It’s not often you hear gasps of amazement from an audience, particularly not when that audience is a highly educated, very influential, not-easily-impressed group of people. But a panel presentation at the Milken Global Conference yesterday did just that, by describing the game-changing potential of stem cell therapies.The Milken Global Conference is an extraordinary event … Continue reading Making a Think Tank think again; opening eyes to stem cell research

Image: Derrick Rossi [credit: Boston Children's Hospital] It’s one of regenerative medicine’s most sought-after goals, but also one of the most difficult to reach: figuring out how to produce blood-forming hematopoietic stem cells, or HSCs. But now, researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute at Boston Children’s Hospital have identified a stem cell-based technique that … Continue reading Scientists Reprogram Mature Blood Cells to Generate Elusive Blood Stem Cells

Wow. What a weekend. We don’t have the official numbers yet, but it sure felt like the organizers met their projections of 200,000 plus attendees at the USA Science and Engineering Festival. Exhibitors offering the kids the chance to see or participate in hands-on science filled two entire floors of the Washington convention center. And … Continue reading Kids and their parents turn out on mass in nation’s capital to learn about science and engineering

Most of us tend to think of art and science as being two very different subjects. They certainly were in my high school where I frequently got in trouble for doodling when I should have been paying attention to the chemistry teacher. But increasingly today we are seeing efforts to show that the two are … Continue reading The art of science, the science of art

Above: Paul Knoepfler speaks on Studio Sacramento. What secrets do stem cells hold? And how are scientists using them to better understand and treat deadly diseases such as ALS, Alzheimer’s and AIDS? Last week UC Davis resident stem cell expert Paul Knoepfler sat down with Scott Syphax of Studio Sacramento to talk about the promise … Continue reading Stem Cell Scientist Paul Knoepfler Interviewed for Studio Sacramento

It’s every cancer patient’s fear: that the drugs being used to shrink their deadly tumor stop working. Faced with this stark reality, researchers have become trapped in a molecular ‘arms race,’ trying to develop more effective therapies to attack the cancer. A better solution would be to prevent the drug resistance at the outset, but … Continue reading Tumor Cells Become Drug Resistant by Reverting to a Stem Cell-Like State, New Study Finds

Young people making Play Doh stem cells at last fall's Bay Area Science FestivalWe spend a great deal of time and effort at CIRM creating ways for the general public to stay informed about stem cell science. In particular I have an extra mandate to make sure we don’t forget about the young ones. That … Continue reading Children and parents to get a hands-on experience in stem cell science at the U.S. Science and Engineering Festival this weekend

A unique, shape-shifting property—previously only identified in man-made materials—has been discovered to also exist in stem cells. In a study published on Sunday in the journal Nature Materials, scientists at the University of Cambridge, UK, describe a strange event that occurred when observing the physical changes that occur as stem cells grow and mature into … Continue reading Shape-Shifting Stem Cells Could Inform New Wave of Absorbent Technologies

There are many different types of cells in the human body, but they all have something in common: housed within each is the complete set of genetic instructions, our genome, that give us life. It turns out that what makes cells different—what guides a blood cell to become a blood cell—depends on which parts of … Continue reading Stanford Researchers Develop New Technique that can Map a Cell’s Genetic ‘Blueprint’