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. Speedy route to reprogrammed stem cells. Many outlets carried news this week of a paper in Nature by a team in Israel that dramatically boosted … Continue reading Stem cell stories that caught our eye: speedier creation of iPS cells, heart rhythms and arthritis

CIRM Chair Jonathan Thomas presents Philip Pizzo with a resolution honoring his serviceOn Thursdays many Facebook pages celebrate "throwback Thursday" with old images. Today on our blog we're doing a throwback to last year, when Philip Pizzo was Dean of Stanford Medical School and served on our governing board. (Lloyd Minor as since replaced him … Continue reading Former CIRM board member writes a personal story on his battle with chronic pain

One of our recent initiatives funded scientists to make, store and distribute stem cell lines to scientists worldwide. We admit that this doesn't sound like the sexiest of scientific projects, but it's actually a big deal for those scientists who need access to those lines for understanding diseases and finding therapies.The San Francisco Business Times … Continue reading Stem cell bank nearly completed: will store and distribute stem cell lines to researchers

Paul Knoepfler in his lab at UC Davis: Photo courtesy of UC Davis Medical CenterPaul Knoepfler’s life changed one October day in 2009. For years Paul had been going into the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center as a stem cell researcher. But this day he was about to cross over to the other side, as … Continue reading An Insider’s Guide to Stem Cells: new book looks at the good, the bad and the future of stem cell research

Ami Thakrar working in the lab. She submitted this photo to our #CIRMStemCellLab Instagram feed.The Santa Barbara Independent has a piece today on the high school students who interned at the University of California, Santa Barbara this summer. Some of those students were part of our Creativity award program, which supported high school interns in stem cell … Continue reading UCSB high school intern: "great way for high school students to get exposed to a life in research"

Ami Thakrar working in the lab. She submitted this photo to our #CIRMStemCellLab Instagram feed.The Santa Barbara Independent has a piece today on the high school students who interned at the University of California, Santa Barbara this summer. Some of those students were part of our Creativity award program, which supported high school interns in stem cell … Continue reading UCSB high school intern: “great way for high school students to get exposed to a life in research”

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. Clinical trial in Lou Gehrig’s disease moves to Phase 2. It is always rewarding when you read about clinical trials in our field advancing. This is … Continue reading Stem cell stories that caught our eye: Lou Gehrig’s disease, misbehaving cells, and nanotech for brain cancer

Shinya Yamanaka’s 2006 discovery that adult cells, such as skin, could be reprogrammed so that they behave like embryonic stem cells, has led to countless follow-up scientific studies, new understandings of human diseases, new strategies for developing drugs and stem-cell based therapies. It also led to a Nobel Prize in Medicine for Yamanaka and UK … Continue reading What’s your story, iPS cells? Watch this new, short documentary for an iPS introduction and primer.

Flickr image: Rick eh?The news cycle for the past day has been filled with articles about work in Spain in which the researchers reprogrammed adult cells in a living mouse to become like embryonic stem cells, and in some cases, even more primitive cells.A few of the articles covering the work captured what the researchers … Continue reading Creating embryonic-like stem cells in living mice a path to therapies? Not so fast

People with Down syndrome have an extra copy of chromosome 21.Our grantees at Stanford have found that a gene they first identified while studying the origin of some cancers may also play a role in Down syndrome.This gene, called Usp16, appears to accelerate how quickly stem cells are used up throughout the body, including in … Continue reading Gene that controls stem cells tied to Down syndrome