Just when I thought that the myths about stem cells, particularly embryonic stem cells, couldn’t get any more fantastic (as in based on fantasy), we have some bright folks out there thinking that soda (pop, coke, pepsi, whatever you call it) is made using embryonic stem cells.

The headline goes: Pepsi is using embryonic stem cells to make better sodas.

While it is true that the enormous corporation that is Pepsi contributes relatively small amounts of money to study the effects of sugar and possible sugar substitutes on cells, the cells involved are in fact not stem cells. They are in reality a human kidney cell line used by thousands of labs around the world.

There is no real connection between Pepsi and embryonic stem cell research that I know of, although even if there was, I see that as no reason to boycott Pepsi.

But even so now reportedly we have a Republican, Ralph Shortey, from Oklahoma introducing a bill that would prohibit making or selling food products that use aborted human fetuses and reportedly the Pepsi stem cell myth is his inspiration.

No I’m not making this up. In fact, there is a very real boycott of Pepsi underway because of this myth.

For reference, the University of Michigan has an excellent website on stem cell myths.

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Imagine my surprise as Republicans here in the U.S. have contributed mightily to stem cell research recently.

Wait, what?

There is a perception that when it comes to stem cell research and particularly embryonic stem cell research that there is a political divide with Republicans opposed to it and Democrats for it.

Of course it is not that simple, but it sure seems like most Republican leaders (even if not necessarily ordinary Republicans) spew out a lot of anti-stem cell rhetoric and do extreme things like sign “personhood” pledges.

So it is indeed surprising that Republicans have recently made decisions that are almost certain to help embryonic stem cell research.

Really? you ask.

Yes, the Republicans have surprisingly helped us in the stem cell field by in effect painting themselves into a corner during their primaries, leaving them with two extremely weak presidential candidates.

The two remaining GOP candidates (for the moment assuming Mr. Paul and Santorum are effectively out of the running) are Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney.

Seeing these two as the remaining fellows, one of whom who will have to go against Obama later this year, must make Obama feel like a kid in a candy store. His potential opponents are so bad, it must just be so hard for him to choose who he’d rather face. What a pickle!

Sorry to my Republican friends, but Gingrich and Romney are equally horrible candidates.

Republicans have done the stem cell field and America more generally a great service by leaving themselves with a pool of two nightmarish candidates. I believe neither can beat Obama barring some jolting development. Most Republicans realize this and now have a full on case of “the vapors”.

Gingrich is an ethically-challenged jerk hated by most establishment Republicans and Romney is an elitist, out-of-touch pseudo-Republican that most Republicans truthfully cannot stomach. Choose your poison, Republicans.

Romney just today released his tax forms for 2010 and 2011, earning more than $40 million and paying less tax on that than most Americans including the middle class. A sizable chunk of his money has gone to Swiss bank accounts (which Romney closed for political reasons) and the Cayman Islands. His work history is solidly founded on earning $10s of millions via Bain by getting hundreds if not thousands of ordinary Americans fired and bankrupting companies. This is the guy who said publicly that he likes to be a position to fire people. This is the guy who calls corporations “people” and seems like a grown up version of the comic character Richie Rich. If, as Romney asserts, corporations are indeed “people” then is not his killing of so many companies a violation of the pro-life agenda he now claims to espouse?

Gingrich has more enemies amongst Republicans than Democrats, which is quite an achievement. He is on his third wife and was cheating on an earlier wife while simultaneously rabidly pushing for Clinton’s impeachment for lying about cheating on his wife. Can you say “Hypocrite”? On TV, Gingrich comes across as a cross between a rabid pit bull and the Pillsbury dough boy. He has publicly stated that if he is President and the Supreme Court makes a ruling he does not like, he’ll simply ignore it. The idea of Newt as the GOP nominee this year is giving mainstream Republicans arrhythmias and fainting spells. They are near hysterical at his performance in S. California and the prospect that Gingrich could well win the Florida primary too.

