STEM CELL STOCKS

[dlry]

While the group is controversial, the technology is promising and could provide an avenue of relief/hope to many and a way around high burdensome healthcare costs in the future. Some promising news releases include:

Dose of stem cells reverses some MS
http://tinyurl.com/cjk728

GERON RECEIVES FDA CLEARANCE TO BEGIN
WORLD'S FIRST HUMAN CLINICAL TRIAL
OF EMBRYONIC STEM CELL-BASED THERAPY
http://tinyurl.com/af52aq

Stem Cells Used To Reverse Paralysis In Animals
http://tinyurl.com/cc49vw

Many of you know these stocks as gern, stem, astm, cytx, osir, athx, they are worth a watch especially on pull backs.

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Scientists at the Universities of Bath and Leeds have discovered a chemical that stops stem cells from turning into other cell types, allowing researchers to use these cells to develop new medical treatments more easily.

http://tinyurl.com/atohnt

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Watch
Building stem cells
1:34A doctor who developed a stem cell therapy for spinal injuries explains the process.
CNN's Thelma Gutierrez reports.
http://www.californiastemcell.com/

Hans Keirstead: Developing therapies based on embryonic stem cells
http://tinyurl.com/cvwdln

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Treating MS Symptoms With Stem Cells

http://tinyurl.com/bnmgdv

[dlry]

I do not know if this is true or not but what are the implications for humans if it is?...would health care procedures be changed forever?,,,would costs come way down?...will this change structural costs related to healthcare to come down? Wouldn't free up an embedded cost within our economies to fuel new demand for products and services?

http://tinyurl.com/b4f2aa

[dlry]

Think of all the drug cocktails this would prevent patients from having to take and pay for if this works!


Stem Cells Cut AIDS Virus in Patient, Ending Need for Drugs


By Rob Waters

Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) -- A German AIDS patient was able to stop drugs he had been taking for 10 years after getting a transplant of stem cells from a donor with a rare gene variant known to resist the deadly disease. The transplant also cured his leukemia, researchers reported.

The stem cell donor was among the 1 percent of Caucasians who have the variant gene that lacks a section known as CCR5 that helps the AIDS virus enter a cell, according to a report today in the New England Journal of Medicine. Doctors in Berlin hoped that putting the donor’s stem cells in the patient would rebuild his immune system and blood cells so they would lack the CCR5 piece.

The results of the experiment may point researchers to a new way of controlling the AIDS virus HIV that doesn’t force patients to take drugs for the rest of their lives. Scientists will now intensify their search for therapies that achieve the same effect, predicted Jay Levy, a University of California, San Francisco, AIDS researcher.

“I think this article is going to stimulate a lot of companies to put more emphasis on gene therapy,” Levy said yesterday in a telephone interview. He wasn’t involved in the research and wrote an editorial published today that accompanied the study.

One such trial sponsored by Sangamo Biosciences of Richmond, California, recently began at the University of Pennsylvania. It will test a gene therapy that aims to modify the immune cells in 12 patients infected with HIV so they lack the CCR5 receptor.

Right Track

Reports about the successful treatment of the German patient presented at a medical meeting last year bolstered the company’s belief that they were on the right track, said Elizabeth Wolffe, a Sangamo spokeswoman.

“The fact that you could put back into the patient CCR5- deficient cells and have those cells work to clear the virus -- that gave us a lot of confidence,” she said in a telephone interview yesterday.

The 40-year-old patient described in today’s journal report had been treated in Germany with antiviral drugs for 10 years, since his HIV infection was diagnosed. In July 2006, he developed leukemia and was given chemotherapy in an effort to eradicate the cancer.

While the chemotherapy controlled the blood cancer, it also made him ill, causing liver and kidney failure, said Gero Hutter, a hematologist at Benjamin Franklin Hospital in Berlin who led his treatment and was co-author of the report. When doctors halted his antiviral drugs, his levels of the AIDS virus spiked until he resumed taking them after a few weeks.

Replacing Cells

After a few more months went by, his leukemia returned and doctors decided to try a stem cell transplant, a risky procedure that kills nearly a third of patients. They figured that as long as they were doing a transplant, they might as well look for a donor who didn’t have the key section of CCR5.

“Our thinking was that if we do this and replace his immune system with cells that are resistant to HIV, we can do two things at once” by stopping his leukemia and his HIV infection, Hutter said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Stem cells from bone marrow, which are also found in circulating blood, have the ability to form blood cells including the white blood cells that fight infection. These are the cells that are attacked by the virus, crippling patients’ immune systems.

Hutter and his colleagues scanned the genomes of 60 potential donors and found one who lacked the CCR5 section. The day after they transfused the donor’s stem cells into the patient, they stopped the antiviral therapy that had suppressed his HIV levels.

‘No Rebound’

“There’s been no rebound of HIV,” Hutter said. “Now, two years after transplantation, we can’t find any HIV in this patient.”

Hutter also said that gene therapy experiments that try to achieve the same goal of inactivating CCR5 hold promise. While the stem cell transplant is too risky to try in most AIDS patients, there may be some who are so sick that it would be worth the danger. First, he said, it should be tried in another patient with both AIDS and leukemia.

When people missing this gene fragment get infected with HIV, they don’t usually develop AIDS symptoms or produce large amounts of the virus.

One drug on the market, Pfizer’s Selzentry, is designed to block the CCR5 receptor so the AIDS virus can’t enter healthy cells. While the drug helps some patients, it must be used with other medications and doesn’t keep the virus from sneaking in.

To contact the reporter on this story: Rob Waters in San Francisco at rwaters5@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: February 11, 2009 17:00 EST

[dlry]

If things continue in this sector here's a post focusing on companies in the New Emerging Stem Cell Index:

http://tinyurl.com/bmtces

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Osiris Therapeutics Inc. (osir) This company has synthesized a medicine in collaboration with Genzyme Corp.(genz) by the name Prochymal.This drug is made of adult stem cells and is capable of regenerating tissues and preventing scar formation.

http://tinyurl.com/bup3jk

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The brain's reserve cells can be activated after stroke
http://tinyurl.com/atebza

athx is a small cap company with a division devoted to stem cell therapy for stroke. http://tinyurl.com/apfvml

It is small cap company. It seems as though it has a very healthy balance sheet. If the group get's going may be one to watch.

[dlry]

Do you think the future might be positively impacted by the progression of this field. Imagine how many kidneys, hearts, etc could be repaired.

“Myth has its lures, but so does modern science. The notion of using one tissue as the scaffold for another is as old as the Birth of Venus to the Book of Genesis,” said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. “Eve may or may not have been formed from Adam’s rib, but these experiments show exactly how stem cell techniques can be used to turn one’s own tissue into newly-formed, architecturally-sound organs.”

From stem cells to new organs: Stanford and NYU scientists cross threshold in regenerative medicine
http://tinyurl.com/c8gjx5