About us

About Proteonomix

Reviewed by the Proteonomix editors

A sunlit lab office table with printed research papers, an open journal and a microscope by the window.

Proteonomix is a reading site about regenerative medicine and the life sciences, written for people who are curious but don't work in a lab. Someone comparing cord blood banks a few months before a baby is due. A student who keeps hearing about induced pluripotent stem cells and wants to know what they are. A reader who saw a stem cell injection advertised at a local clinic and wonders whether it is approved. An investor trying to follow a biotech company's quarterly report. We write for all of them, and we try to give each one an answer they can use.

The subjects run from stem cells and cord blood to clinical trials, gene editing, careers in science, the ethics of new technology and the money behind biotech. The page on what we cover sets out the full list.

Who writes here

Five editors write and review everything on the site.

  • Helen Marchetti managed a cell culture and cryostorage lab, and writes about stem cells, cord blood, regenerative medicine and skin biology.
  • Owen Rasmussen worked as a biotech industry analyst and covers how drugs and cell therapies are developed, manufactured, approved and funded.
  • Leela Ramaswamy is a molecular biologist who has worked with organoids and iPS cells, and handles new research, gene editing and how to read a paper.
  • Jerome Okafor coordinated clinical research studies and writes about trials, donation, CAR-T and the practical side of transplants.
  • Celia Dunmore taught biology and advised students on careers, and covers education, careers, ethics and science in society.

How we work

Sources come first

Every explainer starts from primary material: FDA approvals and safety communications at fda.gov, study records on ClinicalTrials.gov, peer-reviewed papers found through PubMed, information from the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute, and the guidelines of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. We name the source in the sentence (the agency or journal, and the year) so you can check it yourself, and we link to it when a stable page exists.

Press releases, conference abstracts and company websites count as claims to be checked. They are not evidence on their own.

Every claim gets a status

The most common confusion in this field is the gap between a promising result and a treatment a person can actually receive. So each explainer says where things stand, using four plain labels:

  1. Approved: licensed by the FDA for a named use, such as public cord blood units for blood-forming transplants, or the CAR-T therapies approved since 2017.
  2. In clinical trials: being tested in people under FDA oversight, with results that are not yet in, or not yet strong enough for approval.
  3. Early research: work in cells or animals. Sometimes exciting, not yet tested in people.
  4. Unproven: sold to the public without approval or good trial evidence. The FDA and the ISSCR have both warned about clinics in this group.

When a status changes, the page changes with it.

Corrections

If you find a mistake, tell us through the contact page. We check the point against the source, fix the text, and add a short note at the end of the piece saying what changed and on what date. Small fixes to spelling or formatting don't get a note. Anything that changes the meaning does.

What we don't do

The site carries no advertising and no sponsored content. No company pays for a mention and we don't take products for review. We don't sell treatments, cord blood banking, supplements or anything else, and we don't refer readers to clinics, banks or trials. We also can't give personal medical advice. Questions about your own health belong with a doctor who knows your history.

How we choose topics

Three things put a subject on the list.

News that changes what is true comes first: a new FDA approval, a safety warning, a large trial result. Then come the confusions that keep turning up, such as what the "80 diseases" lists on cord blood bank websites really mean (the answer is in our explainer on that list). The third source, and often the most useful, is readers' questions. When several people ask the same thing, it moves up.

We also go back over older pieces. An explainer written two years ago can be wrong today, so the reference pages are reviewed on a schedule, with the date of the last review at the top.

If you want a subject covered, the most helpful message names the question you are trying to answer and where you ran into it: a clinic advertisement, a news story, a conversation in a waiting room. That tells us where the explanation needs to start.

The editors Profiles >

  • Helen Marchetti

    Helen ran cell-culture and cryostorage benches in academic labs for over a decade before moving into science writing. She covers stem cells, cord blood and regenerative medicine, and is happiest explaining why a promising result in mice is not yet a treatment.

  • Owen Rasmussen

    Owen spent years reading biotech pipelines and company filings as an industry analyst. He writes about how drugs and cell therapies are developed, manufactured and paid for, with the numbers and the caveats left in.

  • Leela Ramaswamy

    Leela trained in molecular biology and worked on organoid and iPS cell projects before turning to full-time writing. She explains new research papers, what they measured and what they did not, for readers without a lab coat.

  • Jerome Okafor

    Jerome coordinated clinical studies at a university hospital, from consent forms to data queries. He writes about clinical trials, donation and the practical side of health research, and how patients can ask better questions.

  • Celia Dunmore

    Celia taught high school biology and later advised university students on science careers. She writes about jobs in the life sciences, science education and the questions society keeps asking about new biotechnology.

Reference explainers