Of course if Ron Paul runs as a third-party candidate, this is likely to siphon off more votes from whomever is the official Republican nominee as well.

So, thank you Republicans, for making it more and more likely that Obama, a friend to stem cell research, will remain in office, avoiding the stem cell perfect storm I posted about in December.

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Texas is holding up a Texas-sized magnet for stem cell super star researchers and it is working.

The upper mid-West is reeling from the departure of two stem cell superstars in less than one year and both went South to Texas.

First in May 2011, we had the departure of Sean Morrison from U. of Michigan to UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

Now today we hear that reportedly Doris Taylor is leaving U. of Minnesota and is also Texas bound, in this case for Houston. Taylor will be joining the Texas Hearth Institute at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital in Houston. Dr. Taylor is a true pioneer in the stem cell field, particularly in clinical applications. She received her PhD in pharmacology from UT Southwestern in Dallas where Morrison is now on faculty.

Texas is serious about stem cell research (just ask my good friend Keri Kimler!) and look for Texas to land even more stem cell leaders in the coming years.

Many in California were hoping that Taylor would have been lured to this state via one of the CIRM leadership awards, but alas no such luck. You can read more about Taylor’s research on her still-active U. of Minn website.

Who will be the next stem cell star drawn to Texas?

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Scientists are addicted to email.

It’s difficult to dispute that statement, but is email good or bad for science?

Superficially, it is easy to make the case that email is good for science. Email allows scientists all over the world to rapidly communicate with each other in ways that simply were not possible prior to the email era. In that way, email is an enabler of collaboration and data sharing. Email is also a far more concrete and even documentable method of communication compared to talking on the phone. Thus, in theory email should provide a basis for avoiding misunderstanding.

So, ha, email is good for science…right?

Not so fast.

What is the case that email is bad for science?

Low signal-to-noise ratio. In science we often talk about signal-to-noise ratio. One problem with email is that this ratio is very low. Most emails, even setting aside spam for the moment, are noise and few are signals that we want or need to read. However, while our spam filters may do a reasonably good job sieving out spam, there is no filter for what I call “noise” emails.

How much time every day do scientists waste on this noise? Per week? Per year? I hate to even make a back of the napkin calculation.

Volume. After a certain time in science, particularly if one writes a blog, the shear amount of email that one receives becomes mind-boggling. On a bad week, I can receive almost 1,000 spam emails alone. It is not unusual for me to receive 1,000 “noise” emails as well. Then I probably receive on a busy week about 1,000 emails a week that are “signal”. These are the emails sent from real people that serve the positive benefit of email. They contain questions, data, invitations, ideas, reminders, requests, job inquires, and so forth. So even the volume of “real” emails is at times incredibly high. Of course only a subset of these “real” emails are deserving of attention.

Obligation bombs. One downside of email for faculty is that it is too easy a venue for people to make demands of us. Such demands may be requests to be on committees or attend meetings. These emails are easy for folks to send out to many recipients asking them for a chunk of precious time. Such requests would be far more difficult for someone to make by phone or in person.

Artificial sense of urgency. It is too easy for scientists to let their email distract them. Email programs are easily set to check for new email at regular intervals and give a little notice that “you’ve got mail”….however, when set to do this, email can be very distracting and I find it wiser to not do this, particularly as most email is noise. On the other hand, scientists are operating at ever increasing speeds and they want their information faster. They may also be eagerly awaiting certain emails such as decisions from journals, etc so they are often tempted to have their email auto-check regularly. Email also perpetuates a growing trend that emails must be responded to quickly, but really most often this is not necessary or even desirable….however the sense is there that speed is better.

Miscommunication and angry communication. Email is the basis for more miscommunication than any other form of communication today. This kind of poor communication and in some cases email acting as an “easy” way for people to express anger without having to face a person, can be extremely disruptive and a huge waste of time and energy. Without talking to a person face-to-face, people tend to send more emotional emails and there are often misunderstandings.

