C'est la vie, that really has no bearing on the point at hand.

If I 'believe' it does then it must be true.

No, it just means you believe it does. Nothing more.

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Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

C'est la vie, that really has no bearing on the point at hand.

If I 'believe' it does then it must be true.

No, it just means you believe it does. Nothing more.

There we go. Nothing more != Fair game. Pure and simple.

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me@rescam.org

C'est la vie, that really has no bearing on the point at hand.

If I 'believe' it does then it must be true.

No, it just means you believe it does. Nothing more.

There we go. Nothing more != Fair game. Pure and simple.

Exactly. Meaning that it is fair game, not that it must be true.

---

Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

C'est la vie, that really has no bearing on the point at hand.

If I 'believe' it does then it must be true.

No, it just means you believe it does. Nothing more.

There we go. Nothing more != Fair game. Pure and simple.

Exactly. Meaning that it is fair game, not that it must be true.

Now that is out of the way let's whittle down the word "fair". It's definately a game alright.

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me@rescam.org

Stem-cell transfer breakthrough raises hopes for blindness cure

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me@rescam.org

Studies: Stem cells help animal dystrophy, hearts

By Malcolm Ritter and Lindsey Tanner
ASSOCIATED PRESS

November 16, 2006

Stem cells are once again showing their versatility. One new study finds that they can ease symptoms of muscular dystrophy in dogs – a possible breakthrough for human therapy – while another finds that stem cells recovered from amniotic fluid can be used to grow heart valves – offering a revolutionary way to repair defective hearts.

Sharon Hesterlee, vice president of translational research at the Muscular Dystrophy Association, said the dog experiments provided some of the most exciting results she has seen in her eight years with the organization, which helped pay for the work.

She added that it's not yet clear whether such a treatment would work in people but said she had “cautious optimism” about it.

Meanwhile, scientists from the University of Zurich in Switzerland reported that they had successfully grown human heart valves using stem cells from the fluid that cushions babies in the womb.

The idea is to create these valves in the lab while the pregnancy progresses and have them ready to implant in a baby with heart defects after it is born.

It's one of several tissue engineering advances that could lead to homegrown heart valves for infants and adults that are more durable and effective than artificial or cadaver valves.

“This may open a whole new therapy concept to the treatment of congenital heart defects,” said Dr. Simon Hoerstrup, a University of Zurich scientist who led the work, which was presented yesterday at an American Heart Association conference in Chicago.

Also at the meeting, Japanese researchers said they had grown heart valves in rabbits using cells from the animals' own tissue. It's the first time replacement heart valves have been created in this manner, said lead author Dr. Kyoko Hayashida.

“It's very promising,” University of Chicago cardiologist Dr. Ziyad Hijazi said of the two studies. “I don't doubt” that it will be applied one day in humans, he said.

One percent of all newborns, or more than 1 million babies born worldwide each year, have heart problems. These kill more babies in the United States in the first year of life than any other birth defects, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Heart valve defects can be detected during pregnancy with ultrasound tests at about 20 weeks of pregnancy. At least one-third of afflicted infants have problems that could be treated with replacement valves, Hoerstrup said.

Conventional procedures to fix faulty heart valves all have drawbacks. Artificial valves are prone to blood clots and patients must take anti-clotting drugs for life. Valves from human cadavers or animals can deteriorate, requiring repeated open-heart surgeries to replace them, Hijazi said. That's especially true in children, because these valves don't grow along with the body.

Valves made from the patient's own cells are living tissue and might be able to grow with the patient, said Hayashida, a scientist at the National Cardiovascular Center Research Institute in Osaka.

The Swiss procedure has another advantage: Using cells the fetus sheds in amniotic fluid avoids controversy because it doesn't involve destroying embryos to get stem cells.

In the research focused on muscular dystrophy, scientists reported that two dogs that were severely disabled by the disease were able to walk faster and even jump after the treatments.

Their study was published online yesterday by the journal Nature. It used stem cells taken from the affected dogs or other dogs, rather than from embryos. For human use, the idea of using such “adult” stem cells from humans would also avoid the controversial method of destroying human embryos to obtain stem cells.

