Monthly Archives: August 2012

Aaron Curry using stem cell therapy to help knees

Posted: August 6, 2012 at 12:12 am

Raiders linebacker Aaron Curry isnt sure when hell be able to get back on the field, but hes pretty sure that stem cell therapy will be the thing that winds up getting him back there.

Paul Gutierrez of CSNBayArea.com reports that Curry has received the therapy on both of his knees. Bone marrow from his hips was used in the treatment and Curry told Gutierrez that it is the only thing hes tried that has helped him feel better. Curry is still working out on the side during Raiders practices and said hell only return to practice when hes fully able to help the Raiders.

My goal is to get healthy and just go out there and be violent, be fast, be a pain in the offenses butt and whatever I have to do on the defense, do it, Curry said. And do it full speed. I cant do that until my body says its ready.

The treatment has been popular with Oakland athletes. Linebacker Rolando McClain said that the treatment helped his legs feel better earlier this offseason and As pitcher Bartolo Colon has credited stem cell treatment on his shoulder with saving his baseball career.

With McClain facing a possible suspension under the Personal Conduct Policy and Oakland short on linebacking depth, the Raiders need Curry to be healthy for the start of the season.

More:
Aaron Curry using stem cell therapy to help knees

Posted in Stem Cell Therapy | Comments Off

Unnatural Selection: Muscles, Genes and Genetic Cheats

Posted: August 5, 2012 at 3:52 pm

Take a close look at the athletes competing in this year's Summer Olympic Games in London --their musculature will tell you a lot about how they achieved their elite status. Endless hours of training and commitment to their sport played a big role in building the bodies that got them to the world's premier athletic competition. Take an even closer look--this one requires microscopy--and you'll see something else, something embedded in the genetic blueprints of these young men and women that's just as important to their success. [More]

Source:
http://rss.sciam.com/sciam/topic/gene-therapy

Posted in Gene therapy | Comments Off

Europe Nears First Approval for Gene Therapy Treatment

Posted: August 5, 2012 at 3:52 pm

From Nature magazine

[More]

Source:
http://rss.sciam.com/sciam/topic/gene-therapy

Posted in Gene therapy | Comments Off

AIDS: Genetic Clues from HIV Elite Controllers Could Lead to Better Vaccines, Cancer Treatments (preview)

Posted: August 5, 2012 at 3:52 pm

One day in early 1995 a man named bob massie walked into my office at the outpatient clinic of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Massie told me he had been infected with HIV--the virus that causes AIDS--for 16 years and yet had never shown any symptoms. My physical examination confirmed he was healthy, in stark contrast to all other patients I saw that day. At that time, a new combination of drugs was being tested that would eventually slow the progressive decline in immune function that HIV caused. In 1995, however, most people who had been infected with HIV for a decade or more had already progressed to AIDS--the stage marked by the inability to fight off other pathogens. The young man standing before me had never taken anti-HIV medication and strongly believed that if I learned the secret to his good fortune, the information could help others to survive what was then generally thought to be a uniformly fatal disease.

[More]

Source:
http://rss.sciam.com/sciam/topic/gene-therapy

Posted in Gene therapy | Comments Off

Small Comfort: Nanomedicine Able to Penetrate Bodily Defenses

Posted: August 5, 2012 at 3:52 pm

Tears and a runny nose can be unpleasant on a windy day, but these mucosal secretions play a vital role in protecting the body from viruses and other malicious microbes. Unfortunately, mucus is also adept at washing away medication designed to treat infections and inflammation that occur when an infectious agent is successful in penetrating the body's defenses [More]

Source:
http://rss.sciam.com/sciam/topic/gene-therapy

Posted in Gene therapy | Comments Off

$20 Million in Stem Cell Irony

Posted: August 5, 2012 at 3:52 pm

A bit of irony popped up this
week in the wake of approval of $151 million in awards by the
California stem cell agency.

One of the awards was $20 million to
StemCells, Inc., of Newark, Ca., which is also fighting hard for
another $20 million from the state research enterprise.

