Pity the iPS cell -- it's had quite a ride this year. On the upside, cells reprogrammed from people with autism, Parkinson's disease and schizophrenia were used to create the first ever models of those diseases in a dish. Those models could provide a way of testing drugs on actual human cells. That's good.But in … Continue reading iPS cell smack down

Scientists at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston have reported that they identified a stem cell in lung. The work was published in the May 12 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.In the popular press you often read that adult stem cells exist in all the tissues of the body. This is likely … Continue reading Lung stem cell found, controversy ensues

Back in October the CIRM Governing Board heard from Victoria Jackson, who, in addition to being a powerful businesswoman in the cosmetics world, founded the Guthy-Jackson Charitable Foundation to drive cures for the rare autoimmune disease NMO (neuromyolitis optica or Devic's disease), which her daughter Ali developed as a teenager. Videos of those NMO talks … Continue reading Funding collaborations to find new therapies

On Sunday the UK Telegraph reported the closing of a stem cell clinic in Germany that has been the source of international concern. Last year, a clinic offering stem cell cures in Costa Rica was shut down by the country's health ministry.In both cases, the concern came from claims that injected stem cells would cure … Continue reading German stem cell clinic shut down amidst safety concerns

CIRM grantees at Sanford-Burnham have published another paper using an embryonic stem cell model to understand one of the earliest steps in human nervous system development. (We've blogged about their work before here.) The group led by Alexey Terskikh has been trying to understand how a group of cells called the neural crest form nerves, … Continue reading How a stem cell forms a neuron

From the editor: Yesterday the CIRM governing board approved a $25 million loan to help fund a trial testing the use of an embryonic stem cell-derived therapy for spinal cord injury. Here's our press release. Our guest blogger Roman Reed was injured in a football accident and has since fought tirelessly for spinal cord injury … Continue reading Guest blogger Roman Reed: spinal cord injury stem cell trials get $25 million boost from CIRM

Nine months after a U.S. district court first sent federal funding for embryonic stem cell research into a tailspin, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that those opposing embryonic stem cell research were unlikely to win their case. The ruling means that, for now, federal agencies such as the NIH can continue funding embryonic stem … Continue reading U.S. Appeals Court decision–good news, but not the final word

CIRM grantees at the Scripps Research Institute, University of California, San Diego and Sanford-Burnham Research Institute have taken an intriguing step toward producing neural progenitor cells for research or therapies. The team, led by Sheng Ding who has recently moved to the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco, started with mouse skin cells and converted them … Continue reading CIRM grantees directly create neuronal stem cells for research and therapies

Ethicist Arthur Caplan had an excellent piece about stem cell hype last week on Science Progress, a publication of the Center for American Progress. Caplan is Director of the Center for Bioethics and the Sidney D. Caplan Professor of Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.He starts by saying that yes, some have over-hyped the promise … Continue reading Stem cell hope, hype, and hypocrisy according to Arthur Caplan

Yesterday, stem cell blogger and newly tenured CIRM grantee at UC Davis Paul Knoepfler had an interesting blog entry on iPS cell publications. After mining the literature for publications with the phrases iPS cells, induced pluripotent stem cells, induced pluripotent or induced pluripotency in the title, he found a consistent increase in publications each year … Continue reading CIRM a leader in iPS cell publications