The Nature paper focuses on Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a muscle-wasting genetic disorder that affects only boys and occurs in about 1 in every 3,500 male births. It's the most severe and most common childhood form of muscular dystrophy and the best-known. In theory, the stem cell treatment might also help other muscle dystrophies or even age-related muscle wasting.

Boys with Duchenne dystrophy have trouble walking as early as preschool, and nearly all lose their ability to walk between ages 7 and 12. Typically, they die in their 20s because of weakness in their heart and lung muscles. There is no known cure.

The canine study was done by Giulio Cossu, director of the Stem Cell Research Institute at the San Raffaele Scientific Institute of Milan in Italy, with colleagues there and elsewhere.

“We do not know whether this will work in patients,” Cossu said in a telephone interview. He said he hopes to start a small experiment in children in the next year or two.

The scientists worked with golden retrievers that suffer a crippling form of dystrophy very much like the human one. Researchers studied the effect of repeated injections into the bloodstream of a kind of stem cell extracted from blood vessel walls.

The best results appeared when the cells were taken from healthy dogs. But Cossu said scientists should pursue the possibility of genetically manipulating a patient's own cells and using them instead. That way, patients wouldn't have to undergo lifelong treatment to avoid rejection of donated cells.

In one of several experiments, three dogs that had not yet shown impairment in walking were injected five times, a month apart, with cells taken from other dogs.

One dog completely avoided symptoms and continued to walk well even five months after both the injections and the anti-rejection therapy were stopped.

A second dog also did well initially but died of a heart problem after two months on the treatment. It's not clear whether the problem had anything to do with the treatment, or whether the initial good result would have continued, Cossu said.

The third dog showed partial protection, being able to walk and even run with a limp, but then progressively lost walking ability within a few days after the anti-rejection treatment was stopped.

The researchers also treated two dogs that were severely impaired by the disease. Both gained the ability to move much faster and to jump, and one was even able to run, although neither could use the hind legs normally.

One of these dogs rapidly lost walking ability when the anti-rejection treatment was stopped, but the other continued to walk well for five months until succumbing to pneumonia. That's a common fate for dogs with the genetic condition because of weakness in breathing muscles.

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me@rescam.org

Stem cell injection aids dogs with muscular dystrophy

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me@rescam.org

Australia approves human cloning for stem-cell research

By Rod McGuirk
ASSOCIATED PRESS

December 7, 2006

CANBERRA, Australia – Lawmakers rejecting the opinions of leading politicians yesterday lifted a four-year ban on cloning human embryos for stem-cell research – legislation that could put Australia at the forefront of research into diseases such as diabetes and Alzheimer's.

Prime Minister John Howard, his two deputies and the leader of the major opposition party had argued that the sanctity of human life must take precedence over potential cures for medical conditions that also include Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injuries and arthritis.

But lawmakers in the House of Representatives took advantage of a rare nonparty-line vote yesterday to side with medical researchers, voting 82 to 62 to scrap the ban.

The bill was passed by the Senate last month by a razor-edge 34 to 32.

The new law allows therapeutic cloning, the splicing of DNA from skin cells into eggs to produce stem cells, which are capable of forming all the tissues of the human body.

The cloned embryos cannot be implanted in a womb and must be destroyed within 14 days.

The senator who drafted the bill, former Health Minister Kay Patterson, said it would slow a brain drain of scientists and enable Australian medical researchers to work with peers in countries where therapeutic cloning is allowed.

“We don't have a whole lot of stem-cell research centers in Australia, but what I think we've done now is stemmed the tide of people leaving and enabling people to come back,” Patterson told reporters.

“What I hope we see is an ability to work with people in the United States, Singapore and Britain to actually come together to produce some research,” she added.

She predicted progress would be slow as government health and science authorities drafted guidelines for egg donations and researchers apply for strictly regulated licenses as well as funding.

“We're not going to see a slather of experiments and research,” Patterson said. “We're going to see steady, incremental work in this area both here and overseas.”

