Archive for the ‘Research’ Category
View from the floor: ISSCR final day
The final day of the 9th annual ISSCR meeting was truly a memorable one, with several excellent talks and touching moments. An incredibly moving presentation by Charles Sabine in the morning stands out, and I fear my description will not do it justice. For many, I expect his talk was the highlight of the entire…Read more
View from the floor: ISSCR day 3
Shinya Yamanaka, vice president of the ISSCR, soon-to-be McEwen Centre Award for Innovation recipient, and a leader in the field of iPS cell generation, opened day three of the 2011 ISSCR conference with a presentation titled “Induction of Pluripotency by Defined Factors”. The main hall was surprisingly crowded at 9:00 am given the somewhat rowdy Junior Investigator Night…Read more
View from the floor: ISSCR day 2
Although elsewhere in Canada there are some very troubling consequences arising from a group not living up to their potential (I refer to the rioting hooligans and not the Canucks), the realization of potential happening here at the ISSCR couldn’t be more different. There is a great sense of excitement and buzz surrounding the wide…Read more
View from the floor: ISSCR day one
With the ISSCR fully underway, Toronto is currently playing host to a who’s who of the international stem cell community. Each day I will give a brief glimpse into what is going on, summarizing some of the talks at the conference. Things got started on Tuesday evening with a Stem Cell Network sponsored public symposium…Read more
iPSCs: A tool for understanding ‘A Beautiful Mind’?
A young brilliant mathematician seen by his colleagues as agitated, socially withdrawn, emotionally flat and paranoid is approached by a Department of Defense agent who requests his assistance with code breaking. Following acceptance of this job, the young professor believes he is being followed and is eventually chased through his university campus, captured and sedated….Read more
Researchers hit the bull’s EYE
Generating complex organ tissue from pluripotent stem cells is a major challenge in the field of regenerative medicine. Significant progress has been made in directing pluripotent stem cells to differentiate into specific cell types however; there have been few examples of the successful production of organ tissue in vitro. Last month, a group of researchers…Read more
Entrepreneurial scientists: Moving from being outliers to everyday researchers
Success in a research career is solely defined by ones ability to churn out great academic papers, right? Don’t be so sure. It’s true that successful research careers can be launched with a Science or Nature paper, but many skills other than purely academic ones are increasingly being recognized as important. On this blog, David…Read more