What’s more important than Woolly Mammoth de-extinction research in the stem cell arena? Only maybe a 10,000 other things.
Still, the mammoth de-extinction efforts capture people’s attention much more than the average research story.
Mammoth De-extinction update
Is de-extinction only a pipette dream? This startup has a big, expensive plan to find out, Popular Science. I’ve written before about George Church’s project to bring back Woolly Mammoths.
I still think it’s a lousy plan even if it’s fun to think about in a bubble but not in the real world. In reality, there are many ugly outcomes possible.
It might be a moot point because the way things are going so slowly, there’s a solid chance this particular de-extinction will never happen. George and I might need to be de-extincted ourselves by the time a real Woolly Mammoth could be brought back.
The firm Colossal Biosciences keeps ‘watering down’ the creature it might create to the point it wouldn’t be a Mammoth. No tusks. limited Mammoth DNA, etc. Probably more like an odd, maybe sickly hybrid elephant. Bad idea.
Other recommended reads
- Cell-based versus corticosteroid injections for knee pain in osteoarthritis: a randomized phase 3 trial, Nature Medicine. Hundreds of stem cell clinics sell the types of orthobiologics tested in this rigorous trial. However, the trial found no benefit over standard of care: “In summary, this study shows that at 1 year post injection, there was no superior orthobiologic as compared to CSI for knee osteoarthritis.”
- Decoding aging-dependent regenerative decline across tissues at single-cell resolution, Cell Stem Cell.
- FDA Clears NKGen Biotech to Start US Trials of Alzheimer’s Cell Therapy, Precision Med Online.
- Panel Says That Innovative Sickle Cell Cure Is Safe Enough for Patients, NYT. This is from Vertex and CRISPR Therapeutics. Very good news.
- Effect of microgravity on mammalian embryo development evaluated at the International Space Station, iScience. I found this article by seeing a short blurb on Nature that, based on the new data, was entitled, “Embryos show space babies might be OK.” That title might be a tad premature given the early nature of the work? Still, this is cool research. It was led by stem cell and developmental biologist Teruhiko Wakayama.
- Second Maryland Man to Receive an Altered Pig’s Heart Has Died, NYT.
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- Source: https://ipscell.com/2023/11/weekly-reads-mammoth-de-extinction-update-space-babies-alzheimers-mscs-dont-help-knees/