NEWS and OPINIONS
Thousands of phages found to have CRISPR gene editing system
by Bob Yirka , Phys.org A team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and University of California, Los Angeles, working with a colleague from Vilnius University, has found evidence of thousands of phages with DNA strands that should allow them to...
After three years in prison, ‘CRISPR babies’ scientist is attempting a comeback
By Megan Molteni - Stat News He Jiankui, the Chinese biophysicist who created the first gene-edited children, had been quiet since completing a three-year prison sentence in April, leaving many to wonder whether he had plans to return to scientific research. Earlier...
CAR T cell therapy reaches beyond cancer
By Penn Today Penn Medicine researchers laud the early results for CAR T therapy in lupus patients, which point to broader horizons for the use of personalized cellular therapies. Engineered immune cells, known as CAR T cells, have shown the world what personalized...
A New CRISPR Cancer Treatment Has Been Tested On Humans For The First Time – And The Results Are Promising
by Rameesha Sajwar - Wonderful Engineering Gene-editing technology CRISPR has been used to remove genes from immune system cells to make them better at fighting cancer. Recently, PACT Pharma and UCLA have used CRISPR to remove and add genes to these cells to help them...
USC and CHLA awarded $8 million to expand access to cell and gene therapy clinical trials
CIRM-funded USC+CHLA Alpha Clinic boosts capacity for clinical and translational research, community outreach, training and manufacturing By Wayne Lewis - Keck School of Medicine of USC The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), the state’s stem cell...
Secret shopper studies: an unorthodox design that measures inequities in healthcare access
by Kelsey A. Rankin, Alison Mosier-Mills, Walter Hsiang & Daniel H. Wiznia - BMC Archives of Public Health Abstract Secret shopper studies are particularly potent study designs that allow for the gathering of objective data for a variety of research hypotheses,...
Fitness program for blood stem cells: TAZ protein protects from age-related loss of function
by by Kerstin Wagner, Leibniz-Institut für Alternsforschung - Fritz-Lipmann-Institut e.V. (FLI) - Phys.org Image: Hematopoietic stem cells age very heterogeneously. The TAZ protein, a co-activator of the Hippo signaling pathway, can protect blood stem cells from...
Human synovial mesenchymal stem cells show time-dependent morphological changes and increased adhesion to degenerated porcine cartilage
by Takahiro Tanimoto, Kentaro Endo, Yuriko Sakamaki, Nobutake Ozeki, Hisako Katano, Mitsuru Mizuno, Hideyuki Koga & Ichiro Sekiya - Scientific Reports Abstract The possibility that mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) can adhere to partial defects or degenerative areas in...
Greenstone Bio Secures $1.3M from CIRM for iPSC-derived Cardiovascular Cell Technologies
By By Cade Hildreth, BioInformant Palo Alto, CA – Greenstone Biosciences, Inc. (“Greenstone Bio”), a commercial-stage computational biology company, announces that the Company has received a DISC0 grant funding from the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine...
Second death linked to potential antibody treatment for Alzheimer’s disease
By Charles Piller - Science image caption: There are two hallmarks of Alzheimer’s dementia, amyloid-beta protein deposits known as plaques among brain cells (yellow-orange bundles), and tangles of a protein called tau inside neurons (wiry objects inside the neuron),...
A cell biologist shares the wonder of researching life’s most fundamental form
By Terry Gross - NPR news Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee still remembers the first cell he cultured: It was an immune cell from a mouse, and he had grown it in a petri dish. As he examined it through a microscope, the cell moved, and Mukherjee was fascinated. "I could...
Biologists Create a New Type of Human Cells
The new model cells aid in the study of early embryonic development. by KU Leuven - SciTechDaily Professor Vincent Pasque and his colleagues at KU Leuven have used stem cells to create a new kind of human cell in the lab. The new cells closely mirror their natural...