Britain became the first country to legalize the cloning of human embryos for stem-cell research in 2001.

The Bush administration has banned federal funding for research on stem-cell lines developed after August 2001, but cloning embryos for research is being attempted in the United States with private money.

The U.S. experience with therapeutic cloning was repeatedly raised by lawmakers both for and against lifting the ban during a three-day debate.

Opposition lawmaker Duncan Kerr, who supports therapeutic cloning, told Parliament that in a visit to the United States before last month's elections, he had discovered that embryonic stem-cell research was popular with voters.

Parliament passed Australia's first laws on stem-cell research in 2002, allowing scientists to extract stem cells from spare embryos intended for in vitro fertilization but preventing cell cloning.

Bernie Tuch, a Sydney scientist who is using stem-cell research to try to create insulin-producing cells as a therapy for diabetes, said last month after the Senate passed the bill that Australia could become a leading research center under the new law.

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me@rescam.org

Alright! Some good news on the medical progress front, for a change.

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Stem cell institute is losing its leader
President to retire within six months

By Terri Somers
San Diego Union-Tribune

December 8, 2006

IRVINE – Feeling his work is just about done, Zach Hall announced yesterday that he will step down as president of California's fledgling stem cell institute within the next six months.

“The institute has money in the bank now. There is infrastructure in place. And some of our initial organizational problems seem to be working out positively, so I think this is a good time for you to look for a new president,” Hall said in breaking the news to the 29-member board that oversees the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

His reasons for leaving “were almost entirely personal,” said Hall, who often butted heads with Robert Klein, chairman of the board.

When asked about that friction yesterday, Klein said “there's been a benefit from a robust discussion of ideas. And we mentally challenged each other to excel.”

Hall, who recently turned 69, said he wants to retire to Wyoming with his wife, a recently retired musician, and pursue the things his structured life in academia has kept him from for decades: hiking, skiing, reading and writing.

“This is a job for a younger man,” Hall said with a big grin.

Board members were not surprised.

“I think he's done what he wanted to, and now we've got some really big shoes to fill,” said Duane Roth, who heads CONNECT in San Diego.

Finding a new president should be easier now that the institute has $181 million in the bank, the institute's legal woes seem to be beatable and it has established its headquarters in San Francisco, Roth said.

The future was not so clear during Hall's tenure.

The neurobiologist and veteran administrator at the National Institutes of Health and two California medical schools was tapped from a pool of candidates in 2004 to serve only temporarily as the new stem cell institute's first president while its board looked for someone to take the job permanently.

Hall quickly agreed to stay longer, perhaps about a year, until the institute could get established and start issuing up to $300 million a year in stem cell research grants.

Then politics got in the way.

Citizens groups filed lawsuits questioning the legality of California's $3 billion initiative, which voters approved in November 2004. The lawsuits have since prevented the state from issuing the bonds that would funds available for the institute.

For two years, the institute has been running on donations and loans from the state and philanthropists. No research grants were awarded, and the institute had to run on a staff of about 20 people, rather than the 50 permitted under the initiative.

Meanwhile, the staff pushed forward with writing several of the new institute's ethics policies, scientific standards and a scientific strategic plan. Staff also facilitated dozens of public meetings of the board and several subcommittees.

Last summer, when Hall's year was up, the institute was “very unsteady,” he said. “There was no money. The threat of the lawsuit was still hanging out there, so I agreed to stay on until we could finish what we started.”

Earlier this year the institute used $12.1 million of a $14 million loan to issue grants to train new stem cell scientists, and it organized a review of the first round of research grants. Meanwhile, four staff members worked full time helping completion of a state-mandated audit of the institute.

The institute's prospects started to brighten in the spring when a judge in Alameda County Superior Court upheld the institute's legality. The challengers said they intend to appeal to the state Supreme Court.

The initial court win helped Klein secure for the institute a $150 million loan from the state and $31 million in loans from philanthropists. And last month, an institute's staff organized an independent review of 232 applications for the first round of research grants. Thirty grants are expected to be awarded at the board's February meeting.

