NEWS and OPINIONS

Fertility treatments could get a boost from stem cells
by University of Copenhagen - MedicalXpress - An unexpectedly versatile and regenerative stem cell in early embryos may be key to creating new effective fertility treatments, suggests a new study in mice from the University of Copenhagen. The paper, titled "The...

Huntington Disease Gene Therapy Nets RMAT Designation
By Victoria Johnson - CGT Live = The FDA has granted Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapeutic (RMAT) Designation to uniQure’s AMT-130 gene therapy for the potential treatment of Huntington disease (HD).1 “We’re thrilled to receive the first ever RMAT designation for...

Lab-grown muscles reveal mysteries of rare muscle diseases
By Duke University - Science Daily - Biomedical engineers at Duke University have developed a new technique to better understand and test treatments for a group of extremely rare muscle disorders called dysferlinopathy or limb girdle muscular dystrophies 2B (LGMD2B)....

Stem Cell Plasticity: A Double-Edged Sword
by Hannah Thomasy, PhD - The Scientist - Yejing Ge explores the behavior of skin-resident stem cells in wound repair, cancer, and aging. In 1986, Harold Dvorak, a pathologist at Harvard Medical School, popularized the idea of cancer as a wound that does not heal. In...

Unraveling the Mysteries of Stem Cells
By Gret Harrison - USC Viterbi - New research harnesses machine learning and imaging to give unprecedented insight into stem cell behavior that could enable future lifesaving therapies. Stem cells are like the emergency tool kit of the human body. They have the unique...

A vision of the future: Stem cells offer hope for retinal degeneration
By Hannah Thomasy, PhD - Exploring Drug Discovery and Development News - The black rat rested calmly in a clear tube, its nose twitching gently as it sniffed the air. Its eyes followed the parade of vertical black and white bars scrolling from left to right across a...

What New Gene Therapy Means For Sickle Cell Patients
Dr. Omer Awan MD MPH CIIP - Forbes - Recently, a 12-year-old boy became the first patient with sickle cell disease to begin commercially approved gene therapy that could potentially cure the condition. Read the article - Click Here

Computer-designed proteins guide stem cells to form blood vessels
by Ian Haydon, University of Washington School of Medicine - Phys.org - Using computer-designed proteins, researchers have now shown they are able to direct human stem cells to form new blood vessels in the lab. This milestone in regenerative medicine offers new hope...

Most stem cells die after being injected into brain; new technique could change that
By Laurie Kaiser - University of Buffalo - When the myelin sheath that surrounds nerve fibers in the brain and spinal cord becomes damaged, a number of debilitating conditions can result that limit mobility, inhibit independence and reduce life expectancy. Multiple...

FDA Grants Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy Designation for AMT-130 Gene Therapy in Huntington Disease
by Isabella Ciccone, MPH - Nueurology Live - Recently, the FDA granted regenerative medicine advanced therapy (RMAT) designation to uniQure’s investigational Huntington disease (HD) gene therapy AMT-130 based on interim data from a phase 1/2 trial (NCT04120493) and a...

L’Oreal says it’s working on a form of bioprinted skin that can actually ‘feel’
By Ryan Browne - CNBC - PARIS, France — French beauty and cosmetics giant L'Oreal is working on a form of synthetically produced skin that it says will one day be able to "feel" like we do. At the Viva Technology conference in Paris last week, L'Oreal showed off...

Study: CAR T for Prostate Cancer Shows Efficacy
by Letisia Marquez - City of Hope - Treating prostate cancer with immunotherapy is currently difficult to do. But preliminary results from a first in-human phase 1 trial using a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy developed by researchers from City of Hope®...