Mesenchymal stem cells | Image by Libertas AcademicaGetting a potential therapy into a clinical trial is a tremendously complex process involving years, sometimes decades, of research, a lot of money and a huge amount of organization. Just how much work is involved is really not appreciated by most people.Dr. Vicki Wheelock, Terry Tempkin and their … Continue reading Patience is the key to reaching milestones: progress on the road to treating Huntington’s disease

Pluripotent stem cells. Tissue specific stem cells. Stem cells to treat disease. Stem cells to understand diseases. Personalized stem cells. Stem cell transplants. Bone marrow transplants.It's all a bit confusing, especially for people without a lot of biology background to help them out.TedEd recently posted this video by Craig Kohn that reviews the basics of … Continue reading TedEd video gives the basics of what stem cells are and how they can help with disease therapies

This morning’s Science Times section of the New York Times has a well written piece that tries to balance the hopes and aspirations of patients in need of therapy today and the questionable practices of many stem cell clinics, particularly those operating in other countries. The “stem cell tourism” associated with those clinics prompted a … Continue reading Stem cell “clinical trials” without published data are not clinical trials, the New York Times weighs in

HIV-infected cell: photo by AJC1Up until recently the notion of talking about finding a cure for HIV would have been ridiculed. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that an HIV diagnosis was considered a death sentence. Now we have powerful medications that can keep the virus in check, but even those just manage the … Continue reading Thinking the unthinkable, and saying it out loud: curing HIV

Molecular debris in the brain can cause inflammation. Above, a tangle of proteins common in the brains of Alzheimer's Disease patients. Photo via Wikimedia CommonsIt’s been quite a week for Alzheimer’s Disease. Earlier this week, we posted about research into how tau proteins build up in neurons. Now a group of Stanford researchers have demonstrated … Continue reading Defective garbage disposal cells in brain may explain Alzheimer’s toll

Here are some stem cell stories that caught our eye this past week. Some are groundbreaking science, others are of personal interest to us, and still others are just fun. The ethics of brain clumps in a dish. Late last week and through the weekend headlines around the world proclaimed that scientists had created little human … Continue reading Stem cell stories that caught our eye: ethics of little brains, heart repair, and tracking transplanted cells

Glioma image by Mikhail Kalinin, Wikimedia CommonsKaren Aboody faced the same problem as many scientists developing stem cell-based therapies for various diseases: How to know where the cells go after she transplants them into a patient.Aboody, who is an associate professor at City of Hope in Los Angeles, has a CIRM disease team award to … Continue reading Improved way of tracking stem cells after transplantation

Just as good insulation is critical for getting electricity through the cord that powers your computer (or tablet battery) so you can read this blog post, it’s also critical for neurons transmitting electrical signals down their long axons. That insulation is a fatty substance called myelin that forms a tube or sheath around the length … Continue reading Engineered stem cells become myelin super-producers

We write a lot about scientists testing various types of stem cells as a way of repairing hearts damaged by heart attack (here's one recent post). But the heart is more than just a bunch of muscle tissue, which is what stem cell scientists are usually trying to replace.With that in mind, CIRM grantees at … Continue reading Synthetic patch helps speed heart repair in mice

Geoff Lomax is CIRM's Senior Officer to the Standards Working Group CIRM is creating a stem cell bank designed to make high-quality patient stem cell lines available to scientists who need them (here's more about that banking initiative). Before embarking on this initiative, CIRM’s Medical and Ethical Standards Working Group, along with other funding organizations, … Continue reading Informing patients about tissue donation for stem cell banking