Multiple companies are pursuing CD47-blockade as a tumor immunotherapy approach. Sana Biotechnology Inc., too, is interested in the therapeutic potential of CD47 – but from a very different angle. By overexpressing CD47 on stem cells, researchers at Sana want to make transplanted cells invisible to the immune system.
Sometimes, scientific progress comes from conceptual insights that arrive in a flash. More often, however, such progress arrives in a decidedly less glamorous, though no less important, manner – through the development of new technologies in what can be a very slow iterative cycle of getting a new method to work.
Two separate groups have recently shown that in mouse models, inactivation of a single gene was enough to directly convert other cell types in the brain into neurons.
Technical challenges at the annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) meeting led to at least one lively exchange of stem cell jokes in the chat box as the audience waited for talks to resume, including stem cell parental advice: “You can be anything you want when you grow up!”
LONDON – After the human brain organoid, here comes the gastruloid – a 3D organized model of key elements of the human embryo at around 18 to 21 days old.
Stem cells haven’t exactly panned out as hoped when it comes to approved therapeutics. There are only a couple that have received a nod from the FDA in very specific indications. But the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic could push stem cells back into the limelight and more firmly establish them as therapeutically relevant.
A study published in the Nov. 27, 2019, advance online issue of Nature manages a rare feat. It is both a vindication of and egg in the face for cardiac stem cell research. The good news is that cardiac stem cell transplantation after a heart attack does improve heart function, although the effect is “mild,” Jeffery Molkentin told BioWorld.
MELBOURNE, Australia – Researchers at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne are pushing the boundaries on creating kidney tissue from stem cells.
PERTH, Australia – Stem cell therapy has failed to deliver on its promises, according to Exopharm Ltd. founder and CEO Ian Dixon, who said he believes that exosomes, or the extracellular vesicles released by stem cells, could be a disrupter in the regenerative medicine space.
Stem cell therapies may be relatively early stage, but that hasn’t stopped their developers from giving some serious thought to late stage issues like reimbursement and health economics. At the recent 2011 Stem Cell Meeting on the Mesa, panelists debated how careful consideration of such issues might help them avoid following in the footsteps of Dendreon Corp. First hailed as a front-runner of the cell therapy field for getting FDA approval of prostate cancer vaccine Provenge (sipuleucel-T), Dendreon has since become the red-headed stepchild of many analysts and investors due to its failure to gain commercial traction for the product....
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