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The Drive for Perfect Children Gets a Little Scary – Bloomberg

Posted: August 25, 2017 at 6:42 am

Theres a lot of innovation going on in China these days, but perhaps not all of it is good. Chinese fertility centers are going well beyond American practices, using genetic diagnosis to influence how children conceived through in vitro fertilization will turn out. On one hand, the potential for improving human health is enormous. On the other hand, I am uneasy at the prospect of the power this gives parents. I dont trust people to take so much control over the future of human nature.

Sometimes you hear it argued that the complex nature of genes will prevent major feats of genetic engineering. That may be selling short future advances in Big Data and biomedicine, but even minor changes in genetic diagnosis and selection could have significant effects. Maybe you cant choose to have a child who will be happy, but you might be able to lower the chance of your kid having depression or social anxiety by some small amount. Over the course of generations, that will exert great influence over the nature of the human experience.

QuickTake Gene Editing

One risk, of course, is that parents will opt for some apparently desirable qualities in their children, and then the experiment will backfire, due to unforeseen genetic connections. Maybe well get happier kids, but they will be less creative, or less driven, or they might care less about others. Those are valid concerns, especially in these early days of genetic engineering. But I have a deeper worry, namely that things can go badly even when parents get exactly what they want.

If you could directly alter your kids genetic profile, what would you want? Its hard to know how the social debate would turn out after years of back and forth, but I was dismayed to read one recent research paper by psychologists Rachel M. Latham and Sophie von Stumm. The descriptive title of that work, based on survey evidence, is Mothers want extraversion over conscientiousness or intelligence for their children. Upon reflection, maybe that isnt so surprising, because parents presumably want children who are fun to spend time with.

Would a more extroverted human race be desirable, all things considered? I genuinely dont know, but at the very least I am concerned. The current mix of human personalities and institutions is a delicate balance which, for all of its flaws, has allowed society to survive and progress. Im not looking to make a big roll of the dice on this one.

Its also not difficult to imagine parents wanting children who are relatively well-behaved. The same research paper found that mothers, after extroversion, preferred the trait of agreeableness in their children, again over both intelligence and conscientiousness.

I was struck by a recent Chinese report that some parents are asking for children who are able to drink socially, for business purposes, and thus trying to avoid some genes that make it difficult to process alcohol. Caveat emptor.

Another risk is that parents may be too risk-averse. Especially if a family has only one or two kids, there may be a strong tendency to try to play it safe in terms of personality traits and cognitive abilities. Yet a greater diversity of human types may serve the greater good and perhaps offer intrinsic value too, by making the world an aesthetically richer and more diverse place. Unfortunately, its not hard to imagine a world where many parents opt against prospective children labeled, if only statistically, as too nerdy, too temperamental or too hard-working.

Parents choices, and their eventual public unveiling, may have harmful effects on social norms. What if it becomes known that a high percentage of parents opted for children with paler skin or straighter hair or a greater chance of being heterosexual? That knowledge could boost stigmas and social divisions, even with stringent anti-discrimination legislation. The parental choices could end up being seen as, in essence, the final court of public opinion.

We might expect that the regulators will say no to the most dangerous applications of genetic engineering, but can we be so sure? The techniques will be available in many different countries, and over time the more lax standards will have greater influence, if only through genetic engineering tourism. Parents are also a potent voting bloc, and if they really desire such choices, they may end up getting their way.

In China, these techniques are already about one-third as cheap as in the U.S., interest in them is growing rapidly, and there is talk of having them covered by national health insurance programs.

There is plenty of justified worry about greater discrimination these days, but were hardly talking about the biggest threats.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story: Tyler Cowen at tcowen2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stacey Shick at sshick@bloomberg.net

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For Immune System Stem Cell Studies, Mice Aren’t Enough – Science 2.0

Posted: August 25, 2017 at 6:42 am

If mouse studies were transferable to humans, we'd have cured every disease thousands of times. That is the big reason why you shouldn't accept scaremongering about the chemical of the week in the New York Times, or claims about Miracle Vegetables in the Washington Post.

Stem cell therapy is all the rage, with suspect companies sprouting up like supplement stores, claiming to be a benefit for this and that. Often all they have are mouse studies and FDA disclaimers on their side. That's not to say mouse studies are not valuable, they eliminate a lot of bad products, and in some instances mouse models are good analogues of humans, like in HIV infection, but a new paper reveals what chemists have long known: When it comes to the immune system rats are not little people, even "humanized" mice whichhave been engineered to have a human, rather than a murine, immune system.

These animals have been used for decades to study things like the immune response to the transplantation of pancreatic islet cells for diabetes and skin grafts for burn victims. But unlike what would occur in a human patient, the humanized mice are unable to robustly reject the transplantation of genetically mismatched human stem cells. As a result, they can't be used to study the immunosuppressive drugs that patients will likely require after transplant. The researchers conclude that the humanized mouse model is not suitable for studying the human immune response to transplanted stem cells or cells derived from them.

"In an ideal situation, these humanized mice would reject foreign stem cells just as a human patient would," said Joseph Wu, MD, PhD, director of Stanford University School of Medicine's Cardiovascular Institute and professor of cardiovascular medicine and of radiology. "We could then test a variety of immunosuppressive drugs to learn which might work best in patients, or to screen for new drugs that could inhibit this rejection. We can't do that with these animals."

