Paul Knoepfler

Stem cells explained in different languages

/ Katie Sharify / 1 Comment

Science is hard. Explaining complex science to non-scientists is SUPER hard. But explaining science to non-native English speakers presents a whole new set of challenges.  

I would know. I’m a first-generation immigrant whose highly-educated parents arrived in their new home—the United States—a tad too late to become fluent in its native tongue. I’ve also had the unique experience of participating in a clinical trial using stem cells—a topic which my family still has trouble grasping.  

I still remember the day of my accident, which left me paralyzed from the chest down. My mother came into my room to cheerfully tell me that there was “something” that would “help me walk” again. Those “something” were human embryonic stem cells. The “help me walk” part was doctors simply explaining the potential of the treatment. In her frazzled mind, she could hardly understand Farsi, much less English. Being told that I was a candidate to participate in a stem cell trial somehow translated into being cured.

And she kept looking for the magic bullet. Countless internet searches revealed all sorts of clinics and wellness centers that offered a cure to just about any disease imaginable. My mom wondered, “Were these the same stem cells from my daughter’s trial? Maybe they are even better since they are curing so many folks!”

I tried my best to explain but there was always something missing in translation. I found that troubling. The language barrier made it so difficult to make informed decisions. I couldn’t imagine being a non-native English speaker and learning about such a complicated matter in a language I hadn’t yet mastered.

After all, stem cells are a topic that concerns the people of the world, not just certain countries or certain people speaking only in certain languages.

Dr. Paul Knoepfler would know. And not just because the statement comes straight from him. Paul is a stem cell scientist at UC Davis (full disclosure, we have funded some of his work). His blog, The Niche, is one of the longest-running blogs about regenerative medicine and an especially great resource for those without a science background.

More importantly, in 2021 Dr. Knoepfler launched SCOPE, an outreach effort to make available on the internet a basic page of facts about stem cells in as many languages as possible. What started with “Stem Cells in Spanish” has quickly transformed into a stem cell white paper now available in 35 different languages!

Naturally, I wasted no time and sent the Farsi version to my parents and the French one to my francophone mother-in-law. And it isn’t just me who is finding this information useful. Dr. Knoepfler says, “SCOPE has been a big hit and as the number of languages has grown, the number of page views of my white paper ‘What are stem cells?’ in languages besides English has skyrocketed. For example, just our Stem Cells in Spanish page has received over 680,000 views as of the first half of 2021, while our Indonesian page has over 300,000 views and our Arabic page has a quarter of a million. We are getting readers from all over the world who appreciate reading about stem cells in their own languages.”

To learn more about this initiative, visit Dr. Knoepfler’s blog.

Google eases ban on ads for stem cell therapies

/ Kevin McCormack / 2 Comments

What started out as an effort by Google to crack down on predatory stem cell clinics advertising bogus therapies seems to be getting diluted. Now the concern is whether that will make it easier for these clinics to lure unsuspecting patients to pay good money for bad treatments?

A little background might help here. For years Google placed no restrictions on ads by clinics that claimed their stem cell “therapies” could cure or treat all manner of ailments. Then in September of 2019 Google changed its policy and announced it was going to restrict advertisements for stem cell clinics offering unproven, cellular and gene therapies.

This new policy was welcomed by people like Dr. Paul Knoepfler, a stem cell scientist at UC Davis and longtime critic of these clinics. In his blog, The Niche, he said it was great news:

“Google Ads for stem cell clinics have definitely driven hundreds if not thousands of customers to unproven stem cell clinics. It’s very likely that many of the patients who have ended up in the hospital due to bad outcomes from clinic injections first went to those firms because of Google ads. These ads and certain particularly risky clinics also are a real threat to the legitimate stem cell and gene therapy fields.”

Now the search-engine giant seems to be adjusting that policy. Google says that starting July 11 it will permit ads for stem cell therapies approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). That’s fine. Anything that has gone through the FDA’s rigorous approval process deserves to be allowed to advertise.

The real concern lies with another adjustment to the policy where Google says it will allow companies to post ads as long as they are “exclusively educational or informational in nature, regardless of regulatory approval status.” The problem is, Google doesn’t define what constitutes “educational or informational”. That leaves the door open for these clinics to say pretty much anything they want and claim it meets the new guidelines.

