Traffic cop – The Stem Cell Blog SEO experiment

Devising new ways to introduce more people to the benefits of stem cells.

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Compete’s Top 10 Sites Ranked By: Visits – September 2009

	Domain	Visits	Unique Visitors	Page Views	Total Time Spent (H)	Monthly Attention
1	google.com	2,533,764,950	147,290,286	34,532,217,951	5,435,188	4.749%
2	yahoo.com	2,493,096,797	136,930,976	56,694,592,529	5,982,107	5.227%
3	facebook.com	2,290,512,524	124,579,479	104,438,848,844	10,230,335	8.938%
4	live.com	1,190,318,925	76,791,466	17,257,113,332	1,714,178	1.498%
5	msn.com	970,265,674	84,985,725	7,208,449,423	970,602	0.848%
6	aol.com	656,822,081	54,407,824	22,119,869,931	1,147,520	1.003%
7	myspace.com	562,882,631	50,229,156	38,266,279,455	1,981,872	1.732%
8	ebay.com	551,707,439	73,575,601	11,147,470,055	1,678,161	1.466%
9	youtube.com	478,526,620	84,072,341	6,408,402,122	2,004,610	1.751%
10	craigslist.org

California stem-cell grants awarded : Nature News

California stem-cell grants awarded

First major round of research targeted at therapies takes off.

Erika Check Hayden

Dennis Slamon leads one of the teams to receive funding from CIRM.UCLA

The starting gun has fired for 14 research teams, based in California, who now have four years to make good on the therapeutic promise of stem cells.

On 28 October, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) committed US$230 million to teams of basic and clinical researchers aiming to move experimental stem-cell treatments into an investigational new-drug filing with the US Food and Drug Administration. Britain and Canada together paid an additional $43 million for four of the grants, which will include work by researchers in those countries.

via California stem-cell grants awarded : Nature News.

Geron’s Stem Cell Trial

[For more articles on the long, sordid and somewhat pathetic history of Geron's embryonic stem cell clinical trial to treat spinal cord injury, click here]

Geron Corporation’s Stem Cell Trial

Monday November 2, 2009

Geron Corporation is a company based in Menlo Park, CA and the first biotech company in the USA to be granted permission for a clinical trial of regenerative medicine using embryonic stem cells, in humans. While permission was granted in January 2009, the trials were put on hold until last Friday (October 30, 2009) when the latest round of preclinical trials using animals revealed some side effects that warranted further investigation.

According to the Geron News Release, test animals receiving the treatment, GRNOPC1, developed a higher number of cysts at the area of spinal cord injury than in previous studies. However, the FDA has agreed to allow the studies to continue, since the cysts appear to be non-proliferative, confined to the injury site, and not associated with any serious adverse effects or SUSARS.

GRNOPC1 consists of human embryonic stem cell (hESC)-derived oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs). Oligodendrocytes are cells of the nervous system that produce the myelin shealth, which insultates the axons of nerve cells. Injection with the cells was shown to enhance remyelination of the spinal cord in adult rats. Demyelination after spinal cord injury contributes to loss of neural function. Rats treated with GRNOPC1 seven days after injury exhibited substantially better recovery and improved locomotor ability.

Geron expects re-initiation of the clinical trial in late 2010. Since the treatment must be applied shortly after injury, anyone wanting to participate in a clinical trial must agree to injections within 7 to 14 days of spinal injury…

via Geron Corporation’s Stem Cell Trial.

Court Dismisses Challenge to Embryonic Stem Cell Research : Dispatches from the Culture Wars

Court Dismisses Challenge to Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Posted on: November 2, 2009 9:30 AM, by Ed Brayton

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has dismissed a lawsuit challenging the Obama administration’s new rules on federal funding for stem cell research, which reversed the Bush policy of prohibiting such funding in most cases. And I’m not usually a big fan of dismissing cases based on standing, but in this case there was just no legal basis for the challenge at all.

NIghtlight

The plaintiffs in the case were the Christian Medical Association; Nightlight, a Christian adoption agency that urges the adoption of frozen embryos from fertility clinics; two doctors, James Sherley and Theresa Deisher, who do adult stem cell research but refuse to do embryonic research; two couples who have adopted such embryos; and – amusingly – the embryos themselves. Yes, they sued on behalf of all the snowflakes sitting in fertility clinic freezers.

The court dismissed the case for all plaintiffs based on a lack of standing. And it’s really hard to imagine what the legal argument might be for the suit by any of them. Here’s how the court summarizes their claims:

NIH

Plaintiffs allege that the guidelines, by allowing NIH to fund hESC research, will cause them irreparable harm. Specifically, Drs. Sherely and Deisher contend that the new guidelines will “result in increased competition for limited federal funding and will thereby injure [their] ability to successfully compete for . . . NIH stem cell research funds.” Nightlife alleges that the guidelines will cause a decrease in the number of embryos available for adoption…The Nelsons and Flynns maintain that the guidelines will “jeopardize the likelihood that embryos will become available” for them to adopt in the future. Finally, CMA alleges that the guidelines will frustrate its purpose and require it to expend significant resources to combat the ethical problems posed by hESC research.

via Court Dismisses Challenge to Embryonic Stem Cell Research : Dispatches from the Culture Wars.