By Adithi Iyer In February, the news broke that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved a “first of its kind” new cancer therapy. Iovance’s AMTAGVITM, the subject of the approval, is a personalized immunotherapy for advanced melanoma. To be treated, adult patients who are ineligible for surgery or have metastatic disease provide their…
A synthetic embryo can now be constructed without an egg or sperm. This throws a moral monkey-wrench into current restrictions on embryonic research.
By Sara Gerke At the General Meeting of the German Stem Cell Network (GSCN) in Jena in September 2017, Tobias Cantz and I proposed the establishment of a new GSCN strategic working group. This new working group, known as ELSA, focuses on the ethical, legal and social aspects of the modern life sciences. ELSA aims to serve…
By Robert D. Truog, MD and Melissa J. Lopes, JD The Harvard Embryonic Stem Cell Research Oversight (the “ESCRO”) Committee, an ethics oversight committee charged with reviewing research protocols involving human embryos, human embryonic stem cells, and certain activities with non-embryonic human pluripotent stem cells, recently issued a report exploring the ethical issues related to the creation of synthetic…
By Nadia N. Sawicki Loyola University Chicago’s nationally acclaimed Beazley Institute for Health Law and Policy is pleased to invite original research submissions for the annual Wiet Life Science Law Scholars Conference to be held on Friday, September 7, 2018. The conference is designed to provide an intellectual venue for life science professors, scholars, and…
By I. Glenn Cohen As has now been well-covered in the news, Nature just published a paper from Mitalipov’s lab at the Oregon Health and Science University that used CRISPR/Cas 9 gene editing to correct the MYBPC3 mutation associated with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy — a heart muscle disease that affects 1 in 500 people. The more…
Join us at the Centre for Information and Innovation Law (CIIR) Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen on 20 November, 2017 to discuss Legal Perspectives on Synthetic Biology and Gene Editing. CALL FOR PAPERS Emerging technologies in Synthetic Biology and Gene Editing offer incredible opportunities and promising solutions to some of the most urgent challenges faced by…
By Timo Minssen I am happy to announce the publication of our new working paper on “Patenting Bioprinting Technologies in the US and Europe – The 5th element in the 3rd dimension.” The paper, which has been co-authored by Marc Mimler, starts out by describing the state of the art and by examining what sorts of bioprinting inventions…
By Brad Segal In January of this year, Cell published a study modestly titled, Interspecies Chimerism with Mammalian Pluripotent Stem Cells. It reports success bioengineering a mostly-pig partly-human embryo. One day before, Nature published a report that scientists had grown (for lack of a better word) a functioning genetically-mouse pancreas within the body of a…
By Seán Finan Introduction Last week, while attending a conference, organized by the Petrie-Flom Center in conjunction with a number of other Harvard institutions, on the ethics of early embryo research and the future of the 14-day rule, I was struck by the presentations on recent developments in stem cell technology. The speakers outlined fascinating…
