Today we’re going to talk about heart failure. It’s a sobering topic given that over 20 million people world wide are currently suffering from this disease. Heart failure happens when the body’s heart can no longer pump blood effectively, which can lead to many nasty side effects and inevitably hastens death. Typical strategies for treating … Continue reading A new way to make heart stem cells could potentially repair the damage of heart disease
transplantation
From Science Fiction to Science Fact: Gene Editing May Make Personalized Therapies for Blindness
Have you seen the movie Elysium? It’s a 2013 futuristic science fiction film starring one of my favorite actors Matt Damon. The plot centers on the economic, social and political disparities between two very different worlds: one, an overpopulated earth where people are poor, starving, and have little access to technology or medical care, the … Continue reading From Science Fiction to Science Fact: Gene Editing May Make Personalized Therapies for Blindness
Protective cell therapy could mean insulin independence for diabetic patients
This has already been a productive year for diabetes research. Earlier this month, scientists from UCSF and the Gladstone Institutes successfully made functional human pancreatic beta cells from skin, providing a new and robust method for generating large quantities of cells to replace those lost in patients suffering from type 1 diabetes. Today marks another … Continue reading Protective cell therapy could mean insulin independence for diabetic patients
The Ogawa-Yamanaka Prize Crowns Its First Stem Cell Champion
A world of dark Imagine if you woke up one day and couldn’t see. Your life would change drastically, and you would have to painfully relearn how to function in a world that heavily relies on sight. While most people don’t lose their sight overnight, many suffer from visual impairments that slowly happen over time. … Continue reading The Ogawa-Yamanaka Prize Crowns Its First Stem Cell Champion
CIRM-funded clinical trial for spinal cord injury reports promising results
Today, the Menlo Park-based biotech company Asterias Biotherapeutics reported positive results from the first three patients treated in its Phase 1/2a clinical study using stem cell therapy to treat patients with spinal cord injury. This trial is funded by a CIRM Strategic Partnerships Award grant of $14.3 million. Asterias has developed a stem cell therapy … Continue reading CIRM-funded clinical trial for spinal cord injury reports promising results
Study Identifies Safer Stem Cell Therapies
To reject or not reject, that is the question facing the human immune system when new tissue or cells are transplanted into the body. Stem cell-therapy promises hope for many debilitating diseases that currently have no cures. However, the issue of immune rejection has prompted scientists to carefully consider how to develop safe stem cell … Continue reading Study Identifies Safer Stem Cell Therapies
New Regenerative Liver Cells Identified
It’s common knowledge that your liver is a champion when it comes to regeneration. It’s actually one of the few internal organs in the human body that can robustly regenerate itself after injury. Other organs such as the heart and lungs do not have the same regenerative response and instead generate scar tissue to protect … Continue reading New Regenerative Liver Cells Identified
What a Difference Differentiation can Make: a Little Change can Reduce the Risk of Rejection
No one likes to be rejected. It hurts. But while rejection is something most of us experience at least a couple of times in our life, researchers at Stanford have found a way to reduce the risk of rejection, at least when it comes to one form of stem cells. Reporting in the latest issue … Continue reading What a Difference Differentiation can Make: a Little Change can Reduce the Risk of Rejection
The Stem Cellar 