In recent news, an aging gorilla at the Budapest Zoo has been treated with mesenchymal stem cells to alleviate arthritis. Meanwhile, laboratory-made neurons generated from stem cells have been implanted in the brains of 12 patients suffering from Parkinson’s Disease with effective results. Both of these treatments provide the latest evidence of significant progress in the field of stem cell therapy. Before I underwent knee replacement surgery three years ago last July, I was hellbent on waiting for a stem cell therapy alternative to regrow my arthritic joint. Having endured more than a decade ..read more

One way to put dentists out of the drilling and filling business is to find a way to re-establish and stimulate something our bodies do when our teeth first form. Stem cell researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle may have figured out a potential treatment to repair damaged teeth and regenerate those we lose. Hai Zhang, a professor of restorative dentistry at the University, along with several colleagues has found a way to generate ameloblasts. What are they? Ameloblasts are one of two cells that exist in human embryos responsible for the formation of our teeth. The other cells a ..read more

Osteoarthritis is familiar to me. As the COVID-19 pandemic roiled across North America in 2020, my scheduled knee-replacement surgery was cancelled. After the first wave, and after being infected by the virus, it was several months before I could get to the operating room. Before surgery, I had been dealing with osteoarthritis in both knees for almost two decades. My left knee was far worse than the right. I had been receiving cortisone injections regularly to keep me ambulatory. But in July 2020 I had a prosthetic joint implanted. For years I had put off the surgery in the hope that a less in ..read more

Peter Diamandis writes in his email blast this week, “Imagine creating an embryo from a stem cell. Even further….imagine giving birth to a baby without an egg and a sperm…using an artificial womb.” This sounds like Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” the English author who foretold in his novel a foreboding vision of the future. Peter goes on to describe how this seamlessly impossible capability is much closer to reality as he discusses work by two different research teams working with synthetic mouse embryos created from stem calls rather than eggs and sperm, and about keeping the embryos aliv ..read more

At North Carolina State University, researchers have developed a smart stent that has regenerative therapeutic characteristics. If you are not familiar with stents, they are small metal prostheses that are inserted into blood vessels to open them up to improve vascular blood flow. The best analogy in terms of appearance is to think of the spring contained in your ballpoint pen. Recently I had a cardiac ablation procedure that involved inserting a catheter through my femoral vein into my heart. The ablation would correct atrial fibrillation. an arrhythmia that happened after I was infected with ..read more

CRISPR, the technology first developed by Jennifer Doudna and colleagues at the University of California – Berkeley, is taking on the job of curing hereditary diseases here in the third decade of the 21st century. This is an exciting medical development that has profound implications for some of the most challenging genetic-caused conditions whether in humans or other species. CRISPR today is being tested in clinical trials to treat Type-1 Diabetes Mellitus, Glycogen Storage Disease, Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, Myotonic Dystrophy, Cystic Fibrosis, and a number of refractory cancers including ..read more

The convergence of two technologies is making it possible to free up millions of hectares of agricultural land devoted to livestock. A combination of culturing cells and 3D printing of all types of meat is likely to change land use and the diet of hundreds of millions of people around the world. It could provide reliable food sources even in the face of floods, drought and other environmental catastrophes. I’m not a Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) afficionado. But imagine if KFC were to produce its chicken nuggets from stem cells and 3D-printing plants. In 2020 the news wires lit up with stories ..read more

At North Carolina State University, researchers have developed a smart stent that has regenerative therapeutic characteristics. If you are not familiar with stents, they are small metal prostheses that are inserted into blood vessels to open them up to improve vascular blood flow. The best analogy in terms of appearance is to think of the spring contained in your ballpoint pen. Recently I had a cardiac ablation procedure that involved inserting a catheter through my femoral vein into my heart. The ablation would correct atrial fibrillation. an arrhythmia that happened after I was infected with ..read more

CRISPR, the technology first developed by Jennifer Doudna and colleagues at the University of California – Berkeley, is taking on the job of curing hereditary diseases here in the third decade of the 21st century. This is an exciting medical development that has profound implications for some of the most challenging genetic-caused conditions whether in humans or other species. CRISPR today is being tested in clinical trials to treat Type-1 Diabetes Mellitus, Glycogen Storage Disease, Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, Myotonic Dystrophy, Cystic Fibrosis, and a number of refractory cancers including ..read more

The convergence of two technologies is making it possible to free up millions of hectares of agricultural land devoted to livestock. A combination of culturing cells and 3D printing of all types of meat is likely to change land use and the diet of hundreds of millions of people around the world. It could provide reliable food sources even in the face of floods, drought and other environmental catastrophes. I’m not a Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) afficionado. But imagine if KFC were to produce its chicken nuggets from stem cells and 3D-printing plants. In 2020 the news wires lit up with stories ..read more