Archive by category | International Society for Stem Cell Research

ISSCR 2008: It’s “Shinyamania”

I cornered Harvard’s George Daley shortly after this afternoon’s opening symposium at the International Society for Stem Cell Research meeting in Philadelphia, and asked him for some stats and trends at the meeting. He’s the current president of ISSCR. There are 24,000 2,400 pre-registered attendees, he told me. That’s only 24 2.4 times the size of the last meeting I attended. As for trends: “There’s certainly a bit of Shinya-mania,” Daley said. He was referring to the focus on induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), adult human cells reprogrammed to a stem cell-like state thanks to a couple of transcription factors by a Japanese group led by Shinya Yamanaka.  Read more

ISSCR 2008: Making Beta Cells (and cutting out the middleman)

Harvard’s Doug Melton, in a plenary talk this afternoon to open the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) meeting in Philadelphia, actually didn’t talk about stem cells at all. Rather he discussed new results showing direct differentiation of pancreatic tissue into the elusive and important Beta cells, skipping stem cells altogether.  Read more