Of course stem cells and their caretakers never sleep or take the weekend off, right? But still TGIF! Last week we had some really good and some ugly stem cell headlines that I covered here. How was this week? Good. ES cell differentiation requires chromatin compaction. A PLoS Genetics paper by a team led by Yuhong …
TGIF: stem cell headline weekly review for May 11 Read More »
It wasn’t so long ago that I did a post explaining why after following the company for years, I finally bought a small amount of stock in the stem cell biotech, Advanced Cell Technology (ACT; symbol ACTC). In part it was motivated by my enthusiasm to see them publishing a paper, a very preliminary paper, …
The opponents of hope, those anti-cure crusaders, will not give up and they are active on both the state and federal levels. Today we heard from the S. Louis Beacon that “Missouri Roundtable for Life” is aiming for a 2012 ballot initiative to change the definition of human cloning in such a way that some forms …
The anti-cure movement continues attacks on stem cell research, this time in Missouri Read More »
Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) announced today that it has treated two patients in its clinical trials: one for Stargardt’s Macular Dystrophy (see official trial page for a lot more info) and one for Dry Age-Related Macular Degeneration (see official trial page here for a lot more info). The patients underwent the treatment at UCLA and each …
Two companies, Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) and Geron, both HQ’d here in California, have FDA-approved early stage clinical trials in the works. Geron’s trial has already started and reportedly now has enrolled at least two patients. The trial is of course for the safety of Geron’s GRNOPC1 oligodendrocyte product made from human ES cells for …
Advanced Cell Technology and Geron: allies or competitors? Read More »
In this post I give my most interesting predictions about events in the stem cell field in 2011. Update: I’ve continuing doing predictions every year all the way through 2020 and intend to continue. See my 2012-2020 predictions here. Appeals court rules in favor of federally funded hESC research. This is more of a hope …
Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) announced that the FDA has approved their second human ES cell-based clinical trial, a combined Phase I/II, for the treatment of blindness. As a result, soon ACT will have two active, human ES cell-based clinical trials, both using the same human ES cell-based drug. The aim of the 2nd trial is …
FDA approves ACT’s second stem cell trial for blindness Read More »
Even as some unproven, for-profit stem cell clinics promote themselves aggressively in many ways including now on TV, on the flip side lately we’ve seen more TV journalists covering questionable marketing by the clinics and negative patient outcomes. Today I saw that CBS This Morning, a national broadcast, had a fairly long TV segment on stem …
The FDA has given Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) the go ahead to begin their clinical trial using retinal progenitor cells derived from hESC by clearing the company’s IND application, bringing hope to those with vision loss and even blindness. The trial will be a combined Phase I/II to treat Stargardt’s Macular Dystrophy and has huge …