Email also makes it easy to accidentally (or purposefully) send dumb messages to large numbers of people at once. I’ve seen angry people send spiteful emails to entire departments of deans of colleges….and once the deed was done, it was too late. There is no undoing an email.

What most scientists find is that they spend too much time on email for all these reasons, but email is not something they can simply ignore because despite these problems there are very important emails in the mix and it is far too easy to get behind on one’s email.

Solutions?

What some scientists do is have a separate “secret” email that only their closest associates know about. Such secret email addresses are intended to result in a purer stream of high value content email. I’ve never had a secret email address, but I seriously doubt that it achieves its purpose and it also defeats one golden intent of email, which is to facilitate communication between scientists that do not know each other.

Other scientists who have administrative assistants ask them to sift through their emails for them, but I doubt many do this because first of all I don’t think many people have their own administrative people any more and even if they do, the admin people have better things to do. Also, most scientists feel the need to go through their email themselves. I’ve never had an administrative assistant so I have never faced this dilemma.

What do you think? Is email good or bad for science? Please take our poll above. Comments are also appreciated.

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There is a postdoc position available in the Knoepfler Lab at UC Davis School of Medicine in Stem Cell Research.  This position is funded by a grant from CIRM.

The applicant filling this position will study epigenetic and genomic events in stem cells including iPS and ES cells as well as cancer stem cells.

Qualified applicants will have an Ph.D., and M.D., or both. They must have a track record of first-author publications in internationally respected journals in molecular, cellular, or developmental biology or biochemistry.

Qualified applicants are encouraged to send their CVs as well as the names and contact information of 3 references to knoepfler@ucdavis.edu .

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Today after years of following the company Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), I finally bought stock (ACTC) in it.

Why?

As a stem cell researcher myself working on human ES cells, iPS cells, and many other types of stem cells, I have been following ACT for years, but have never pulled the trigger to buy their stock….until now.

They are conducting research on using human ES cell-based technology as treatments for blindness. They are also currently the only company with FDA approved clinical trials underway.

At one point in the last few years, I could have bought the stock for a nickel a share, but didn’t. I felt it was too risky at that point. ACT investors are readers of my blog and have been telling me for years to buy the stock, but I am a pretty conservative investor.

What changed to make me, someone who is quite risk averse, buy this high-risk biotech stock?

They published their initial findings from a few patients from their clinical trial in the prestigious journal, Lancet. At least they will publish it later this week, but word broke today about the study.

ACT researchers led by stem cell superstar Robert Lanza found that their human ES-cell based RPE drug has so far proved safe and there are even hints at efficacy in their initial data. To me this is a huge step forward and I applaud ACT for publishing this work. Too often biotechs keep everything a secret.

As a scientist, I have to point out one potential complicating factor from their initial study is that reportedly the evidence of efficacy in the treated eye of one patient were also accompanied by improvements in vision in the uninjected control eye as well. However, only the treated eye in another patient improved, which is encouraging.

You have to keep in mind in these early phase clinical trials that the patients allowed to be enrolled have very severe disease so the potential for improvement could also be constrained by the severity of the disease. The FDA does not want new treatments safety tested in patients with only mild disease because the risk for harm is higher. For example, you could make a person with only moderately impaired vision go blind. However, at least so far with ACT’s studies, the treatment seems safe after 4 months.

So after following ACT for years, I decided to buy their stock because I think this publication in Lancet represents a huge milestone for the company.

I am honest with myself that it is a risky investment and for all I know I could lose it all. Data from longer term studies with more patients will tell a clearer story on which to judge ACT’s potential, but so far so good. Good enough for me to make a small investment in this company.

Investing in ACT is also an ethical thing to do. Trying to help blind people see and people with impaired vision retain their sight seems like a very worth cause to me.

Disclosure. Obviously based on the title of this article, I now ACT stock. I am not a financial advisor and do not recommend investments. All readers of this blog should consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions. This blog post does not constitute financial advice.

