Right Turn: Clinical trials – one solution to unapproved stem cell treatments
I’ve been thinking about unapproved stem cell treatments a lot recently. First, I read this article that hailed the arrival of stem cell treatments in a small community in western Canada. There were...
View ArticleRight Turn: ‘Right to try’ state of affairs in U.S.
On Tuesday, August 29, Signals is hosting a blog carnival on the topic Right to Try. Before you read the perspectives of the contributing bloggers, here’s what President Trump thinks about the...
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‘Bad Luck 2.0’ – the transformation to success
By Sara Nolte Over two years ago, an article published in Science took the Internet and media by storm. The paper, “Variation in cancer risk among tissues can be explained by the number of stem cell...
View ArticleRight Turn: A user’s guide to debunking health goop
Do you recognize the name Timothy Caulfield? How about if I tell you that he took on Gwyneth Paltrow and her Goop empire in his popular 2015 book Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything? Caulfield is...
View ArticleRight Turn: Genes are this season’s hottest trend
In what feels like back-to-back news, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved two gene therapies for cancer. The actual announcements happened seven weeks apart, but for patients,...
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Right Turn: Unwrapping bubble boy disease
Before Jake Gyllenhaal starred in the 2001 comedy Bubble Boy, there was a 1976 version starring John Travolta called The Boy In The Plastic Bubble. Both movies were inspired by the lives of David...
View ArticleRight Turn: New approach to treating fatal skin disease that affects babies...
It’s heartbreaking to watch this February 2018 video of Jonathan Pitre, the Canadian teen with epidermolysis bullosa (EB), who advocated for patients and fought so hard to be rid of his disease, and...
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Right Turn: Goodbye NCE, hello New Frontiers in Research Fund
Big news was announced yesterday in Canada’s research community. The Government of Canada’s Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) program is being retired on the cusp of its 30th anniversary and...
View ArticleRight Turn: Curing Canavan Disease with gene therapy
Rare diseases are defined as such because the number of people affected by them is considered very low. Depending on which country you live in, that number will change. There are so many rare diseases...
View ArticleRight Turn: Disappointing news about regenerative medicine funding in Ontario
It was announced publicly this week that the Ontario Institute for Regenerative Medicine’s (OIRM) funding will not be renewed after March 2020. Closing OIRM would be a significant loss to the...
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Right Turn: Are stem cell documentaries aiming to lend legitimacy to unproven...
In our hyperconnected world, video is king. There are many reasons for this, including the fact that for marketers video helps convert visitors (to a website for example) into customers. Videos also...
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Right Turn: On your mark, get set, MO!
While this November has been dramatic on the weather front, it has been unremarkable as far as Movember goes. I am only n=1, but I haven’t noticed any unusual facial hair growing on male colleagues,...
View ArticleRight Turn: Holiday gifts to help find cures
Are you a risk taker? Do you pride yourself on giving unique and intriguing gifts? Well if you haven’t yet heard of Two Blind Brothers, pay attention. Two Blind Brothers produces clothing to fund...
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Info for all, minus the paywall
Joshua Dierolf (www.joshuadierolf.com) is a PhD candidate at Western University studying the influence of metabolism on stem cell pluripotency and early development. It is hard to evade the incessant...
View ArticleRight Turn: Exciting progress in treating Cystic Fibrosis
I am going to take a guess that the teen romance movie Five Feet Apart, starring Haley Lu Richardson and Cole Sprouse, introduced many people to cystic fibrosis (CF). Certainly that was the case for my...
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Could stem cells be enlisted to battle COVID-19?
MERS-Coronavirus particle, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Earlier this month, Chinese media reported that doctors in Yunnan cured a patient from coronavirus with a stem cell...
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Communicating new science in a crisis
On most days, scientific discoveries are not cover stories or even top headlines. That hasn’t been the case since COVID-19 hit our collective consciousness. We are being inundated with science news,...
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Blog Carnival: Cell and gene therapy industry to emerge stronger post-COVID-19
Credit: Flickr Finally, COVID-19 is no longer the only topic dominating the news cycle, although it took several months before mainstream media felt they could move away from covering a global pandemic...
View ArticleRight Turn: Observable progress for people with eye diseases
The news that Health Canada has approved gene therapy Luxturna to treat blindness couldn’t come at a better time, as October is Blindness Awareness Month. You don’t have to look far to find other high...
View ArticleRight Turn: President Biden is bringing science back
Former president Donald Trump was, unfortunately, not a big fan of science. Perhaps more damaging, he was an instigator of misinformation and disinformation. One gem that will be remembered long after...
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