Guest blogger Natalie DeWitt is special projects officer at CIRM and has helped develop CIRM's alpha clinics concept. Brainstorming session at the alpha clinics workshop in November 2012This week Nature Medicine published a news story about the Alpha Stem Cell Clinics initiative, raising some interesting questions about how such a clinical network would differ from … Continue reading Stem cell alpha clinics support clinical trials, bring more options to patients

Stanford researcher, Heike Dalrup-LinkStanford scientists have made it easier to peer inside our bodies to see what transplanted stem cells are up to. In a study published online yesterday in the journal, Radiology, they describe how they enlisted a drug normally used to treat anemia, ferumoxytol, to tag stem cells inside a living body. Ferumoxytol … Continue reading Pumping iron: new way of tracking transplanted stem cells uses anemia drug

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. Stem cells form inner ear structures. It was fun reading about work by a team from my alma mater, Indiana University that makes major strides … Continue reading Stem cell Stories that caught our eye: spare parts for ears, hope for stroke and dubious therapy in Italy

Serving on the Board of an organization is not exactly glamorous. It often involves a lot of in-depth reading and long, sometimes really long, meetings in windowless rooms at hotels near an airport. Serving on the Board of the stem cell agency can be particularly challenging because of the complex nature of the work we … Continue reading Letter from the heart – thoughts from an autism advocate on leaving the stem cell agency

Planaria like this one can regrow new body partsAt California's stem cell agency we are focused on finding new cures for disease, but sometimes the path to cures is paved with research in animals, like, for example, flatworms.No, seriously. One way of understanding how tissues regenerate is by studying animals whose tissues regenerate naturally. Like … Continue reading The path to stem cell cures paved with… flatworms?

Since Shinya Yamanaka won the Nobel prize last year for reprogramming adult cells to an embryonic-like state--so-called iPS cells--it's been hard to keep up with the pace of new research using these cells. For those looking for a summary, The Gladstone Institutes has recently posted a nice, accessible explanation of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells … Continue reading iPS cell roundup: testing drugs, studying disease, developing therapies

In the past few days we’ve had several pieces of good news for businesses developing stem cell-based products.The Washington Post today reported that the House Financial Services' Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Enterprises held a hearing on “Reducing Barriers to Capital Formation, Part II” today to discuss reducing regulatory burdens and other capital … Continue reading Reducing barriers to capital formation for stem cell companies

Nature Medicine has a good story about our proposed Alpha Clinics. These are the clinics we've proposed funding throughout the state to support stem cell clinical trials. (We've written about them here.)The story quotes CIRM's Natalie DeWitt:Few stem cell therapies, with the exception of hematopoietic stem cells derived from bone marrow or cord blood, are … Continue reading Alpha clinics supporting stem cell clinical trials to be discussed July 25

Loring Leeds told his story of living with HIV/AIDS in our Stories of HopeThe first time you try something new, particularly in the world of science, it is often a time of both optimism and caution. That’s particularly true when it’s the first time a project you have funded is starting a clinical trial, moving … Continue reading Clinical trial testing innovative HIV/AIDS stem cell therapy gets under way

Courtesy of Takanori Takebe/Yokohama City University Graduate School of Medicine One of the more intriguing promises of regenerative medicine is the thought that one day stem cells could be used to grow replacement organs. That day is still a way off but may be just a little bit closer after researchers in Japan showed that they … Continue reading This bud’s for you – scientists grow human livers in mice