Archive for the ‘News’ Category
3D patterning of blood vessels: Creating a fertile landscape for engineered tissues
Nepalese terraces. Photo: strudelt via Flickr . Picture traveling back in time to an era before cell phones (*shudder*). Before radios. Before germ theory. In fact, try taking yourself back to when written language was first being developed around 6000 BC. It’s hard to imagine. And yet while these societies may have lacked our freeways…Read more
To the stars and beyond: Assessing the impact of the $100 Genome
We live in a time of extraordinary medical advances. So far in 2013, we’ve seen the successful transplantation of a bioengineered kidney into rats, an infant reportedly cured of HIV using anti-retroviral drugs that are currently on the market, and discovered a protein that has the potential to ‘reverse aging’ in the heart. These ‘small…Read more
Oldies but still goodies: how we continue to transform the field of haematopoietic stem cells
“A Rat’s Past Lives, a Giraffe and Bull” depicts the interaction between the extracellular matrix and differentiated hematopoietic stem cells. Image by Elizabeth Cambridge from the Cells I See library . If you Google the term “stem cells”, you will be inundated by search results that range from the expected to the truly bizarre. For…Read more
Update: $600M insider trading fine is largest ever
. As a follow up to last month’s post describing how leaked information about an Alzheimer’s drug clinical trial led to the largest ever case of insider trading and destroyed the careers of Dr. Sidney Gilman, a well-respected clinician, and Matthew Martoma, a young stock trader, the Securities and Exchange Commission has just levied the…Read more
BioTime: A new Geron, without a decade of baggage
Avid watchers of the stem cell and regenerative medicine market have no doubt heard of Geron selling its stem cell assets to BioTime. Nature covered it in some detail last month, and the transaction itself follows a Letter of Intent announced last November, which valued it at approximately $71 million. The transaction leaves Geron to…Read more
Awakening in Toronto
We’ve posted several times in the past on exhibits and events where stem cells feature not just as a subject of scientific study, but as works of art. In this we are not alone — in addition to our own Cells I See art contest, shows at the Ontario Science Centre and the critically-acclaimed Perceptions…Read more
Rejuvenation therapy for our aging T-cells (and what it may mean to cancer treatment)
It is said that with age comes “wisdom”; however, I often think that “exhaustion” might serve as a reasonable substitute. As we deal with life’s stresses, and new hairs sprout of snowy white hues, it is hard not to think of our younger days of freedom and vitality. If I could anthropomorphize a cell, I…Read more
How to “micro” manage your injured heart
When we accidentally burn ourselves while cooking or nick our fingers on a piece of paper, most of us experience a fleeting moment of irritation but never worry that the wound won’t heal. Our everyday lives have taught us that skin is a tissue with great regenerative capability. Unfortunately, the merits of self-healing seem to…Read more
Life and death: The human face of the cell therapy industry
. Within the past few weeks, we have all lost someone who has impacted our lives. And this I can guarantee. On Monday 8th April 2013, I woke up, grabbed my tennis bag and headed for a morning hit. In the car, I heard the lacquered voice of the BBC’s John Humphrys report the death…Read more