ZOMBIES REJOICE!
1st STEPS TO LABMADE GRAY MATTER, aka…
B R A I N S S S S ! ! !
Also patients with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, TBI, Ataxia…
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029473.800-grow-a-new-brain-first-steps-to-labmade-grey-matter.html#.Uxj1DIWGZp3
via http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142961213013045
Can an article that died over a year ago, rise from the grave and start walking around on the internet? This one did! On first reading, I honestly could not even tell if the article was real or not…was old or new…
This seems to be an undated article from Reuters that reads like some of the articles that came out a year ago. If you do a keyword search for “FDA” + “Geron” on Reuters.com, they show no such article that has come out recently. Only the one’s from Jan/Feb 2009…
http://www.reuters.com/search?blob=fda+geron&pn=1
BUT if you google it, it comes up in the last 2 days and it seems to be on a handful of different papers…
BUT many of those papers are all a part of the Canada.com network…
very weird stuff!
The stock price in the article is off of course. Geron was at $4.8 before the announcement over a year ago and then jumped to $8 before crashing back to $4 again…dashing the hopes of spinal cord victims and shareholders who were too slow to get out in time.
So I think someone may be doing a fake media campaign…raising articles from the dead like zombies…changing them slightly…removing the dates on them…posting them as “current” articles…impersonating both Reuters and their Health and Science Editor, Maggie Fox…
or maybe canada.com just got very confused…
but if this was purely accidental…
why were the dates removed from them? All of them.
——————————————————
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has cleared the way for the first trial to see if human embryonic stem cells can treat people safely, a company involved in the controversial research on Friday.
Geron Corp, a California biotechnology company, said it plans a clinical trial to try to use the stem cells to regrow nerve tissue in patients with crushed, but not severed, spinal cords.
The issue of human embryonic stem cell research has been a political touchstone, with anti-abortion forces backed by former president George W. Bush arguing the technique involves the destruction of human embryos. Advocates say it could transform medicine.
“For us, it marks the dawn of a new era in medical therapeutics. This approach is one that reaches beyond pills and scalpels to achieve a new level of healing,” Geron Chief Executive Dr. Thomas Okarma said in a telephone briefing.
Shares of Geron rose more than 53 percent to $8 in mid-morning trading on Nasdaq after touching $8.38.
Geron will recruit eight to 10 recently injured patients and inject them with small numbers of human embryonic stem cells manipulated to become the oligodendrocyte cells that insulate nerves, and that produce compounds to stimulate the growth of nerve cells.
Okarma said there was no political significance to the announcement coming the same week as President Barack Obama took office. Obama has been widely expected to lift restrictions on federal funding and support of human embryonic stem cell research.
An FDA spokeswoman said, “Before FDA allowed the study to proceed, Geron worked with FDA to address important scientific questions.”
CHEAP AND EASY
Okarma said the treatment should eventually become cheap and easy to mass produce because the cells can be grown in vats. He believes the cells may be useful for other diseases such as multiple sclerosis, in which nerve cells are stripped of their insulating sheaths, and perhaps strokes.
Financial analysts celebrated. Stephen Brozak and Daniel Mallin of WBB Securities LLC said it could “as important to drug therapy as the discovery of … penicillin.”
Dr. Robert Lanza of the rival Massachusetts-based Advanced Cell Technology, which is also seeking to create therapies using human embryonic stem cells, called the decision a “huge advance for the entire field”. This sends a message that we’re ready at last to start helping people,” he said.
Stem cells are the body’s master cells, giving rise to all the tissues, organs and blood. Embryonic stem cells are considered the most powerful kinds of stem cells, as they have the potential to give rise to any type of tissue.
Researchers are also trying to find ways to use so-called adult stem cells, taken from bone marrow and elsewhere in the body, and have learned how to transform ordinary skin cells into stem-like cells. But scientists argue that no one knows which route will work so all avenues must be pursued.
The Phase I trial will be designed to show that patients do not develop tumors, or damage to their nervous systems. But Okarma believes it will also indicate whether the stem cells might repair the damaged spinal cords.
“These are living cells that will divide, make more of themselves and migrate throughout the lesion after injection,” he said.
While the patients will get low doses of immune-suppressing drugs for the first two months, Okarma is confident the cells will escape immune system recognition and patients will not have to endure the treatments that organ and tissue transplant recipients usually do. Treatment on the first patient should begin this summer.
Okarma said the company has a strong balance sheet, free of debt, and “ample to fund the company through this trial”.
(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Doina Chiacu and Toni Clarke; Editing by Alan Elsner and Julie Steenhuysen)
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Genetic Research:
Key games: Bioshock, Resident Evil
Stem cell research and the manipulation of the human genome may be presented in the Mainstream Media as a controversial, nuanced subject but, as any half-serious gamer knows, there are only two possibilities when you start tweaking DNA – superhuman abilities or rampaging mutant hordes.
Forget gene therapy or regrowing limbs or any of that positive health benefits stuff. Equally, put aside any thought of ethical complications, the sanctity of life, eugenics, yadda yadda yadda. This is the coin, and here are the two available sides: Superpowers, or Zombie Holocaust.
Happily, once again, gaming cuts through the issues and shows a clear plan of action. No matter how stringent the ethical guidelines or how strictly monitored the research, video games show us that there will always be some shadowy multinational corporation creating their own private army of deathless gene-freaks.
The plan, therefore, is simple – develop superpowers to fight the zombies. What could go wrong?
via Kotaku – What Can Games Teach Us About The Election? – Politics.
RECENT POSTS ON THE STEM CELL BLOG Stem Cells In the News Now! TSCB CellNews biohealthinvestor Adult Stem Cell Awareness RANDOM WORDPRESS STEM CELL POSTS
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