Businessman and philanthropist T. Denny Sanford committed $100 million this November to create a stem cell center at the University of California in San Diego (UCSD). The Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center will be directed by Lawrence Goldstein, who already directs UCSD’s stem cell research and the existing Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine. “The goal is very straightforward,” Goldstein says, “and that is to accelerate the development of stem cell–based therapies for patients with intractable diseases.” Continue reading Millionaire’s gift to San Diego
Category Archives: Nature Biotechnology
UCSD researcher shot by cofounder
On September 18, former Traversa Therapeutics CEO Hans Petersen went on a shooting spree. One of two people wounded was molecular biologist Steven Dowdy, a professor at University of California San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine, in La Jolla, and cofounder of Traversa, according to a San Diego police report. Continue reading UCSD researcher shot by cofounder
Greenpeace campaign prompts Philippine ban on Bt eggplant trials
A court in the Philippines has ordered scientists to halt field trials of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) eggplant, over concerns that the genetically modified (GM) crop poses a risk to human health and the environment. On May 17, 2013, the Philippine Court of Appeals issued a cease-and-desist order to scientists running the field trials, a ruling that, if upheld, could set a precedent that may affect other biotech crops in development locally, such as the Golden Rice and GM papaya and abaca under development in the country. Continue reading Greenpeace campaign prompts Philippine ban on Bt eggplant trials
SARS-like virus reignites ownership feuds
A new human coronavirus isolated from a patient in Saudi Arabia is raising questions over how to handle the intellectual property (IP) of newly emerging infectious diseases. As Nature Biotechnology went to press, the World Health Organization (WHO) had been notified of 81 cases and 45 deaths globally since September 2012 attributed to the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, (MERS-CoV). Ali Mohamed Zaki, a microbiologist at Soliman Fakeeh Hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, who isolated the virus from a patient, has lost his job after announcing the existence of the virus through a public medium. Saudi officials accuse him of mailing a virus sample to a laboratory in The Netherlands without permission. Continue reading SARS-like virus reignites ownership feuds