Good news for vampires and patients alike: Scientists in Edinburgh have generated red blood cells directly from bone marrow stem cells in the lab. This alternate source of cells could help the 4.5 million people in the U.S. who need a transfusion each year (from America's Blood Centers, which has many interesting facts about how … Continue reading Vampires get a taste of lab-grown blood

Erin Rhoades is a professional city planner and lifelong Berkeley resident. Ms. Rhoades' planning interests are focused on infill development and sustainability. Erin is a founding Board member of Livable Berkeley and the Board Chair.The Li Ka Shing Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences/University of California, Berkeley The Li Ka Shing Center for Biomedical and Health … Continue reading State-of-the-Art Science and Architecture combine for a World-Class Downtown

Jonathan Moreno is senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.In a cleverly written but factually empty blog post, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council tries to justify his organization's opposition to human embryonic stem cell research. This time he avers … Continue reading Peyton Manning and how a political football goes flat

Geoff Lomax is CIRM's Senior Officer to the Standards Working Group  Last week we posted on the initial views of scientists and policy analysts on the 10/18 European Court of Justice decision regarding the patentability of hESC products. The initial views were quite pessimistic with regard to hESC-based therapy development, although James Lawford-Davies did offer a … Continue reading The European embryonic stem cell patent ban: The Other Side of the Coin?

This weekend CIRM hosted an educational event in Bakersfield to update people on the progress being made by CIRM grantees. The event featured a keynote address by board chair Jonathan Thomas plus talks by grantees working on age-related diseases including blindness. Although CIRM holds board meetings throughout California, this is the first time people in … Continue reading Bakersfield residents learn about stem cell progress in aging, macular degeneration

The Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco are set to expand their stem cell research program with a $5 million gift from the Roddenberry Foundation.The independent Institute, which is associated with the University of California, San Francisco, has received $24 million in funding from CIRM (you can see a complete list of those awards here). The … Continue reading CIRM grantees at Gladstone Institute receive $5 million to expand stem cell program

Geoff Lomax is CIRM's Senior Officer to the Standards Working Group The European Court of Justice issued a ruling today that therapeutic products created from human embryonic stem cells are not patentable. A press release cites the court's decision:Court holds that an invention is excluded from patentability where the implementation of the process requires either … Continue reading Experts View European Court Ruling as a Setback for Stem Cell Therapies

CIRM took our high school curriculum on the road last week to the annual meeting of the National Association of Biology Teachers in Anaheim at a hotel just down the block from Disneyland. About 800 biology educators attended the meeting. Although I did not venture into the amusement park, I suspect the exhibit hall at … Continue reading CIRM high school curriculum a hit in the land of Disney

A group led by the Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge, working with the Sangamo Biosciences, has shown that it's possible to fix mutations in reprogrammed cells. This work, which was published in Nature, takes two previous advances and combines them into one proof-of-concept.Since 2007 stem cell scientists have been able to reprogram adult … Continue reading Researchers fix mutation in reprogrammed stem cell, create functional liver