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In June 2011 I did a post about genomics and its growing importance both for science and society. The stem cell field has a very rapidly accelerating genomic component as well. I went so far as to call it a revolution and I still believe that is not an exaggeration.

CIRM has rightly recognized the critical importance of genomics for understanding stem cell biology and applying that technology to the clinic. This past week CIRM approved funding for an initiative on genomics that would fund, according to the CIRM PR, one or two centers of excellence doing research in this area. This is very exciting.

Areas of stem cell genomics research could include whole genome sequencing of stem cells of various types including iPS cells. We know that both iPS cells and ES cells have some unusual genomic and so-called epigenomic characteristics, but more work needs to be done in this area to more clearly understand the importance of these characteristics.

While CIRM will not release an RFA for this funding mechanism for a few more months you can read more about CIRM’s thoughts about this in their concept statement here as well as an interesting article by CIRM (DeWitt et al in Nature Biotechnology). These are PDFs.

CIRM is wise to fund genomics research. Whether you are a scientist, patient advocate, or anyone else interested in health care, you should not “miss the boat” on the genomics revolution. It will change your life.

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What does it take to succeed in science?

Here are some key ingredients in my opinion after 22 years in academic science.

Passion. One important ingredient that we cannot necessarily change significantly about ourselves, but that I think nonetheless is crucial for success, is a true excitement for science. Sometimes people even go so far as to call it “passion” or “fire in the belly”, which sounds a bit over the top, but I think is pretty accurate about many successful scientists.

They love science.

So I would say to young folks thinking about a career in science:

how much do you really like science?

Of course not everyone who is successful in science is going to be born loving it or even realize they like it strongly before college. For example, despite my love of science at a young age, I also loved writing and ended up getting a B.A. in English Literature at Reed College so I can’t claim complete fidelity to science. However, I took science classes at Reed and came close to getting a Bio major.

If you don’t strongly like science at least by the time you are well into college, my advice is don’t try to make a career out of it.

Of course there will always be exceptions to this rule and I know people who became scientists later in life and had great success, but they had always liked science and just found themselves in other careers. However, if you look into your heart and don’t strongly like science, than pursuing a career in it is likely to leave you frustrated and unsuccessful.

People. There is this stereotype about scientists that they have rather poor people skills, perhaps most recently (and strikingly) illustrated by the funny show The Big Bang Theory mostly populated by science geek characters from Caltech. While these physicists in the show are indeed inept at dealing with people, I’d venture to say that not all scientists are that way. In fact, I know many scientists who are delightfully engaging human beings, outgoing, and even charismatic. My dad was good with people and he graduated from Caltech.

But, that’s actually not what I mean when I list “people” as an important factor in success in science.

Instead, what I mean is that with only rare exceptions, you really cannot go it alone in science and the people around you will play crucial roles in whether you are successful or not. I’ve done a previous post on mentoring and I believe that mentors for all stages of scientists are very important. I also was fortunate to publish a piece written by Irv Weissman on his mentors, who helped make him the godfather of stem cell research. Finding the “right” mentor is critical and what “right” means depends on who you are. One student might find a mentor overbearing, while another might flourish with a mentor who provides a lot of structure. Others might do best with a mentor who expects independence.

In addition during your career, other students, technicians, administrative staff, etc. are part of your community as a developing scientist. You need to show all these people respect. Science is a small world and you never know when you might need help from the most unexpected people.

In science a huge part of your success or lack thereof will be your reputation and you start developing that early. Reputations can be powerful things. Go out of your way to show the people around you and also your long distance colleagues that you are a good colleague. Avoid pettiness. Be generous with your time and give to your fellow students and others. Be polite. Make yourself an asset to others.

At the same time, you have to have your own personality as a scientist. You need a balance between confidence and respect for others.

You also need to learn what you can from everybody. You can learn from other people’s successes but also their mistakes.