However, back in 2008, Kenneth
Stratton, general counsel for the firm, put some distance between his
company and the agency, which is handing out $3 billion in toto.

Stratton said,

"We will take CIRM money last. We
don't want to be in a position where, years from now, we are actually
forced to sell [our products] in California at a loss."

But last week, Martin McGlynn, CEO of
StemCells, said in a press release,

“We are extremely grateful to CIRM
for its support.”

Times have changed for both the company
and CIRM, which is in the process of altering the intellectual
property rules that offended Stratton in 2008. The changes were due
to be approved last Thursday, but action was put off by the CIRM
board. It was overwhelmed as it dealt with the record pace of appeals
by researchers who were scrambling to overturn negative decisions by
grant reviewers.

StemCells' application for another $20
million is one of those being appealed. The board will take it up
again in either September or late October, after it undergoes
additional scrutiny by the agency.

CIRM is touting its IP changes as being
more friendly to business. They also can be made retroactive to cover
awards to business made in the past. CIRM directors expect to meet by
telephone, probably in August, to approve the new IP rules.

Source:
http://californiastemcellreport.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Posted in Stem Cells, Stem Cell Therapy | Comments Off

Stem Cell Blowback from Proposition 71

Posted: August 5, 2012 at 3:52 pm

Proposition 71 last week once again
stood in the way of action by the $3 billion California stem cell
agency.

This time it was a bit of minutia
embedded in state law that prevented the agency's governing board
from going forward. The result is that the board will have to hold
another meeting in August to approve matters that need to be acted on
in a timely fashion.

The minutia involves the supermajority
quorum requirement for the board, the percentage of board members
needed to conduct business legally. Proposition 71, the 10,000-word
ballot initiative that created the agency in 2004, stipulates that 65
percent of the 29 members of the board be present for action.

Here is what happened: Late last
Thursday afternoon, CIRM directors were moving fast after a long day
of dealing with $151 million in research awards. But as they
attempted to act on proposed changes in the agency's important
intellectual property rules, one of the board members left the
meeting, presumably to catch a flight. The result was that the
meeting quickly ended after it was decided to deal with the IP
proposal and another matter during a telephonic meeting this month.

The quorum problem has plagued the CIRM
board since its inception, although the situation has eased since
J.T. Thomas, a Los Angeles bond financier, was elected chairman in
2011. A few years back, the board also changed its rules to allow a
limited number of board members to participate in meetings by
telephone, reducing the pressure on board members to physically
attend meetings.

The obvious solution would be to change
the quorum to 50 percent, a reasonable standard. However, the board
is legally barred from doing that. To make the change would require a super, supermajority vote, 70 percent of
each house of the state legislature and the signature of the
governor. That is another bit that is embedded in state law, courtesy of Proposition 71. To attempt to win a 70 percent legislative vote would involve a political process
that could be contentious and also involve some horse-trading that
the stem cell agency would not like to see.

Why does the 65-percent quorum
requirement exist? Normally, one would think such internal matters
are best left to the governing board itself. It is difficult to know
why former CIRM Chairman Bob Klein and his associates wrote that
requirement into law. But it does allow a minority to have effective
veto power over many actions by the governing board.

Of course, there is another way to look
at the problem: CIRM board members could change their flights and
stick around until all the business is done. But that would ignore
the reality that all of them are extremely busy people and have
schedules that are more than full.

All of this goes to one of the major policy issues in California -- ballot box budgeting and the use of initiatives that are inflexible and all but impossible to change, even when the state is in the midst of a financial crisis in which the poor, the elderly and school children are the victims. One California economist has called the situation "our special hell."

For more on some of the other problems
created by Proposition 71, see here(cap on size of staff, which took legislation to remove), here (board cannot nominate its ownchairman), here (dual executive arrangement).

Source:
http://californiastemcellreport.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Posted in Stem Cells, Stem Cell Therapy | Comments Off