To get all this done, staff members usually worked 14-to 16-hour days, said Mary Maxon, deputy vice chairwoman. She announced yesterday that after two years in a post she agreed to take for one year, she would be leaving.

“It's been like three jobs in one,” said Maxon, who will volunteer her time while the institute's policies are finalized.

Also leaving is staff member Kate Shreve. Staff member Walter Barnes retired earlier this year, and Nicole Pagano, the institute's former public relations specialist, left this year after spending two years in a job that she originally committed to for one year.

Among the reasons for these departures, say Maxon and Klein: exhaustion.

Klein, an author of the initiative and its primary salesman, has been serving full time as chairman without taking a salary. He said yesterday he planned to stay probably another year so he could contribute his real estate and facilities expertise when the institute is expected to award large grants for the construction of new research facilities.

An institute policy regarding ownership of inventions created by companies that take loans or grants from the institute was approved by the board yesterday.

The policy, which has been controversial among people who fear the initiative is a giveaway to the biotech industry, would also provide the state with milestone payments if it funds research that leads to a blockbuster product.

For instance, if state-funded research contributes to a product that reaches $250 million in revenue, the company must pay the institute three times its original investment. If the product reaches $500 million in revenue, the company again must pay the institute three times its investment.

The state would then be entitled to a 1 percent share of patent royalties on revenue above $500 million.

The policy also requires companies to state how their plans for supplying the uninsured are consistent with industry standards; to provide discounted prices to publicly funded health care plans; and to give preference to California residents if therapies are in short supply.

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me@rescam.org

Human heart valves grown in lab

By Lindsey Tanner
ASSOCIATED PRESS

December 14, 2006

Scientists for the first time have grown human heart valves using stem cells from the fluid that cushions babies in the womb – offering a revolutionary approach that may be used to repair defective hearts in the future.

The idea is to create these new valves in the lab while the pregnancy progresses and have them ready to implant in a baby with heart defects after it is born.

The Swiss experiment follows recent successes at growing bladders and blood vessels and suggests that people may one day be able to grow their own replacement heart parts – in some cases, even before they're born.

It's one of several sci-fi tissue engineering advances that could lead to homegrown heart valves for infants and adults that are more durable and effective than artificial or cadaver valves.

“This may open a whole new therapy concept to the treatment of congenital heart defects,” said Dr. Simon Hoerstrup, a University of Zurich scientist who led the work, which was presented last month at an American Heart Association conference.

Also at the meeting, Japanese researchers said they had grown new heart valves in rabbits using cells from the animals' own tissue. It's the first time replacement heart valves have been created in this manner, said lead author Dr. Kyoko Hayashida.

“It's very promising,” University of Chicago cardiologist Dr. Ziyad Hijazi said of the two studies. “I don't doubt” that it will be applied one day in humans, he said.

One percent of all newborns, or more than 1 million babies born worldwide each year, have heart problems. These kill more babies in the United States in the first year of life than any other birth defect, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Heart valve defects can be detected during pregnancy with ultrasound tests at about 20 weeks of pregnancy. At least one-third of afflicted infants have problems that could be treated with replacement valves, Hoerstrup said.

“It could be quite important if it turns out to work,” said Dr. Robert Bonow, a Northwestern University heart valve specialist.

Conventional procedures to fix faulty heart valves all have drawbacks. Artificial valves are prone to blood clots, and patients must take anti-clotting drugs for life. Valves from human cadavers or animals can deteriorate, requiring repeated open-heart surgeries to replace them, Hijazi said. That's especially true in children, because these valves don't grow along with the body.

Valves made from the patient's own cells are living tissue and might be able to grow with the patient, said Hayashida, a scientist at the National Cardiovascular Center Research Institute in Osaka.

The Swiss procedure has another advantage: Using cells the fetus sheds in amniotic fluid avoids controversy because it doesn't involve destroying embryos to get stem cells.

“This is an ethical advantage,” Hoerstrup said.

