The annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research was held this June in San Francisco. Three UCR labs attended the annual meeting and presented their work. Dr. zur Nieden's lab presented a number of posters done on her work both in Germany and at UCR. Her PhD graduate student Ivan Martinez (a member of the CMBD graduate program) attended the meetings and presented a poster on his work dealing with the effects of tobacco smoke on differentiation of bone from embryonic stem cells. Dr. Sato of the Biochemistry Department was in attendance. Dr. Talbot's lab presented two posters, one dealing with the phenomenon of dynamic blebbing in human embryonic stem cells which was presented by graduate student Nikki Weng and one dealing with the use of video bioinformatics to analyze time lapse video data that was presented by Shawn Fonteno an undergraduate in the NIH MARC program and Dr. Sabrina Lin a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Talbot's lab.

The meetings were packed with posters, platform sessions, and commercial exhibits and a wealth of new information on stem cells was available. Many new advances both in technology and the science of stem cells were presented at this year's annual meeting. The venue (Moscone West) was excellent, and the meetings were well attended and highly worthwhile.