Persistence. At every level of science, persistence is vital. We all get grant rejections. We all get paper rejections. We get other kinds of rejection. Our experiments don’t work either for no apparent reason or because we messed up. Despite these hurdles, you must continue pushing forward and keep focused!

The most successful scientists I know all share one trait: they have an amazing ability to both  persist and focus despite challenges and hurdles.

There will be times in science when working fast to get papers done and published are important, but in general Science is a marathon not a sprint. 

A lot of science is doing seemingly the same thing or very similar things over and over….if that sounds too frustrating to you than science may not be for you.  Even the most creative, cutting edge, high risk science will involve repetition and certainly will present you with times when it feels like nothing is working. At those times you need to find something in yourself to keep going. You can’t rely on your mentor or friends to keep you going. Science is not for the easily discouraged. You also must have a sense of personal responsibility.

Perspective. When I was a graduate student I had a eureka moment. It wasn’t some discovery at the bench. Rather, at some point I was talking with my old friend Frank while our gels were running and I realized that during one’s time in science you are not only doing science, but also you should be growing as a scientist. This may sound corny, but it is so true. I believe that to be successful in science you have to keep perspective that you are really doing two things. You are doing science and you are also changing as a person. If you do not follow both these paths, then you will not really succeed as a scientist. The great scientists that I know realize this and they embrace lifelong learning. They take every opportunity to improve as a scientist and a person. It is not enough to do great science. You also have to keep making yourself better, learning new things, taking a fresh perspective….otherwise you’ll find yourself the same person you were a long time ago without having grown.

In the end you need to be honest with yourself and I think you’ll find the answers as to whether a career in science is right for you. Even if you are not 100% sure, there’s nothing wrong with in essence experimenting on yourself in the sense of trying out science for a while and seeing if it “clicks” for you. That’s in fact more generally what life is all about.

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This post is focused on the important facts you need to know about stem cells as drugs.

Many of the folks out there who want to earn a living to scamming vulnerable patients with so-called “stem cell treatments” have been upset that the U.S. FDA continues to view stem cell-based therapies and indeed cell therapies more generally as “drugs”.

By viewing stem cells as technically drugs, the FDA has the authority and responsibility to regulate stem cell-based treatments for safety and efficacy. The stem cell scammers don’t like that of course because they want to operate under their own rules where safety and efficacy are not important.

For now, however, stem cells are drugs. That is reality.

However, stem cells are very different from all other drugs in ways that are important for you to understand.

I recall a segment from the Canadian news show 16×9 where a doctor who lost his license in the U.S. was now offering stem cell treatments in Mexico. Unlike most folks offering such treatments, this guy did at least warn the patient (as captured on hidden camera) that stem cells have risks….however he compared stem cells to aspirin, which is a bit deceiving.

It is true that aspirin is a drug and stem cells are a drug, meaning that both can have benefits and side effects (a comparison I myself discussed here in my guide to patients). Indeed, even aspirin has potent dangers and a recent study showed that all those people out there in the world taking a daily aspirin to try to prevent heart attacks may in fact be doing themselves more harm than good (see a discussion of that study here).

But stem cells are fundamentally different from any other drug and let me explain how. This is critically important if you or a family member are thinking about stem cells as a treatment!

Let’s start with aspirin as our representative traditional, chemical drug. When you take an aspirin, your digestive system takes it up,  the concentration in your body goes up for a certain number of hours, and then the concentration starts going down. Your body metabolizes drugs and excretes them. At some point within a few days, that aspirin is essentially 100% gone from your body and never comes back unless you take another pill.

OK, let’s say you now get an injection of stem cells. What happens next is totally different than for a traditional “pill” drug. Unlike a chemical pill, the stem cells are alive! They are either injected into your bloodstream or a tissue. After injection, a lot of the stem cells die from shock or from being attacked by your body’s immune system, depending on the source of the stem cells. However, in many cases, a lot of stem cells survive. So while their “concentration” goes down (to continue the discussion from a drug perspective), there is a good chance that they never completely go away. This is a key difference from a chemical drug.

