Ron Leuty of the San Francisco Business Times  wrote a nice obituary for breast cancer advocate Barbara Brenner, who founded the notoriously feisty Breast Cancer Action. The San Francisco-based organization took aim at Big Pharama, Big Biotech and what she called the "pinkwashing" of breast cancer awareness.Brenner died of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's … Continue reading Breast cancer advocate Barbara Brenner dies of ALS

Image by LittleDebbie11Back in the late 1990s, CIRM grantee at Salk Institute for Biological Studies Fred Gage published what might be my favorite stem cell research ever: he found mice that exercise regularly have more new neurons forming in their brains and seemed to have better memories than their couch-potato labmates.As a runner, that struck … Continue reading Excercise induces new neurons to form in the brain via seratonin

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. Getting a therapy to market. Fierce Biotech published an insightful interview with Henry Termeer, former CEO of Genzyme, which was the first company to market … Continue reading Stem cell Stories that caught our eye: getting therapies to market, creating new bone, healing skin ulcers

(photo: Wikimedia Commons)A video by Stanford University recently reminded me of my own surprise, as a biologist, of the power of math. The video and corresponding Scope blog entry describes Stanford stem cell scientists getting a shock when a mere engineer gave them a lesson in speeding up research.One nice perk to choosing a cell … Continue reading Mathematics + Biology: A Stem Cell Genetics Love Story

President Obama issued an executive order yesterday requiring federal agencies to make data publicly available. A Washington Post story quotes President Obama explaining the value of this data:“We’re making it easier for people to find the data and use it, so that entrepreneurs can build products and services we haven’t even imagined yet."We agree that … Continue reading White House calls for more #opendata, we agree! Check ours out

Transplanted neurons treat mice with epilepsy. Courtesy of Scott Baraban, Robert Hunt, and Kelly GirksisOur grantees at UCSF overachieved this week, showing both that transplants of a certain cell type can treat epilepsy in mice, and that they can generate those cells starting with human stem cells -- either embryonic or reprogrammed.First, the epileptic mice. That … Continue reading Transplanted neurons treat mice with epilepsy

Researchers at Harvard University have big news today: their scientists found a protein in the blood that seems to reverse the effects of aging in the hearts of mice. Young mice have a lot of the protein, called GDF-11, old mice less so. When they injected the protein into the blood of older mice, their … Continue reading Becoming young at heart: single protein helps old hearts appear young in mice

First, an admission: the work I'm about to describe doesn't actually have to do with stem cell research. But it's cool, and it was done by scientists at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in La Jolla, which has so far received more that $30 million in funding from CIRM. Maybe some of our grantees provided insightful … Continue reading Are you a couch potato mouse or marathon mouse? One molecule might hold the difference

Stem cells at different stages of maturing into nerve cells like those affected by A-T. Image was taken in the lab of Guoping Fan at the University of California, Los Angeles.One of the most promising uses of reprogrammed stem cells -- the embryonic-like cells generated from a patient's skin or other tissue -- is in … Continue reading Stem cells model rare neurological disease, suggest possible therapy

Diane Souza had a severely fractured arm repaired by CIRM grantees at University of California, Davis who were working with stem cells taken from bone marrow. There's more about her story on our website.Our friends at the New York Stem Cell Foundation had some big news to share yesterday afternoon: Their scientists were able to … Continue reading Growing bone from stem cells