Molded in a month

Here's how the experiment worked:

Amniotic fluid was obtained through a needle inserted into the womb during amniocentesis, a prenatal test for birth defects that is often offered to pregnant women ages 35 and older.

Fetal stem cells were isolated from the fluid, cultured in a lab dish, then placed on a mold shaped like a small ink pen and made of biodegradable plastic. It took only four to six weeks to grow each of the 12 valves created in the experiment.

The researchers said lab tests showed they appeared to function normally.

The next step is to see if they work in sheep, a two-year experiment that Hoerstrup said is under way.

He and co-researcher Dorthe Schmidt called their method “a promising, low-risk approach enabling the prenatal fabrication of heart valves ready to use at birth.”

Hoerstrup said amniotic stem cells also can be frozen for years and could potentially be used to create replacement parts for aging or diseased valves in adults, too.

The research is preliminary, and experts say implanting tissue-engineered human valves in human hearts is likely years away. But it's not as far-fetched as it sounds.

Earlier this year, U.S. scientists reported re-engineering seven diseased bladders with tissue grown from the patients' own cells.

And last year, researchers reported that two kidney dialysis patients from Argentina had received the world's first tissue-engineered blood vessels, fashioned from their own skin and vein tissue.

Dr. John E. Mayer Jr., a Children's Hospital Boston heart surgeon and tissue engineering pioneer, said scientists are optimistic that this area of research will revolutionize how people with valve disease will be cared for in the future.

About 250,000 patients worldwide have surgery to replace heart parts each year, according to Mayer.

In one of Mayer's experiments, heart valves fashioned from stem cells harvested from sheep bone marrow appeared to function normally when implanted in sheep. A similar experiment used cells harvested from sheep arteries.

Hoerstrup said amniotic fluid is potentially a richer source of stem cells than other sources.

Mayer said the big question is whether stem cells from amniotic fluid can create valves superior to those made from other cell types.

“I'm pretty sure the ball will continue to be advanced down the field,” Mayer said. “We'll get there one way or the other.”

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me@rescam.org

Can stem cell transplantation stop a rare, fatal disease?

By Ann Parson; author of “The Proteus Effect; Stem Cells and Their Promise for Medicine.”

December 14, 2006

Every illness is cruel. But one that goes beyond cruel is Batten disease, a fatal brain disorder also known as neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis.

An infant will develop normally for a while, only to start experiencing seizures and regress neurologically. Fading vision, changing behavior and deteriorating mobility can alert parents that something is terribly wrong. Then, piling insult upon injury, as the child's mental decline grows more acute, parents are apt to encounter “misdiagnose after misdiagnosis,” as one mother described it. Because of its extreme rareness, many doctors fail to identify the disorder.

Last month, in an unprecedented and gutsy move, a team of doctors at Doernbecher Children's Hospital on the campus of Oregon Health and Science began testing a radical therapy for Batten disease, for which there is currently none. The phase-one clinical trial involves transplanting neural stem cells into the brains of six children afflicted by Batten's.

Surgery on the first child in line for the procedure took place Nov. 14, according to StemCells Inc., the Palo Alto company that developed the process. The FDA and a university review board both deemed the procedure acceptable enough to sign off on it months ago.

The cells being transplanted – StemCells' proprietary product “HuCNS-SC” – were derived from the donated neural tissue of human fetuses. Thus they are the “adult” kind of stem cell and not those from early embryos.

Many eyes are on this human trial. To begin with, it's reportedly the first time that a pure composition of neural stem cells has been used to treat a brain disorder. According to StemCells Inc., in the past, when Parkinson's patients have received fetal brain cells, their implants have amounted to a “gemish” of different cell types.

StemCells scientists emphasize that the primary objective at this early stage of testing is to evaluate their procedure's safeness. Still, any indication that the therapy works would be exhilarating progress not only against Batten disease, but numerous other lysosomal storage disorders.

Pioneering families

Of some 40 lysosomal storage diseases, half are brain-related. Each of these diseases is due to a specific inherited genetic mutation that robs a person of a crucial enzyme that recycles a cell's fat and protein “garbage.”

