If you are born with Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID), your childhood is anything but normal. You don’t get to play with other kids, or be held by your parents. You can’t even breathe the same air. And, without treatment, you probably won’t live past your first year. This is the reality of SCID, also called … Continue reading Gene Therapy Beats Half-Matched Stem Cell Transplant in Side-by-Side Comparison to Treat ‘Bubble Baby’ Disease
News
Stem Cell Scientists Reconstruct Disease in a Dish; Gain Insight into Deadly Form of Bone Cancer
The life of someone with Li-Fraumeni Syndrome (LFS) is not a pleasant one. A rare genetic disorder that usually runs in families, this syndrome is characterized by heightened risk of developing cancer—multiple types of cancer—at a very young age. People with LFS, as the syndrome is often called, are especially susceptible to osteosarcoma, a form … Continue reading Stem Cell Scientists Reconstruct Disease in a Dish; Gain Insight into Deadly Form of Bone Cancer
Cancer Cells Mimic Blood Vessels to Colonize the Body’s Farthest Reaches
Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have just uncovered the latest dirty trick in the cancer playbook—one that spurs the cancer cells to spread throughout the body and evade treatment. But importantly, they believe they may have found a way to counter it. Reporting today in the journal Nature, Cold Spring Harbor researchers describe how … Continue reading Cancer Cells Mimic Blood Vessels to Colonize the Body’s Farthest Reaches
Building a Better Needle: CIRM-Funded Invention Gets Cells Into Brain More Safely, Efficiently
If NASA’s billion dollar Mars rovers deployed a bunch of dollar store party balloons to cushion the moment of impact, the mission would fail miserably. Likewise, the many years and millions of dollars spent on developing a stem cell-based therapy could be all for naught if the delivery of those precious cells into patients used … Continue reading Building a Better Needle: CIRM-Funded Invention Gets Cells Into Brain More Safely, Efficiently
Breast Cancer Tumors Recruit Immune Cells to the Dark Side
We rely on our immune system to stave off all classes of disease—but what happens when the very system responsible for keeping us healthy turns to the dark side? In new research published today, scientists uncover new evidence that reveals how breast cancer tumors can actually recruit immune cells to spur the spread of disease. … Continue reading Breast Cancer Tumors Recruit Immune Cells to the Dark Side
March ICOC/Governing Board Meeting Begins Soon
The March ICOC/Governing Board Meeting is beginning this morning at 9am in Berkeley, CA. Agenda details and dial-in instructions can be found on our website. Please watch this space for an update from the meeting. You can also keep up with the latest news by visiting CIRM on Twitter and Facebook.
Goodnight, Stem Cells: How Well Rested Cells Keep Us Healthy
Plenty of studies show that a lack of sleep is nothing but bad news and can contribute to a whole host of health problems like heart disease, poor memory, high blood pressure and obesity. In a sense, the same holds true for the stem cells in our body. In response to injury, adult stem cells … Continue reading Goodnight, Stem Cells: How Well Rested Cells Keep Us Healthy
The best tools to be the best advocate
It’s hard to do a good job if you don’t have the right tools. And that doesn’t just apply to fixing things around the house, it applies to all aspects of life. So, in launching our new website this week we didn’t just want to provide visitors to the site with a more enjoyable and … Continue reading The best tools to be the best advocate
CIRM Launches New and Improved Website
CIRM has experienced many exciting changes over the past year: we’ve welcomed a new president, revamped our blog and—perhaps most importantly—announced a radical overhaul in how we fund stem cell research with the launch of CIRM 2.0. That’s not even mentioning the 11 projects we are now funding in clinical trials. And now, we’d like … Continue reading CIRM Launches New and Improved Website
New understanding of the inner workings of our genetic tool kit should help us make smarter repairs
For young biology students the steps from genes to their function becomes a mantra: DNA makes RNA and RNA makes protein. But it is really not quite that simple. A few different types of RNA act along the path and we are now learning that the structure, or shape, of the individual RNA molecules affects … Continue reading New understanding of the inner workings of our genetic tool kit should help us make smarter repairs
The Stem Cellar 