Like many non-scientists I used to think that sonic hedgehog was a video game. Now I know better thanks to a fascinating study by researchers at Stanford and UC San Francisco. The researchers were trying to understand how developing cells of the embryo communicate with each other. So they put a fluorescent chemical tag onto … Continue reading Reach Out and Touch Someone: How cells communicate with each other

The stem cell news is a-buzz today with the story of a young girl who received a synthetic windpipe seeded with her own stem cells. She was born without a functioning windpipe and has lived her 2 1/2 years in intensive care.She's not the first to receive such a transplant, but she is the youngest … Continue reading A stem cell-seeded windpipe for a young girl: more to come from tissue engineering

The local high school sent its full cheerleading squad to cheer on the Huntington’s disease advocates at the beginning of the walk and, here, to congratulate them as they finished the circuit. Patients with Huntington’s Disease, their families and friends, and families and friends of patients who had already lost the battle with the deadly … Continue reading Huntington’s community rallies in Irvine, celebrates a scientific anniversary

When the University of California, Irvine put the construction of its stem cell building out to bid the recession had hit. The bids were low enough they had funds to add an extra floor. This added a bonus for the taxpayers of California who had funded $27 million toward the building through CIRM. The stem … Continue reading Art event merges serious science, passion and whimsy at UC Irvine @uci

(Image from Smithsonian.com)I can almost hear the TV host shouting, “Is that your final answer?”Okay, maybe it’s no high-stakes game show but a new Smithsonian magazine/Pew Research Center survey that quizzes Americans on their science literacy and their thoughts about education in the U.S. awards us with some insights about our perceptions of the nation’s … Continue reading Are you a science whiz? This quiz suggests Americans are better than they think

This image shows proteins on the HIV virus binding receptors on the T cell (source: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Health) Doctors in Minnesota have performed a blood-forming stem cell transplant on a 12 year-old boy with both leukemia and HIV infection that could treat both the cancer and the infection … Continue reading Minnesota boy receives transplant that could treat both leukemia and HIV infection

Today Harvard's stem cell scientists announced finding a hormone that could lead to a therapy for type 2 diabetes (we blogged about that here). That's big news for the 26 million people in the U.S. with the disease.The question I've heard is how this relates to the stem cell agency's investment in a type 1 … Continue reading Diabetes demystified: the role of stem cells in finding treatments

A six-day scientific mystery surrounding Harvard's stem cell institute was initially solved (or guessed at) yesterday by CIRM grantee and blogger at UC Davis Paul Knoepfler (here is his blog entry).This morning at 12pm Harvard time his prediction was proved right -- researchers at the institute had published a paper revealing a hormone that prods … Continue reading Harvard scientists discover hormone that could lead to type 2 diabetes therapy

CIRM's Senior Officer to the Standards Working Group, Geoff Lomax, is blogging this week from Montreal where his attending the Canadian Stem Cell Network's meeting "Understanding Stem Cell Controversies". The afternoon session on Day 2 at the Understanding Stem Cell Controversies workshop began picking apart the complex relationship between research and the public, specifically where … Continue reading Ask, Ask, Ask: The views of patients and the public should inform stem cell treatments and research

This image titled “Passion” shows young brain cells in orange and is part of an art show at UC Irvine tomorrowAt CIRM we have long taken advantage of the fact that researchers track stem cells by labeling them with various colors of florescent markers. When they snap pictures of the tiny cells the result is … Continue reading Photogenic stem cells on display at UC Irvine event @UCI