Right Turn: The ABCs of IP and CEO

by Stacey Johnson | May 11, 2018

For Canada to thrive, supporting and training our future work force and leaders is crucial. This can happen in a myriad of ways. For a group of Canadian organizations in the biotherapeutics field, this has taken the form of joining together to host training workshops...

Right Turn: CRISPR, at a theatre near you

by Stacey Johnson | May 4, 2018

Does it seem like CRISPR is everywhere these days? That’s because it is! The popular gene editing tool – Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats – is significant for its ability to edit DNA at precise locations, making it possible to correct...

Human brain implants thrive inside mouse skulls and raise ethical questions

by Jovana Drinjakovic | Apr 25, 2018

Miniature human brains continue to develop when hooked up to a blood supply in the mouse brain in a finding that opens up new avenues for learning how the brain forms and falls ill, while at the same time raising ethical questions. Last week, two teams reported...

Right Turn: Talking gene therapies at StemCellTalks McMaster

by Stacey Johnson | Apr 20, 2018

This week (April 15-21) is National Volunteer Week. Across Canada, 12.7 million people donate their time to make Canada a better place to live. In the stem cell community, scientists, clinicians, researchers and hundreds of university students across the country work...

Will THIW become the next TIFF?

by Stacey Johnson | Apr 13, 2018

For those who aren’t familiar with THIW, there are parties but no films getting their world premieres. The comparison I’m making in the title is to the fact THIW is becoming a must-attend week-long event, with so much going on from morning to night, that serious...

Digital health: The new frontier of diagnosis?

by Guest | Apr 6, 2018

Meredith O’Brien is the Communications Coordinator at CCRM. Meredith graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, Honours in Film and Media from Queen’s University. While writing her fourth-year thesis titled “iViral: The power of the individual in driving viral content,” she...

Checking in at the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering

by Stacey Johnson | Mar 30, 2018

Canada’s reputation for excellent science in the field of regenerative medicine can be traced back to the University of Toronto (U of T). Quite literally, Drs. James Till and Ernest McCulloch were U of T researchers when they discovered stem cells in the early 1960s....

Right Turn: Will civil lawsuits stop the marketing of unapproved stem cell treatments?

by Stacey Johnson | Mar 23, 2018

With 570 stem cell clinics in the United States alone offering direct-to-consumer marketing of stem cell interventions and “clear grounds for concern that some of the companies we found are not compliant with federal regulations” (Knoepfler and Turner, Cell Stem...

No “double standards” – Advancements in cell and gene therapy

by Sowmya Viswanathan | Mar 12, 2018

Dr. Sheng Lin-Gibson is the Chief of Biosystems and Biomaterials Division at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and directs its Regenerative Medicine Programs. She serves as the Convenor of ISO/TC 276: Biotechnology Working Group...

Right Turn: International Women’s Day should be every day

by Stacey Johnson | Mar 8, 2018

International Women’s Day (IWD), also known as the United Nations (UN) Day for Women’s Rights and International Peace, is an opportunity to honour women’s achievements, “to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have...