To highlight that point Gizmodo did a quick search on Google using the phrase “stem cells for neuropathy” and quickly came up with a series of ads that are offering “therapies” clearly not approved by the FDA. One ad claimed it was “FDA registered”, a meaningless phrase but one clearly designed to add an air of authenticity to whatever remedy they were peddling.

The intent behind Google’s change of policy is clearly good, to allow companies offering FDA-approved therapies to advertise. However, the outcome may not be quite so worthy, and might once again put patients at risk of being tricked into trying “therapies” that will almost certainly not do them any good, and might even put them in harm’s way.

It’s hard to be modest when people keep telling you how good you are

/ Kevin McCormack / 2 Comments

THIS BLOG IS ALSO AVAILABLE AS AN AUDIO CAST

I have a confession. Deep down I’m shallow. So when something I am part of is acknowledged as one of the best, I delight in it (my fellow bloggers Katie and Esteban also delight in it, I am just more shameless about letting everyone know.)

And that is just what happened with this blog, The Stem Cellar. We have been named as one of the “22 best biology and stem cell blogs of 2022”. And not just by anyone. We were honored by Dr. Paul Knoepfler, a stem cell scientist, avid blogger and all-round renaissance man (full disclosure, Paul is a recipient of CIRM funding but that has nothing to do with this award. Obviously.)

We are particularly honored to be on the list because Paul includes some heavy hitters including The Signals Blog, a site that he describes this way:

“This one from our friends in Canada is fantastic. They literally have dozens of authors, which is probably the most of any stem cell-related website, and their articles include many interesting angles. They post really often too. I might rank Signal and The Stem Cellar as tied for best stem cell blog in 2021.”

Now I’m really blushing.

Other highly regarded blogs are EuroStemCell, the Mayo Clinic Regenerative Medicine Blog and Stem Cell Battles (by Don Reed, a good friend of CIRM’s)

Another one of the 22 is David Jensen’s California Stem Cell report which is dedicated to covering the work of, you guessed it, CIRM. So, not only are we great bloggers, we are apparently great to blog about. 

As a further demonstration of my modesty I wanted to point out that Paul regularly produces ‘best of’ lists, including his recent “50 influencers on stem cells on Twitter to follow” which we were also on.

Making the list of people to follow

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment

THIS BLOG IS ALSO AVAILABLE AS AN AUDIO CAST

If you are walking down the street on a dark night, being followed is not necessarily something you want. But if you are online, having someone follow you is almost always a positive thing. And when that person is Dr. Paul Knoepfler it’s most definitely a plus.

Paul is a stem cell scientist at UC Davis (full disclosure, we have funded some of his work). He’s also one of the longest-running and most active bloggers about regenerative medicine and an ever-present presence on Twitter. His blog is always a great read and, for those of us without a science background, easy to follow and understand.

Dr. Paul Knoepfler, UC Davis: Photo courtesy UC Davis

That’s why it’s quite an honor that Paul has listed the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine’s as one of the 50 Influencers on stem cells to follow on Twitter.

Paul says this does not necessarily mean the most influential in the field of research because many researchers – such as Nobel Prize winner Dr. Shinya Yamanaka – don’t use Twitter. He says in making the list he looked for a few key elements.

“I particularly appreciate those accounts that include a mix of info, news, and opinion with original content or opinions of their own too.

“I emphasized inclusion of those accounts who regularly tweet. Also, I aimed for a good mixture of accounts across the globe, not just in the U.S. I also included stem cell policy researchers and bioethicists.”

“I picked this list of 50… for 2022 based simply on my impressions of their influence or because they do interesting tweets and/or have a fresh perspective on things, not strictly based on metrics.”

Whatever the reason, we’re delighted, and honored to be on Paul’s list.

And if you would like to see why we made the ’50 to Follow list’, then follow us on Twitter

Tipping our hat to the good guys (& gals)

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment

A search on Google using the term “stem cell blogs” quickly produces a host of sites offering treatments for everything from ankle, hip and knee problems, to Parkinson’s disease and asthma. Amazingly the therapies for those very different conditions all use the same kind of cells produced in the same way. It’s like magic. Sadly, it’s magic that is less hocus pocus and more bogus bogus.

