Highlights of my first trip to virtual Paris, courtesy of ISCT

by Guest | Jul 2, 2020

Glenn MacLean is a Development Manager at CCRM where his focus is supporting company creation.  Glenn obtained his PhD from Queen’s University while studying the role of retinoic acid metabolism during embryonic development. For post-doctoral studies, Glenn studied...

What’s COVID-19 doing to Australian Biotech?

by Guest | Jun 25, 2020

Prof. Richard Boyd (Monash University) is a co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cartherics Pty. Ltd., a young Melbourne–based immunotherapy biotechnology company that combines T cells, NK cells, genetic engineering and stem cells to “supercharge” the immune...

Right Turn: Revisiting stem cell tourism

by Stacey Johnson | Jun 19, 2020

Are you the type of traveller who finds a destination you love and you keep returning to it every chance you get? That’s not me. I can appreciate that with a limited number of vacation days and a limited budget, there is something to be said for sticking with the...

Right Turn: Acknowledging racism in academia with #ShutDownSTEM

by Stacey Johnson | Jun 12, 2020

The discourse related to racism in (North) America is showing no signs of slowing down. Rightly so. The injustice and anger has been building for hundreds of years and while protests are not new, a global pandemic that is disproportionately hitting African Americans...

Right Turn: The need for diversity in STEM

by Stacey Johnson | Jun 5, 2020

At the risk of appearing to be jumping on the bandwagon, it feels tone deaf right now to blog about something unrelated to racism in North America given how this important issue is currently dominating media coverage, our conversations and our thoughts. CCRM has...

Using immunotherapy to make cold tumours immunological hotbeds

by Sara M. Nolte | May 28, 2020

Cancer immunotherapy is so hot right now. Signals bloggers have covered CAR T cells (here and here), but haven’t given some other exciting immunotherapies their time to shine. I aim to correct that. A normal part of the immune system, checkpoints are a mechanism to...

Looking forward to the next few years in blood stem cell gene therapy

by David Kent | May 21, 2020

Over the past four weeks, I’ve discussed numerous aspects of gene therapy in an attempt to convey my excitement for this field moving forward. The convergence of numerous advances in basic biology (as described here and here) and clinical trials (as explained here and...

Bioengineering approaches to building stem cell “homes” outside the body

by David Kent | May 14, 2020

The second post in this series on gene therapy and blood stem cells might give readers a small sense of the absolutely enormous research investment (time, money, people, etc.) required to find a way to expand blood stem cells for therapeutic purposes. Ever since the...

Improving the efficiency of gene targeting in blood stem cells

by David Kent | May 6, 2020

As mentioned in the introductory post to this series on blood stem cell gene therapy, several significant issues existed with the first set of clinical trials in the gene therapy world. It became abundantly clear that simply delivering the gene target on its own would...

Obtaining more target cells for gene therapy

by David Kent | Apr 30, 2020

Blood stem cells are the fundamental component of regenerative medicine applications involving the blood and immune system. Despite significant efforts and investment, the research community has largely failed to maintain fully functional blood stem cells for...