Although Batten disease is extremely rare, the entire clump of lysosomal storage diseases isn't. The damaging clump, which includes Tay-Sachs, Gaucher, Schindler and Krabbe's disease, affects 1 in every 5,000 people.

The hope, in the Oregon trial, is that the brain-infused cells will make enough of the enzyme that's missing in Batten disease that cells throughout the brain will no longer become engorged with unrecycled waste.

The Batten's trial is also attracting attention because, as experimental as it is, “you have some really thoughtful, really great scientists behind it,” said Larry Goldstein, director of the UCSD Stem Cell Program. StemCells' scientific founders include three of the stem cell community's most senior mavericks: Fred Gage at the Salk Institute, Irving Weissman at Stanford and David Anderson at the California Institute of Technology.

Behind the surgery at Doernbecher Children's Hospital are: doctors Robert Steiner, vice chairman of pediatric research; Nathan Selden, head of the division of pediatrics neurological surgery; and Thomas Koch, director of pediatric neurology.

“These kids are doomed if you don't do anything,” noted Goldstein. “It's my personal opinion that it's legitimate for scientists to take greater risks, because the alternative is so grim.”

But the trial's foremost “pioneers,” pointed out Lance Johnston, executive director of the Batten Disease Support and Research Association, are the families willing to enroll. “It's something that a lot of families have had to do soul-searching over, to subject their children to this,” said Johnston. “But the prospects are very exciting, since it holds the potential to stop the disease.”

Gauging risks

Batten disease's three most common forms start in infancy, late infancy and the teenage years. Children enrolled in the Oregon trial have either the infantile version, which usually brings death by age 5, or the late-infantile type, which usually ends life by age 12.

Some scientists, meanwhile – who don't want to be identified and seen as doubting Thomases – view the Batten trial as seriously high-risk. The brain is complex, and our knowledge of it scant. Are we, they ask, really ready for this particular human brain-cell transplant? Will the transferred neural stem cells specialize into glial cells, as StemCells has indicated? What if they turn into neurons instead? And what if the cells travel into inappropriate regions of the brain?

And though the brain is perceived as an area that doesn't mount an immune defense against introduced tissue, will that hold true in this case, when neural cells from a fetus that has no kinship to the patient are put into his or her brain?

Evan Snyder, a neurologist pediatrician and director of The Burnham Institute's Stem Cells and Regeneration Program, offers that he's “less concerned about the risks” of this particular trial than he is the prospect that “the cells won't do anything at all” and fail to help the children. The cells possibly aren't being delivered early enough in the disease process or “optimally” enough, he said. “There may be no adverse effects, but no positive effects, either.”

Interestingly, one other phase-one Batten trial, which began in 2004, is after the same enzyme-replacing effect but by way of an intracranial gene-therapy approach. A team headed by Ronald Crystal, chairman of the department of genetic medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical Center, is trying to replace Batten's mutated gene with a normal copy inside cells. The same outcome is envisioned: that cells, once genetically corrected, should be able to produce the missing waste-clearing enzyme.

Ten children are enrolled. With the exception of one previously reported death that occurred 45 days after the trial began, there have been “no other significant adverse events,” said Crystal, who expects to report on the trial's outcome within the year.

At a September teleconference with members of the media, StemCells and Oregon University staff said that, after the initial surgery, a surgery will follow approximately every 30 days until all six of the phase-one children have received transplants. With the aid of a targeting computer, the surgeons will drill small incisions in the skull and, using thin needles, pass cells though these incisions into multiple locations in the left and right hemispheres as well as the brain's ventricular fluid. The doctors did not mention exactly where these locations are.

“The locations are essentially based on two factors,” said Selden. “One, we'd like to distribute the neural stem cells around the brain such that they can get to as much brain tissue as possible. And then secondly, we want to avoid making the injections directly into eloquent brain areas where the injection procedure itself might have a higher risk of causing a deficit, such as, for example, primary motor cortex would be a bad place to inject because it could cause weakness or paralysis of a part of the body.”