The good news is there are blogs out there (besides us, of course) that do offer good, accurate, reliable information about stem cells. The people behind them are not in this to make a quick buck selling snake oil. They are in this to educate, inform, engage and enlighten people about what stem cells can, and cannot do.

So, here’s some of our favorites.

The Niche

This blog has just undergone a face lift and is now as colorful and easy to read as it is informative. It bills itself as the longest running stem cell blog around. It’s run by UC Davis stem cell biologist Dr. Paul Knoepfler – full disclosure, we have funded some of Paul’s work – and it’s a constant source of amazement to me how Paul manages to run a busy research lab and post regular updates on his blog.

The power of The Niche is that it’s easy for non-science folk – like me – to read and understand without having to do a deep dive into Google search or Wikipedia. It’s well written, informative and often very witty. If you are looking for a good website to check whether some news about stem cells is real or suspect, this is a great place to start.

Stem Cell Battles

This site is run by another old friend of CIRM’s, Don Reed. Don has written extensively about stem cell research in general, and CIRM in particular. His motivation to do this work is clear. Don says he’s not a doctor or scientist, he’s something much simpler:

“No. I am just a father fighting for his paralyzed son, and the only way to fix him is to advance cures for everyone. Also, my mother died of breast cancer, my sister from leukemia, and I myself am a prostate cancer survivor. So, I have some very personal reasons to support the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine and to want state funding for stem cell and other regenerative medicine research to continue in California!”

The power of Don’s writing is that he always tells human stories, real tales about real people. He makes everything he does accessible, memorable and often very funny. If I’m looking for ways to explain something complex and translate it into everyday English, I’ll often look at Don’s work, he knows how to talk to people about the science without having their eyes cloud over.

A Closer Look at Stem Cells

This is published by the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR), the leading professional organization for stem cell scientists. You might expect a blog from such a science-focused organization to be heavy going for the ordinary person, but you’d be wrong.

A Closer Look at Stem Cells is specifically designed for people who want to learn more about stem cells but don’t have the time to get a PhD. They have sections explaining what stem cells are, what they can and can’t do, even a glossary explaining different terms used in the field (I used to think the Islets of Langerhans were small islands off the coast of Germany till I went to this site).

One of the best, and most important, parts of the site is the section on clinical trials, helping people understand what’s involved in these trials and the kinds of things you need to consider before signing up for one.

Signals

Of course, the US doesn’t have a monopoly on stem cell research and that’s reflected in the next two choices. One is the Signals Blog from our friends to the north in Canada. This is an easy-to-read site that describes itself as the “Insiders perspective on the world of stem cells and regenerative medicine.” The ‘Categories ‘dropdown menu allows you to choose what you want to read, and it gives you lots of options from the latest news to a special section for patients, even a section on ethical and legal issues. 

EuroStemCell

As you may have guessed from the title this is by our chums across the pond in Europe. They lay out their mission on page one saying they want to help people make sense of stem cells:

“As a network of scientists and academics, we provide independent, expert-reviewed information and road-tested educational resources on stem cells and their impact on society. We also work with people affected by conditions, educators, regulators, media, healthcare professionals and policymakers to foster engagement and develop material that meets their needs.”

True to their word they have great information on the latest research, broken down by different types of disease, different types of stem cell etc. And like CIRM they also have some great educational resources for teachers to use in the classroom.

Media matters in spreading the word

/ Kevin McCormack / 2 Comments
Cover of New Yorker article on “The Birth Tissue Profiteers”. Illustration by Ben Jones

When you have a great story to tell the best and most effective way to get it out to the widest audience is still the media, both traditional mainstream and new social media. Recently we have seen three great examples of how that can be done and, hopefully, the benefits that can come from it.

First, let’s go old school. Earlier this month Caroline Chen wrote a wonderful in-depth article about clinics that are cashing in on a gray area in stem cell research. The piece, a collaboration between the New Yorker magazine and ProPublica, focused on the use of amniotic stem cell treatments and the gap between what the clinics who offer it are claiming it can do, and the reality.

