In this episode, we welcome Drs. Shahin Rafii and Raphael Lis. Dr. Rafii is director of the Ansary Stem Cell Institute, chief of the Division of Regenerative Medicine, and the Arthur B. Belfer Professor at Weill Cornell Medicine. His lab investigates stem cell biology and angiogenesis using in vivo mouse models. Dr. Lis who was the first author on their recent Nature paper and is an Instructor in Medicine and the TRI-SCi Flow Cytometry Core Manager at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Featured Resource: Bone Marrow Niches and HSC Fates Wallchart

US to Pull Out of Paris Climate Accord – President Donald Trump announced June 1 that the United States will leave the Paris climate accord, calling it “simply the latest example of Washington entering into an agreement that disadvantages the United States.”

Plants – A Source of Air Pollution When Temperatures Rise – During heat waves, city trees actually boost air pollution levels with as much as 60 percent of ground-level ozone created with the help of chemicals emitted by urban shrubbery.

Climate Change May Be Beneficial for Earworms – Researchers analyzed 21 years of data from Maryland cornfields and suggest that rising temperatures might help corn earworms (Helicoverpa zea) develop resistance faster to a widespread genetically built-in crop protection.

Humans Love Looking at Faces Even Before Birth – In the first-ever study of prenatal visual perception, fetuses were more likely to move their heads to track facelike configurations of light projected into the womb than non-facelike shapes.

New Therapy “Flags” DNA to Boost Cancer Fighting T-Cells – An antibody sold as the drug Keytruda helps turn on cancer-fighting T cells by blocking PD-1 proteins, freeing T cells to attack the cancer.

Trump Retains Collins as NIH director – President Donald Trump has decided to appoint the director of the National Institutes of Health even though pro-life advocates called on Francis Collins to be replaced because of his support for embryonic stem cell research that involves the destruction of human life.

Using Stem Cells to Reverse Brain Death?? – The company, Bioquark, plans to initiate a study later this year to see if a combination of stem cell and protein blend injections, electrical nerve stimulation, and laser therapy can reverse the effects of recent brain death.

Skin Stem Cells to Treat Congenital Brain Defect – Researchers developed a stem cell-based therapy for generating skin grafts to cover myelomeningocele defects before birth according to a study published in Stem Cell Reports.

CryoPause: A New Method to Immediately Initiate Experiments after Cryopreservation of Pluripotent Stem Cells – Researchers describe a modification of PSC workflows that eliminates a major variable for nearly all PSC experiments: the quality and quantity of the PSC starting material.

Photo Reference: Courtesy of Dr. Shahin Rafii 

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