Stem Cell Injections for Osteoarthritic Knees

Some friends recently asked me about getting stem cell injections for painful knees with osteoarthritis (Figure 1). Should they push their doctors for this treatment? Were they, and consequently their stem cells, going to be too old if they waited? I started my investigation at PubMed, searching for “stem cells” and “osteoarthritis,” which produced 1249 … Read more

Engineering the Immune System to Treat Diabetes

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Some diseases arise because the immune system reacts with normal, healthy cells in the body. In other diseases, lack of an effective immune response contributes to the disease. Cancer cells escape attack by the immune system, in part, by producing a lot of the protein PD-L1 (Gough, 24 May 2017). PD-L1 binds and activates the … Read more

Virally Modified Cells Regenerate Normal Skin

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Stem cells hold great promise for medical intervention. However, it has been difficult to leverage these cells effectively. In the study by Hirsch and colleagues, a collaboration between doctors and researchers saved the life of a child with a skin disorder called junctional epidermolysis bullosa (JEB). JEB is a genetic disease caused by mutations in … Read more

Desert Green Algae and Cyanobacteria for Synthetic Biology

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Synthetic biology is the discipline of designing and then engineering artificial systems using biological components. The field of molecular biology and the ability to read the information encoded in DNA are critical to this technical discipline, which also relies on the principles of engineering, detailed knowledge of cell biology, and an understanding of chemistry. Synthetic … Read more