Here’s one paragraph profiling a Dr. David Greene, who runs a company providing amniotic fluid to clinics. It’s a fine piece of writing showing how the people behind these therapies blur the lines between fact and reality, not just about the cells but also about themselves:

“Greene said that amniotic stem cells derive their healing power from an ability to develop into any kind of tissue, but he failed to mention that mainstream science does not support his claims. He also did not disclose that he lost his license to practice medicine in 2009, after surgeries he botched resulted in several deaths. Instead, he offered glowing statistics: amniotic stem cells could help the heart beat better, “on average by twenty per cent,” he said. “Over eighty-five per cent of patients benefit exceptionally from the treatment.”

Greene later backpedals on that claim, saying:

“I don’t claim that this is a treatment. I don’t claim that it cures anything. I don’t claim that it’s a permanent fix. All I discuss is maybe, potentially, people can get some improvements from stem-cell care.”

CBS2 TV Chicago

This week CBS2 TV in Chicago did their own investigative story about how the number of local clinics offering unproven and unapproved therapies is on the rise. Reporter Pam Zekman showed how misleading newspaper ads brought in people desperate for something, anything, to ease their arthritis pain.

She interviewed two patients who went to one of those clinics, and ended up out of pocket, and out of luck.

“They said they would regenerate the cartilage,” Patricia Korona recalled. She paid $4500 for injections in her knee, but the pain continued. Later X-rays were ordered by her orthopedic surgeon.

“He found bone on bone,” Korona said. “No cartilage grew, which tells me it failed; didn’t work.”

John Zapfel paid $14,000 for stem cell injections on each side of his neck and his shoulder. But an MRI taken by his current doctor showed no improvement.

“They ripped me off, and I was mad.” Zapfel said.      

TV and print reports like this are a great way to highlight the bogus claims made by many of these clinics, and to shine a light on how they use hype to sell hope to people who are in pain and looking for help.

At a time when journalism seems to be increasingly under attack with accusations of “fake news” it’s encouraging to see reporters like these taking the time and news outlets devoting the resources to uncover shady practices and protect vulnerable patients.

But the news isn’t all bad, and the use of social media can help highlight the good news.

That’s what happened yesterday in our latest CIRM Facebook Live “Ask the Stem Cell Team” event. The event focused on the future of stem cell research but also included a really thoughtful look at the progress that’s been made over the last 10-15 years.

We had two great guests, UC Davis stem cell researcher and one of the leading bloggers on the field, Paul Knoepfler PhD; and David Higgins, PhD, a scientist, member of the CIRM Board and a Patient Advocate for Huntington’s Disease. They were able to highlight the challenges of the early years of stem cell research, both globally and here at CIRM, and show how the field has evolved at a remarkable rate in recent years.

Paul Knoepfler

Naturally the subject of the “bogus clinics” came up – Paul has become a national expert on these clinics and is quoted in the New Yorker article – as did the subject of the frustration some people feel at what they consider to be the too-slow pace of progress. As David Higgins noted, we all think it’s too slow, but we are not going to race recklessly ahead in search of something that might heal if we might also end up doing something that might kill.

David Higgins

A portion of the discussion focused on funding and, in particular, what happens if CIRM is no longer around to fund the most promising research in California. We are due to run out of funding for new projects by the end of this year, and without a re-infusion of funds we will be pretty much closing our doors by the end of 2020. Both Paul and David felt that could be disastrous for the field here in California, depriving the most promising projects of support at a time when they needed it most.

It’s probably not too surprising that three people so closely connected to CIRM (Paul has received funding from us in the past) would conclude that CIRM is needed for stem cell research to not just survive but thrive in California.

A word of caution before you watch: fashion conscious people may be appalled at how my pocket handkerchief took on a life of its own.

CIRM public events highlight uncertain future of stem cell research

/ Kevin McCormack / 2 Comments

When governments cut funding for scientific research the consequences can be swift, and painful. In Canada last week for example, the government of Ontario cut $5 million in annual funding for stem cell research, effectively ending a project developing a therapy to heal the damaged lungs of premature babies.