Two doses of cells, the team said, will be used and their effects on the brain disease eventually compared. The children's cognitive, communicative, behavioral and motor functions will be closely monitored, with brain MRI, magnetic resonance spectroscopy, EEG and seizure frequency providing additional measurements.

Whether the implanted cells produce the desired effect of making enough of the absent enzyme to stop Batten's incorrigible march probably won't be known for one, two or even more years.

Proof-of-concept for the Oregon trial, said the researchers, has originated from mouse studies that show that when human neural cells are placed in the mouse brain, they secrete the enzyme that Batten children so desperately need; moreover, as levels of the enzyme increase, abnormal lysosomal storage material recedes.

Additional reasons for going out on an experimental limb include successful enzyme replacement therapies for lysosomal storage diseases in other parts of the body. Since the early 1990s, for instance, doctors have been using enzyme replacement therapy to halt and even reverse Gaucher disease, which affects mostly bone marrow, liver and spleen. The protein that Gaucher patients lack (glucocerebroside) is administered intravenously.

“But because proteins don't cross into the brain, that approach can't be used for the brain,” noted Ronald Crystal at the Weill Cornell Medical Center. Hence, his New York team's choice of administering gene therapy, and the Oregon surgeons' transplanting of cells, both straight to the brain.

Back in 1995, Evan Snyder (then at Harvard Medical School) and colleagues reported in the journal Nature that they had successfully cured mice of a disease similar to Sly disease in humans, a lysosomal storage disorder. Cells from healthy newborns were transferred to the brains of sick mice. This essentially gave the mice the enzyme their bodies needed.

Snyder was quoted in The New York Times as saying, “This is like a bone marrow transplant, but in the brain.” As he continues to insist today, there's reason to think that with further study and application, such brain-cell transplant strategies should someday save the lives of many youngsters.

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me@rescam.org

Worlds apart

U-T SPECIAL REPORT | THE STEM CELL RACE

As moral debate sidetracks stem cell research in the U.S., countries in Asia, Europe are moving to stake claims in the promising industry

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me@rescam.org

Investors wanted – must have vision, passion

U-T SPECIAL REPORT | THE STEM CELL RACE

A personal interest often is key to finding financial support for controversial research

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me@rescam.org

Singapore makes investment in its survival

U-T SPECIAL REPORT | THE STEM CELL RACE

The city-state hand-picks stem cell industry for economic growth, and for scientific advances

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me@rescam.org

Stem cell research no dream for California

U-T SPECIAL REPORT | THE STEM CELL RACE

Held up by lawsuits over Prop. 71, $3 billion state institute gets going with philanthropic loans

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me@rescam.org

From BBC News

'New stem cell source' discovered
By Matt McGrath
BBC science reporter

Scientists say they have discovered a new source of stem cells that could one day repair damaged human organs.

The Harvard University team say they have recovered functioning stem cells from amniotic fluid - the liquid that surrounds the baby in the womb.

The most useful types of stem cell have so far been derived from specially grown human embryos.

But this has created ethical concerns because the embryos are destroyed in the process.

Opponents say this is tantamount to cannibalism.

Supporters say stem cells offer real hope in treating illnesses like diabetes, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

Versatility

The Harvard scientists say the stem cells they found in amniotic fluid seem to have many of the qualities of embryonic stem cells.

The scientists, from Wake Forest University School of Medicine, were writing in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

They say they have managed to turn the stem cells into functioning muscle, fat, blood vessel, nerve and liver cells.

In tests, these newly made cells seemed to restore some function in brain-damaged mice.

Although these amniotic-fluid-derived stem cells are small in number, their ability to renew themselves and their versatility gives the researchers great hope.

They say that a bank of 100,000 of these stem cells could supply a genetic match for 99% of the US population.

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"I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me

Fuzzy, I'm happy as long as babies are not being murdered to get the stem cells. Of course, there are many procedures involving adult stem cells which are in use today and there is evidence that using fetal stem cells can lead to cancer. That is no reason to stop research, as long as the fetal cells can be recovered from amniotic fluid.