Not only may some of the stem cells survive and live in your body forever after a transplant, but some of them may proliferate and increase in number. Thus, their “concentration” may not only vary over time but may start increasing. Again, this is a key difference compared to a chemical pill drug.

The stem cells may also move around your body. So for example, stem cells injected into your neck or back may end up in your brain or kidney, etc. It is also worth noting that most likely no matter where the stem cells are injected, some will end up in your blood stream allowing them to ride around in your body and take root anywhere they please.

Stem cells can also cause cancer once transplanted. Stem cells are cousins of cancer cells in most cases….while the cancer cells are the black sheep of that family, stem cells can also turn to the dark side and give you cancer under certain circumstances.

The bottom line is that unlike all traditional chemical pill drugs, once you are injected with a stem cell treatment, you will in many cases have that “drug” forever and be unable to control how it behaves in your body.

The same holds true for your child.

If you are contemplating getting a stem cell treatment for your child, keep in mind that the stem cells injected into your kid will most likely stay with them forever as in the rest of their lives and those stem cells can later on do bad things that nobody can stop.

Think about this carefully.

You take an aspirin, it soon goes away. But once you get a stem cell treatment, your body (or your child’s) cannot necessarily get rid of those stem cells ever! In some cases your body will get rid of the stem cells, but in other cases it won’t and there’s no way to know in advance which will happen. Thus, taking a stem cell “drug” has unique risks you have to face realistically.

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About two months about Geron shocked and disappointed the stem cell community by dropping its stem cell program. The move was reportedly made for financial, not scientific reasons.

Biotech companies have to be financially sound in order to help stem cell researchers turn science into cures and Geron’s leadership had to do what it thought important. Even so, I think Geron made the wrong move and I called it the biggest misstep in the stem cell field of 2011 in  my post Stem Cell Awards for 2011, one of this blog’s most read posts ever.

For years, Geron and Advanced Cell Technology, the two companies furthest along in pursuing human embryonic stem cell (hESC)-based regenerative medicine therapies, have been linked together. I’m not sure the companies enjoyed this relationship and from what I hear many viewed the two as fierce competitors.

As of July 2011, both companies had treated patients in hESC-based early phase clinical trials. A month earlier in June 2011, I did a post questioning whether ACT and Geron were allies or competitors. My feeling was that they were allies in reality, despite the competitive feelings between investors in the companies. I still felt that way when Geron punted.

So where does Geron’s exit leave ACT?

ACT’s trials are ongoing, but as Robert Lanza, CSO of ACT recently put it, Geron’s departure leaves all the focus (and pressure) on ACT. They really are alone out there at the moment.

In my Top 10 stem cell predictions for 2012 posted on December 7, 2011, my #1 most important prediction for the whole stem cell field was that ACT’s clinical trials would show their RPE product to be safe in 2012. Regarding efficacy, I also said “I hope the data points in that direction”.

It’s only mid-January 2012 so there’s still plenty of time this year for ACT to let us know how things are going with their trial. Remarkably, ACT’s stock (symbol ACTC) is up 72% in 2012 so far, suggesting that investors believe in this company and are optimistic about its hESC drug trial. You can tap into the chatter between ACT investors at the ACTC investorshub website (be prepared for a lot of speculative comments on there) and also more generally in the stem cell field at investorstemcell.com.

I think Geron’s departure is not good news for ACT by any means, but I also believe that ACT has matured as a company and can handle being the only one in the spotlight for the moment. My hope is that additional companies will start clinical trials using hESC as well in the next year or two, but it could be a while….so for the time being ACT, you are the one star out there.

Disclosures: I do not currently have investments in either company discussed in this post. I am not a stock analyst and recommend that investors consult a professional advisor before making investment decisions.

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