Here in the US the federal government is already placing restrictions on support for fetal tissue research and there is speculation embryonic stem cell research could be next. That’s why agencies like CIRM are so important. We don’t rely on a government giving us money every year. Instead, thanks to the voters of California, we have had a steady supply of funds to enable us to plan long-term and support multi-year projects.

But those funds are due to run out soon. We anticipate funding our last new awards this year and while we have enough money to continue supporting all the projects our Board has already approved, we won’t be able to take on any new projects. That’s bad news for the scientists and, ultimately, really bad for the patients who are in need of new treatments for currently incurable diseases.

We are going to talk about that in two upcoming events.

UC San Diego Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center

The first is a patient advocate event at UC San Diego on Tuesday, May 28th from 12.30pm to 1.30pm. It’s free, there is parking and snacks and refreshments will be available.

This will feature UC San Diego’s Dr. Catriona Jamieson, CIRM’s President and CEO Dr. Maria Millan and CIRM Board member and Patient Advocate for Parkinson’s Disease, David Higgins PhD. The three will talk about the exciting progress being made at UC San Diego and other programs around California, but also the uncertain future and the impact that could have for the field as a whole.

Here’s a link to an Eventbrite page that has more information about the event and also a link to allow you to RSVP ahead of time.

For all of you who don’t live in the San Diego Area – or who do but can’t make it to the event – we are holding a similar discussion online on a special Facebook Live: Ask the Stem Cell Team About the Future of Stem Cell Research event on Thursday, May 30th from noon till 1pm PDT.

This also features Dr. Millan and Dr. Higgins, but it also features UC Davis stem cell scientist, CIRM-grantee and renowned blogger Paul Knoepfler PhD.

Each brings their own experience, expertise and perspective on the field and will discuss the impact that a reduction in funding for stem cell research would have, not just in the short term but in the long run.

Because we all have a stake in what happens, both events – whether it’s in person or online – include time for questions from you, the audience.

You can find our Facebook Live: Ask the Stem Cell Team About the Future of Stem Cell Research on our Facebook page at noon on May 30th PDT

Media shine a spotlight on dodgy stem cell clinics

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment
A doctor collects fat from a patient’’s back as part of an experimental stem cell procedure in Beverly Hills, Calif. on Dec. 5, 2014. (Raquel Maria Dillon / Associated Press)

For several years now, we have been trying to raise awareness about the risks posed by clinics offering unproven or unapproved stem cell therapies. At times it felt as if we were yelling into the wind, that few people were listening. But that’s slowly changing. A growing number of TV stations and newspapers are picking up the message and warning their readers and viewers. It’s a warning that is getting national exposure.

Why are we concerned about these clinics? Well, they claim their therapies, which usually involve the patient’s own fat or blood cells, can cure everything from arthritis to Alzheimer’s. However, they offer no scientific proof, have no studies to back up their claims and charge patients thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars.

In the LA Times, for example, reporter Usha Lee McFarling, wrote an article headline “California has gone crazy for sketchy stem cell treatments”. In it she writes about the claims made by these clinics and the dangers they pose:

“If it sounds too good to be true, it is. There is no good scientific evidence the pricey treatments work, and there is growing evidence that some are dangerous, causing blindness, tumors and paralysis. Medical associations, the federal government and even Consumer Reports have all issued stern warnings to patients about the clinics.”

In Denver, the ABC TV station recently did an in-depth interview with a local doctor who is trying to get Colorado state legislators to take legal action against stem cell clinics making these kinds of unsupported claims.

Chris Centeno of the Centeno-Schultz Clinic, who’s specialized in regenerative medicine and research for more than a decade, said too many people are simply being scammed.

“It’s really out of control,” he told the station.

ABC7 did a series of reports last year on the problem and that may be prompting this push for a law warning consumers about the dangers posed by these unregulated treatments which are advertised heavily online, on TV and in print.

In California there is already one law on the books attempting to warn consumers about these clinics. CIRM worked with State Senator Ed Hernandez to get that passed (you can read about that here) and we are continuing to support even stronger measures.

