Young people making Play Doh stem cells at last fall’s Bay Area Science Festival

We 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 is why I developed a stem cell high school curriculum and get out to college campuses a few times a year; it is just fun to talk to young people.

But science festivals ratchet that up about a dozen notches. For the past two years we have participated in the Bay Area Science Festival, which attracts more than 20,000 children and their parents to the San Francisco Giants baseball park. Most of the kids range from age 5 to age 15 and their excitement in getting the chance to participate in hands-on science is palpable. It is also important to note that while the kids are playing with the activity, the parents seem genuinely pleased to get a chance to talk about what we are accomplishing in stem cell science.

Now, CIRM has teamed up with the International Society for Stem Cell Research and the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine to offer two hands-on activities at the third annual USA Science and Engineering Festival
For younger kids we will be offering them the chance to make stem cells out of Play Doh. And for older ones, they can participate in a tissue engineering exercise in which they can inject alginate, a gel-like substance made from seaweed, into molds of either an ear or a meniscus, the cartilage in the knee that many weekend warriors would love to have refreshed. The alginate sets in two minutes, so the kids can walk away with a baggie holding their body part, which in the lab would become a scaffold for seeding stem cells to grow the real thing.

If you have friends or family in the D.C. area, tell them to come to booth #706 at the Washington Convention Center Saturday or Sunday. It being the nation’s capital, I will be sorely disappointed if I don’t see at least one congressman or woman being a good parent and taking their children to get excited by science. Although, since the festival expects to attract over 200,000 people, the legislators could get lost in the crowd.

Don Gibbons