BillHyland wrote[quote]there is evidence that using fetal stem cells can lead to cancer. [quote]
I am sure you meant cure for cancer, correct?

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4 institutes band together on stem cells

San Diego consortium project will train 32 scientists

By Terri Somers
Union-Tribune

January 9, 2007

Frederick Lo, a 25-year-old graduate student with a degree in bioinformatics, is the face of a new training program funded by California's taxpayer-funded stem cell initiative.

Lo has been developing computer systems that simulate biological reactions and record how different molecules react during different experiments.

The University of California San Diego scientist realized there is much data to be mined as scientists push forward with stem cells to learn how they evolve into the many different cell types in the body. Learning more about the actual biologic processes would help him make better informatics systems, Lo reasoned.

This month Lo has started working with stem cell lines at the Burnham Institute, thanks to a joint training program that has been designed by the four major research institutes in Torrey Pines that is being paid for with training grant funds from California's Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

“I wouldn't have the lab exposure without this training grant,” Lo said.

Lo is one of 32 scientists of all experience levels and expertise who have been selected to participate in the first joint project of the San Diego Stem Cell Consortium.

Joining him are scientists from a variety of backgrounds, who run the gamut in age and experience from 30-year-old Yu-hong Pang, a post doctoral stem cell researcher who is interested in turning human embryonic stem cells into heart cells, to Christian Carson, a 33-year-old post-doctoral candidate now jumping into stem cell research in the neurosciences, and 41-year-old post-doc Oded Singer, who has been working with human embryonic stem cells for several years.

The consortium that brings them all together was formed last year, when UCSD and the Burnham, Salk and Scripps research institutes entered a pact to share grant money they might receive from California's stem cell institute. Under the agreement they would also share their different expertise and bring together scientists from many different disciplines, including those who specialize in stem cells, informatics, developmental biology, and different biologic systems.

All of this expertise will be needed to eventually bring new therapies from stem cells to market, said Mark Mercola, a Burnham scientist who is among the training grant recipients.

“The connections and networking I do through this program with people from different disciplines could pay dividends later on, if we work on joint projects,” Lo said.

Ultimately, the consortium hopes to obtain a large facilities grant from the state to build a joint research facility on UCSD land along North Torrey Pines Road, near the Salk Institute. The facility would provide a home for scientists from all four institutes to conduct joint projects, and not be confined by federal funding restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research.

A group of scientific leaders from the four institutes has been meeting regularly to draft a plan for the research they would undertake in the proposed facility. Meanwhile, a group of community business leaders has been meeting to strategize about fundraising and who and how the institutes will apply for the facility grant.

The San Diego consortium's scientific mission officially kicked off yesterday with an introductory meeting at the Burnham Institute, during which each of the scientists got to meet the instructors who will be teaching a specially designed course, and then mingle over beer and pizza.

Statewide, the stem cell institute has distributed $12.1 million to 16 institutes to fund training of scientists. The four San Diego institutes received a total of $2.48 million in the first year of the three-year training program.

“This is a pretty amazing day to me,” said UCSD professor and scientist Larry Goldstein as he started the gathering. He introduced the wide array of scientists from the four institutes who will be teaching various facets of the course, including ethics professors who will lead discussion on the field's many provocative questions.

Goldstein has been pushing for more than two years to get to the point he'd be spending state money for such a course. He and Burnham's Evan Snyder were among a small group of researchers and patient advocates who first floated the idea of asking state taxpayers to fund stem cell research, especially human embryonic stem cell research.

Their work, which resulted in the initiative known as Proposition 71, sought to circumvent federal funding restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research.

Voters approved the initiative, but the funding has since been stymied by lawsuits challenging Proposition 71's legality. However, the stem cell institute now has $181 million in the bank thanks to philanthropic loans and donations.

“Two and a half years ago, everyone I talked to said I was out of my mind,” Goldstein said. “It wasn't the first time I heard it, but this time it's documentable that I wasn't.”

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