And the NBC TV station in San Diego recently reported on the rise of stem cell clinics around the US, a story that was picked up by the networks and run on the NBC Today Show.

One of the critical elements in helping raise awareness about the issue has been the work done by Paul Knoepfler and Leigh Turner in identifying how many of these clinics there are around the US. Their report, published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, was the first to show how big the problem is. It attracted national attention and triggered many of the reports that followed.

It is clear momentum is building and we hope to build on that even further. Obviously, the best solution would be to have the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) crack down on these clinics, and in some cases they have. But the FDA lacks the manpower to tackle all of them.

That’s where the role of the media is so important. By doing stories like these and raising awareness about the risks these clinics pose they can hopefully help many patients avoid treatments that will do little except make a dent in their pocket.

Stem Cell Roundup: Rainbow Sherbet Fruit Fly Brains, a CRISPR/iPSC Mash-up and more

/ Todd Dubnicoff / Leave a comment

This week’s Round Up is all about the brain with some CRISPR and iPSCs sprinkled in:

Our Cool Stem Cell Image of the Week comes from Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute:

Mann-SC-Hero-01-19-18

(Credit: Jon Enriquez/Mann Lab/Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute).

This rainbow sherbet-colored scientific art is a microscopy image of a fruit fly nervous system in which brain cells were randomly labeled with different colors. It was a figure in a Neuron study published this week showing how cells derived from the same stem cells can go down very different developmental paths but then later are “reunited” to carry out key functions, such as in this case, the nervous system control of leg movements.

A new therapeutic avenue for Parkinson’s disease – Buck Institute

Many animal models of Parkinson’s disease are created by mutating specific genes to cause symptoms that mimic this incurable, neurodegenerative disorder. But, by far, most cases of Parkinson’s are idiopathic, a fancy term for spontaneous with no known genetic cause. So, researchers at the Buck Institute took another approach: they generated a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease using the pesticide, paraquat, exposure to which is known to increase the risk of the idiopathic form of Parkinson’s.

Their CIRM-funded study in Cell Reports showed that exposure to paraquat leads to cell senescence – in which cells shut down and stop dividing – particularly in astrocytes, brain cells that support the function of nerve cells. Ridding the mice of these astrocytes relieved some of the Parkinson’s like symptoms. What makes these results so intriguing is the team’s analysis of post-mortem brains from Parkinson’s patients also showed the hallmarks of increased senescence in astrocytes. Perhaps, therapeutic approaches that can remove senescent cells may yield novel Parkinson’s treatments.

Discovery may advance neural stem cell treatments for brain disorders – Sanford-Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (via Eureka Alert)

Another CIRM-funded study published this week in Nature Neuroscience may also help pave the way to new treatment strategies for neurologic disorders like Parkinson’s disease. A team at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP) discovered a novel gene regulation system that brain stem cells use to maintain their ability to self-renew.

The study centers around messenger RNA, a molecular courier that transcribes a gene’s DNA code and carries it off to be translated into a protein. The team found that the removal of a chemical tag on mRNA inside mouse brain stem cells caused them to lose their stem cell properties. Instead, too many cells specialized into mature brain cells leading to abnormal brain development in animal studies. Team lead Jing Crystal Zhao, explained how this finding is important for future therapeutic development:

CrystalZhao_headshot

Crystal Zhao

“As NSCs are increasingly explored as a cell replacement therapy for neurological disorders, understanding the basic biology of NSCs–including how they self-renew–is essential to harnessing control of their in vivo functions in the brain.”

Researchers Create First Stem Cells Using CRISPR Genome Activation – The Gladstone Institutes

Our regular readers are most likely familiar with both CRISPR gene editing and induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technologies. But, in case you missed it late last week, a Cell Stem Cell study out of Sheng Ding’s lab at the Gladstone Institutes, for the first time, combined the two by using CRISPR to make iPSCs. The study got a lot of attention including a review by Paul Knoepfler in his blog The Niche. Check it out for more details!

