It’s August already. For many, this means vacation time and soaking up as much summer as possible before work and life ramp up again in the fall.
For me, August means multiple family birthdays ($) and the return of the blog carnival! What is a blog carnival you ask? Signals launched its first blog carnival in 2016. This is how I described it at the time: “A blog carnival is essentially an online blogging ‘party’ with many guests who all blog on the same topic and link back to the party host – and, by that, I mean the main blog.” I’ve also used this description: “Think of a blog carnival as a single venue hosting a variety of entertainment. In this case, the ‘entertainment’ are posts from influential bloggers across the stem cell research community all blogging on the same topic.” It’s not complicated; you get the idea.
The 2016 event was such a success that we’ve hosted it yearly ever since, with one exception. We missed having one in 2022 because of a little ole thing called OmniaBio Inc. that kept us super busy.
OmniaBio is a subsidiary of CCRM. It is a contract development and manufacturing organization focused on cell and gene therapies. It offers process and analytical development, and manufactures cells and viral vectors under Good Manufacturing Practices standards for early-stage to commercial manufacturing. It launched in the spring of 2022 and there was a great deal of work involved to raise awareness and provide information about this significant biomanufacturing initiative for Canadians and the global cell and gene therapy community. I have since come up for air and I’m ready to resume the blog carnival tradition.
This year’s event will go live on Tuesday, August 22. Although the topic is under wraps for now, I am happy to reveal this year’s bloggers. They are: David Kent, a Principal Investigator at the York Biomedical Research Institute in England and a long-time contributor to Signals; Phil Vanek, Chief Technology Officer, Gamma Biosciences, and a respected thought leader in the field; Don Gibbons, a respected writer, editor and (science) communications expert who has recently started blogging for Signals; Michael May, President and CEO of CCRM (everyone knows Michael so enough said); and we will also have contributions from our valued partners: CCRM Australia, Medicine by Design and the Stem Cell Network. I am confident they will all bring thoughtful insight, originality and their unique perspectives to this year’s topic.
To get a flavour of previous blog carnivals, here is a list of the past themes and topics with links to the contributors. If you are enjoying some summer downtime, these are great reads.
2016: Recognizing the 10-year anniversary of iPSCs
2017: Right to Try
2018: Has the regenerative medicine industry come of age?
2019: What are the hurdles in your country impacting patient access to cell and gene therapies?
2020: COVID-19 has presented both challenges and opportunities for the regenerative medicine field
2021: Aging is far more reversible than we thought
Aging has been in the news a lot recently because of developments from the lab of David Sinclair, Harvard University. His research builds on a “groundbreaking aging clock that can speed up or reverse the aging of cells.” Dr. Sinclair was the inspiration for our topic in 2021. It seems fitting to end this post with a video featuring a recent conversation with Dr. Sinclair. I invite you to leave a comment on any of the pages linked above and would be curious to learn your thoughts on whether aging is reversible.
Stacey Johnson
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