Back in 1994, a Canadian researcher named John Dick made a cancer discovery that kicked off what has been an 18 year debate. He found that for people with a certain kind of leukemia—called acute myelogenous leukemia—a small group of slow-dividing cells seem to be the source of all the other cancer cells. If a … Continue reading The heart of cancer: Cancer stem cells shown to exist in three tumors

Each month CIRM President Alan Trounson gives his perspective on recently published papers he thinks will be valuable in moving the field of stem cell research forward. This month’s report, along with an archive of past reports, is available on the CIRM website.Of the six papers I discuss in this month’s full report, I just … Continue reading Guest blogger Alan Trounson — July’s stem cell research highlights

Stem cell-derived heart muscle cells The first task of developing a stem cell-based therapy is coaxing the stem cells to turn into the desired cell type – neurons for brain diseases, pancreatic cells for diabetes, or, in the case of some recent work by a group of CIRM grantees, heart muscle cells for heart disease. A … Continue reading Needle in a haystack search turns up compound that might mend broken hearts

How do you say “what are stem cells ” in Portuguese? How about Turkish or even Hindi and Vietnamese? I had no idea either, at least not until I turned to Prof. Paul Knoepfler’s stem cell blog. As regular readers of this blog know Prof. Knoepfler is a stem cell researcher at the UC Davis … Continue reading Translations bring stem cell information to the world

Huntington's disease advocates speaking to the Governing BoardYesterday’s governing board meeting should have been a happy one. The agency awarded $150 million dollars to fantastic teams of researchers whose work could result in therapies for some of the worst diseases – Huntington’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease, melanoma and heart disease, to name a few.But that … Continue reading Patient advocates speak in support of disease teams, new therapies

I’m always impressed by good science communication, especially in the field of stem cell research. That’s why I was excited to see the new video program unveiled this week by the Gladstone Institutes. Gladstone, which is affiliated with UCSF, launched a new website featuring five videos produced by Wondros—an award winning company founded by Jesse … Continue reading CIRM grantees at the Gladstone Institutes launch powerful new videos

A few weeks ago we asked people to submit questions for the first video in our Ask the Expert series. Well, you submitted questions and we asked stem cell expert Lawrence Goldstein, PhD, at the University of California, San Diego to answer them. I’ve spoken with Dr. Goldstein in the past about his ALS research … Continue reading Ask the stem cell expert: your questions answered on Alzheimer’s disease

Paula Cannon, University of Southern CaliforniaToday brings more news from the AIDS conference being held this week in Washington D.C. The local San Francisco NPR affiliate did a story for their Quest science program about one approach to a possible disease cure. They interviewed Timothy Ray Brown, who is the first person to have the … Continue reading CIRM HIV/AIDS disease team making news

Next week begins the international AIDS conference, being held this year in Washington DC. CIRM’s board member Jeff Sheehy is there, in his role as long-time HIV/AIDS advocate. For the first time, the news coming out in advance of the meeting is about cures, not long-term drugs. As the Washington Post reports, this is a … Continue reading 2012 AIDS conference focuses on a cure

Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells reprogrammed from human skinWhen I read about stem cells in the news it is often frustrating to see all stem cells lumped together as if they are the same. It gives the impression that what one stem cell can do, all can do. In fact, different types of stem cells … Continue reading Confused about the many types of stem cells? Read on…