 

Stem Cell Roundup: Gene therapy for diabetes, alcohol is bad for your stem cells and hairy skin

/ Karen Ring / Leave a comment

The start of a new year is the perfect opportunity to turn a new leaf. I myself have embraced 2018 with open arms and decided to join my fellow millennials who live and die by the acronym YOLO.

How am I doing this? Well, so far, I got a new haircut, I started doing squats at the gym, and I’m changing up how we blog on the Stem Cellar!

On Fridays, we always share the stem cell stories that “caught our eye” that week. Usually we pick three stories and write short blogs about each of them. Over time, these mini-blogs have slowly grown in size to the point where sometimes we (and I’m sure our readers) wonder why we’re trying to pass off three blogs as one.

Our time-honored tradition of telling the week’s most exciting stem cell stories on Friday will endure, but we’re going to change up our style and give you a more succinct, and comprehensive roundup of stem cell news that you be on your radar.

To prove that I’m not all talk, I’m starting off our new Roundup today. Actually, you’re reading it right now. But don’t worry, the next one we do won’t have this rambling intro 😉.

So here you go, this week’s eye-catching stem cell stories in brief:

Gene therapy helps mice with type 1 diabetes – EurekAlert!

A study in Cell Stem Cell found that gene therapy can be used to restore normal blood sugar levels in mice with type 1 diabetes. The scientists used a virus to deliver two genes, PDX1 and MAFA, into non-insulin producing pancreatic cells. The expression of these two proteins, reprogrammed the cells into insulin-producing beta cells that stabilized the blood sugar levels of the mice for 4 months. While the curative effects of the gene therapy weren’t permanent, the scientists noted that the reprogrammed beta cells didn’t trigger an immune response, indicating that the cells acted like normal beta cells. The researchers will next test this treatment in primates and if it works and is safe, they will move onto clinical trials in diabetic patients.

Alcohol increases cancer risk in mice by damaging stem cell DNA – GenBio

*Fair warning for beer or wine lovers: you might not want to read story.

Cambridge scientists published a study in Nature that suggests a byproduct of alcohol called acetaldehyde is toxic to stem cells. They gave watered-down alcohol to mice lacking an essential enzyme that breaks down alcohol in the liver. They found that the DNA in the blood-forming stem cells of the mice lacking this enzyme were four times more damaged than the DNA of normal mice. Excessive DNA damage creates instability in the genetic material of cells, which, over time, can lead to cancer. While many things can cause cancer, individuals who aren’t able to process alcohol effectively should take this study into consideration.

Stem cell therapy success for sclerodoma patients – The Niche

For those of you unfamiliar with sclerodoma, it’s an autoimmune disease that can affect the skin, blood vessels, muscle tissue and organs in the body. Rather than recreate the wheel, here’s an overview of this study by UC Davis Professor Paul Knoepfler in his blog called The Niche:

Paul Knoepfler

“A new NIH-funded study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) gives some hope for the use of a combination of a specific type of myeloablation [a form of chemotherapy] and a transplant of hematopoietic stem cells. This approach yields improved long-term outcomes for patients with a severe form of scleroderma called systemic sclerosis. While survival rates for systemic sclerosis have improved it remains a very challenging condition with a significant mortality rate.”

Phase III stem cell trial for osteoarthritis starts in Japan – EurekAlert!

Scientists in Japan have developed a stem cell-based therapy they hope will help patients with osteoarthritis – a degenerative joint disease that causes the breakdown of cartilage. The therapy consists of donor mesenchymal stem cells from a commercial stem cell bank. The team is now testing this therapy in a Phase III clinical trial to assess the therapy’s safety and effectiveness. As a side note, CIRM recently funded a clinical trial for osteoarthritis run by a company called CALIBR. You can read more about it here.

Cool Stem Cell Photo of the Week

I’ll leave you with this rad photo of hairy skin made from mouse pluripotent stem cells. You can read about the study that produced these hairy skin organoids here.

In this artwork, hair follicles grow radially out of spherical skin organoids, which contain concentric epidermal and dermal layers (central structure). Skin organoids self-assemble and spontaneously generate many of the progenitor cells observed during normal development, including cells expressing the protein GATA3 in the hair follicles and epidermis (red). Credit: Jiyoon Lee and Karl R. Koehler