Stanford scientists have overcome one significant hurdle in developing a therapy for muscle-wasting diseases like muscular dystrophy. Until now, the muscle stem cells that stand at the ready to repair muscle damage couldn’t be grown outside the safe confines of a muscle. Once uprooted from their home and transferred to a laboratory dish, they matured … Continue reading Muscle stem cells a step closer to treating muscular dystrophy

Researchers at the University of Southern California disrupted a gene in human blood-forming stem cells and made the cells resistant to infection by HIV. Equally important, the disruption of the gene HIV uses to invade cells did not alter the cells’ stemness; they were able to replicate as stem cells and differentiate into various blood … Continue reading Blood Stem Cells Made Resistant to HIV

By Paul KnoepflerThe two most serious obstacles to regenerative medicine therapies are potential immune rejection of transplanted cells and the possibility that such cells could form a type of tumor called teratoma. CIRM grant recipient and professor of Biology at UC San Diego, Yang Xu, is tackling both of these hurdles. He and his colleagues … Continue reading Reducing teratoma risk from transplanted stem cells

CIRM grantee and UC Davis stem cell scientist Paul Knoepfler has an important new entry on his blog: Five simple ways to protect your stem cells. In it he says:If one can prevent a problem for occurring in the first place, it is far better than trying to treat it after the fact. So true. … Continue reading Stem cells and preventive medicine

By Don C. ReedThe world is delighted that patients with injured eyes in Italy regained their sight, thanks to the use of stem cells transplanted from their own good eyes. This is a wonderful victory for Dr. Grazziella Pellegrini, the University of Modena, and everyone involved. They are doubly to be congratulated because they are … Continue reading Full Vision Cure? Full Stem Cell Research Required

The issue of stem cell tourism has gotten a lot of attention in the past few weeks. Two weeks ago, the Costa Rica health ministry closed down a clinic offering unproven stem cell therapies (here is our blog entry on this event, and a video about stem cell tourism). Last week, CIRM and ISSCR co-hosted … Continue reading Stem Cell Tourism in the news

Last week, while stem cell researchers from around the world congregated in San Francisco for their annual meeting, stem cell pioneer Shinya Yamanaka won the Kyoto Prize for Advanced Technology. This award in generally considered to be a precursor to a Nobel Prize.A press release from UCSF said:Yamanaka received the prize for his discovery of … Continue reading Shinya Yamanaka receives Kyoto prize for reprogramming skin cells

Some happy news from this week's meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research held in San Francisco (co-sponsored by CIRM): CIRM grantee Joanna Wysocka won the organization's Outstanding Young Investigator Award, given out at a session on Thursday morning. Wysocka, who is assistant professor of developmental biology at Stanford University School of Medicine, … Continue reading CIRM grantee Joanna Wysocka wins Outstanding Young Investigator Award

CIRM grantee Paul Knoepfler at UC Davis just published an interesting paper. He also publishes a blog, so we'll let him describe this findings in his own words:We just published a paper supported by CIRM funding showing that knocking out c- and N-myc in mESC leads to a wave of differentiation-associated gene expression, decreased cell … Continue reading Cancer genes also involved in embryogenesis, stem cell maintenance