#neostem

CIRM 2.0 starts off with a bang

CIRM has reinvented itself in a new form, CIRM 2.0, under the leadership of its new President Randy Mills.

CIRM is almost like a stem cell that has changed into another new kind of stem cell. Us scientists could see the change coming in the “programming” at CIRM in terms of how it was operating as the 2.0 version, but what would it bring in practical terms?

We are starting to see the new CIRM…

As Predicted, Big News For California Stem Cell, Inc.: Purchased by NeoStem

Late last year I was hearing some exciting things about California Stem Cell, Inc. under the leadership of Hans Keirstead.

In fact, I thought a big move for California Stem was in the cards for 2014 and looking into my stem cell crystal ball, I went so far as to make that one of my top 10 stem cell predictions for 2014.

Today, that prediction came true with the purchaseof California Stem by stem…

Nature was appalled in April by the heavy-handed tactics of the Catholic church in its public courtship of New York-based company Neostem, which is pushing Very Small Embryonic-Like stem cells (VSELs) to clinical trial — prematurely, in the eyes of many scientists. 

The company itself acknowledges the "conflicting and controversial data" (mainly that other labs following their protocol cannot reproduce their results).

‘‘We found that every step of the way, we could not confirm the results of the Ratajczak group,’’ says Irving Weissman, Director of the Stanford Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and the senior author of an article in Stem Cell Reports this week (Stanford press release available here).

As well as being dismissive of this discordant body of literature, the company is now looking to move to clinical trial with the cells, to which the company acquired worldwide exclusive technology rights in 2007.