read More
January 9, 2018
(Wired) – Bursac’s team used pluripotent stem cells derived from human skin cells, which they genetically programmed to express large quantities of a protein called Pax-7. It can reprogram a single stem cell into what’s known as a myogenic progenitor … Read More
January 9, 2018
Journal of Medical Ethics (vol. 43, no. 11, 2017) is available online by subscription only. Articles include: “What Sort of Death Matters?” by Rebecca Roache “The Deadly Business of an Unregulated Global Stem Cell Industry” by Tamra Lysaght et al. “Do … Read More
January 5, 2018
(U.S. News & World Report) – Stem cell transplants could offer new hope for people with a severe form of scleroderma — a debilitating and deadly condition that affects the immune system, a new study suggests. “Scleroderma hardens the skin … Read More
January 5, 2018
(The Conversation) – After cigarettes, alcohol is perhaps the most common carcinogen that humans voluntarily expose themselves to. How this simple substance promotes cancer, though, has not been clear. But our latest study, using genetically modified mice, sheds some light … Read More
January 4, 2018
(Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News) – Scientists in the U.S. have grown mouse skin tissue complete with hair follicles (HFs) directly from mouse pluripotent stem cells (mPSCs). The hairy skin more closely resembles natural mouse skin than existing lab-grown tissue … Read More
January 3, 2018
(The Guardian) – Scientists have come a step closer to mimicking the natural process by which the body creates sperm from stem cells in work that could ultimately provide new treatments for infertility. Speaking at the Progress Educational Trust annual … Read More
January 2, 2018
(STAT News) – We are witnessing great promise in medicine today. The vocabulary dazzles: “precision medicine,” “stem cells,” “moon shot,” and other terms that hint at exciting new possibilities. But it is also a time of great vulnerability for patients. … Read More
December 22, 2017
(Quartz) – In August 2017, researchers at Ohio State College of Engineering announced an exciting new technology. “Tissue nanotransfection” (TNT for short) which enables injured or aging tissue to be repaired or restored, including blood vessels, nerve cells and entire … Read More
December 21, 2017
(PhysOrg) – A new study in Nature Genetics identifies a specific population of pluripotent embryonic stem cells that can reprogram to totipotent-like cells in culture. Moreover, the scientists of Helmholtz Zentrum München and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) have identified bottlenecks and … Read More
December 19, 2017
(Reuters) – The early hope that stem cell therapy would make the paralyzed walk, the blind see and cure diabetes have given way to a long list of failures, highlighted by early stem cell champion Geron Corp abandoning the field … Read More
December 13, 2017
(MIT Technology Review) – During menopause a woman’s ovaries stop working—leading to hot flashes, sleep problems, weight gain, and worse, bone deterioration. Now scientists are exploring whether transplanting lab-made ovaries might stop those symptoms. In one of the first efforts … Read More
December 13, 2017
(Nature) – During embryonic development, cells differentiate into particular lineages according to information about their position in the embryo. This adoption of a particular cellular identity often triggers changes in the organization of the embryo, which, in turn, results in … Read More
December 13, 2017
(Bloomberg) – A half-century ago, Canadian scientists discovered transplantable stem cells, which can grow into any kind of human tissue. Now, a government-backed research facility in Toronto wants to create a partially automated factory that would mass-produce these human building … Read More
December 13, 2017
(Washington Post) – One practical solution is to bring the philosophy and ethics toolbox to the floor of the lab itself, to the point where the lines begin to be drawn in the first place. I’m a philosopher and ethicist … Read More
December 13, 2017
(Medical Xpress) – Epidemiological studies show that in utero fetal infection with the Zika virus (ZIKV) may lead to microcephaly, an irreversible congenital malformation of the brain characterized by an incomplete development of the cerebral cortex. However, the mechanism of … Read More
December 12, 2017
(Wired) – In the end, Crispr’s leading luminaries formed three companies—Caribou Biosciences, Editas Medicine, and Crispr Therapeutics—to take what they had done in their labs and use it to cure human disease. For nearly five years the “big three’ Crispr … Read More
December 5, 2017
(The Guardian) – The ultimate goal remains to make synthetic organs from scratch using a synthetic scaffold, as Macchiarini tried and failed to do with tracheas. Pig scaffolds do not pose a risk, but manufacturing them does not readily scale … Read More
December 1, 2017
(STAT News) – In the barely three years since biologists discovered how to create these “brain organoids,” the lentil-sized structures have taken neuroscience by storm. Starting with a recipe developed by scientists in Austria, researchers from Japan and China to … Read More
December 1, 2017
(Nature) – Shahbazi et al. used their ex utero culture systems to study the coordination between the exit from pluripotency and the formation of the amniotic cavity. First, the authors noticed that the downregulation of pluripotency genes coincided with the appearance of … Read More
