Dompaminergic neurons derived from human embryonic stem cells. These cells degenerate in Parkinson’s disease. This photo was taken by Jeannie Liu in the lab of Jan Nolta at the University of California, Davis. CIRM on Flickr A recent Wall Street Journal article reminded me of the work of someone I came to know well while...

Continue reading

Regular readers of Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM) sector reports may have noticed that the organization is taking a new approach to sharing insights on the cell and gene therapy sector. In April, ARM launched a new format for distilling key data and trend insights. Let’s delve into the key highlights from April’s inaugural Sector...

Continue reading

Credit: National Institutes of Health CRISPR-Cas9 is not only a revolutionary technology, it is also a topic that never ceases to intrigue. From gene editing to agriculture, the possibilities are seemingly endless. In medicine, CRISPR-Cas9 has shown promising results in curing genetic blood disorders and developing new therapies for cancer. However, concerns about off-target editing...

Continue reading

For people like me working in the biological science sector, the annual DNA Day (every April 25th) is always a cause to raise a toast, but this year was special. It marked the 70th anniversary of the discovery of the double helix by Watson and Crick (and Franklin) and the 20th anniversary of the completion...

Continue reading

The first Science Huddle panel discussion of 2023, Cell & Gene Therapy: Maximizing Commercialization, delved into challenges keeping leaders in the cell and gene therapy (CGT) commercialization space up at night. Moderating the event was Dr. Christian K. Schneider, Head of Biopharma Excellence, who has held leadership roles with both Danish and UK regulatory agencies,...

Continue reading

One of the major limitations of using stem cell donors is the challenge of finding an adequate match, which is why I always get excited about therapies that use a patient’s own tissue. But why is the issue of a “match” such a big deal? You may have come across terms like “graft versus host...

Continue reading

Peace Chukwu is a medical writer and fourth-year medical student at the University of Nigeria. She also serves as the national Editor-in-Chief for SCORA, a magazine published by the Nigerian Medical Students Association. She tweets @Makuopeace. Nile tilapia, wikipedia commons As a medical student, watching the episode on Grey’s Anatomy where fish skin was used...

Continue reading

Stephie Leung is currently an Associate Scientist at Artisan Biotechnologies. Stephie started her career in cell and gene therapy with GE Healthcare Lifesciences, working at the Centre for Advanced Therapeutic Cell Technologies, a collaboration between CCRM and GE Healthcare in CCRM’s Toronto office. As such, she considers herself a CCRM alumna and is eager to contribute her writing to Signals. Over...

Continue reading

Peter Zandstra enjoying the beauty of British Columbia Few people have made bigger contributions to the Canadian regenerative medicine ecosystem than Dr. Peter Zandstra. He is co-founder of two companies advancing cutting-edge biotechnologies for therapeutic use (Notch Therapeutics and ExCellThera, both of which are developing technologies set to transform the lives of patients) and he’s...

Continue reading

OpenAI’s recent release of GPT-4 has made headlines in the last week. It is the latest version of the large language model that powers its popular artificial intelligence (AI) chat bot: ChatGPT. Passing the U.S. bar exam is one of its notable accomplishments. Plus, this version analyzes images (for example, it can assess a photo...

Continue reading