The researchers write in Cell Reports that they were studying pluripotent stem cells, which can become any tissue in the body. They tested the animals' immune response to human embryonic stem cells, which are naturally pluripotent, and to induced pluripotent stem cells. Although iPS cells can be made from a patient's own tissues, future clinical applications will likely rely on pre-screened, FDA-approved banks of stem cell-derived products developed for specific clinical situations, such as heart muscle cells to repair tissue damaged by a heart attack, or endothelial cells to stimulate new blood vessel growth. Unlike patient-specific iPS cells, these cells would be reliable and immediately available for clinical use. But because they won't genetically match each patient, it's likely that they would be rejected without giving the recipients immunosuppressive drugs.

The authors found that two varieties of humanized mice were unable to completely reject unrelated human embryonic stem cells or iPS cells, despite the fact that some human immune cells homed to and were active in the transplanted stem cell grafts. In some cases, the cells not only thrived, but grew rapidly to form cancers called teratomas. In contrast, mice with unaltered immune systems quickly dispatched both forms of human pluripotent stem cells.

The researchers obtained similar results when they transplanted endothelial cells derived from the pluripotent stem cells.

A new mouse model

To understand more about what was happening, they created a new mouse model similar to the humanized mice. Instead of reconstituting the animals' nonexistent immune systems with human cells, however, they used immune and bone marrow cells from a different strain of mice. They then performed the same set of experiments again.

Unlike the humanized mice, these new mice robustly rejected human pluripotent stem cells as well as mouse stem cells from a genetically mismatched strain of mice. In other words, their newly acquired immune systems appeared to be in much better working order.

Although more research needs to be done to identify the cause of the discrepancy between the two types of animals, the researchers speculate it may have something to do with the complexity of the immune system and the need to further optimize the humanized mouse model to perhaps include other types of cells or signaling molecules. In the meantime, they are warning other researchers of potential pitfalls in using this model to screen for immunosuppressive drugs that could be effective after human stem cell transplants.

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New treatment for deadly blood cancers expected to be approved soon – STLtoday.com

Posted: August 25, 2017 at 6:42 am

Cancer doctors in St. Louis are ready to use a new therapy using a patients own blood to fight their disease.

The therapy, called CAR-T, for chimeric antigen receptor T-cell, involves removing immune cells from the blood, reprogramming them genetically to find and destroy cancer cells and then returning the immune cells to the patient. So far, the therapy has been tested on patients with hard-to-treat advanced blood cancers such as leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma that kill more than 58,000 Americans a year.

In one small study sponsored by Novartis Pharmaceuticals, 52 of 63 pediatric and young adult patients with relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukemia went into remission after undergoing CAR-T therapy. The 11 other patients died, seven from the cancer and four from side effects of the treatment.

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common childhood cancer, can be effectively treated with chemotherapy, but survival rates drop below 30 percent if the patient relapses. Candidates for CAR-T therapy include an estimated 600 children each year who relapse or do not respond to traditional chemotherapy.

At least 16 of the 20 people who have received CAR-T therapy for leukemia or lymphoma through clinical trials at Washington Universitys Siteman Cancer Center have seen their cancers disappear after treatment.

Ive never seen anything in cancer history with that kind of response, said Dr. Armin Ghobadi, an assistant professor in oncology at Washington University. These are the basically bad, incurable, deadly, unstoppable cancers and patients usually die quickly when we dont give them this treatment.

If approved as expected by the Food and Drug Administration, CAR-T therapy could be available locally within a year. Currently no patients at St. Louis Childrens Hospital qualify for the therapy, but patients are expected to come from neighboring states, said Dr. Robert Hayashi, director of hematology/oncology at the hospital.

This advancement is significant and has already demonstrated that it can be an effective form of therapy, Hayashi said. The ability of being able to show a clear success opens the door in terms of what other cancers can benefit from this exact same strategy.

So far the therapy has shown the most effectiveness in cancers of the blood. Another small trial in China involved 33 out of 35 patients experiencing remission from relapsing multiple myeloma, a plasma cancer, after receiving CAR-T therapy.

For decades, scientists have tried to corral the bodys immune system to fight cancer the way it attacks harmful bacteria or viruses. The immune system has a harder time recognizing cancer cells, allowing them to grow. Re-engineering immune cells to fight cancer cells is like turning on the cars headlights at night, Ghobadi said.

A main challenge with CAR-T therapy is the length of time it can take to reprogram the patients blood cells up to three weeks. Researchers are studying ways to reduce the time frame, including engineering universal CAR-T cells derived from donor blood or umbilical cord blood.

CAR-T therapy is expected to cost up to $500,000 for a one-time treatment. Scientists at Washington University are working to engineer the cells in-house, which could lower the price.

The side effects of the treatment can be severe as the immune system is amplified to fight cancer. A complication called cytokine release syndrome can cause life-threatening reactions including brain swelling. In early studies, one-third to one-half of patients treated with CAR-T therapy developed the syndrome. Because patients will need to be closely monitored, drug companies will limit the treatments availability to a few dozen cancer centers nationwide, including Siteman.

Marie Miceli, 64, was one of the first to be treated with CAR-T cell therapy in a trial at Siteman after several rounds of chemotherapy and a stem cell replacement failed to knock out non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

A year later, Miceli is in remission and just celebrated the birth of her fourth grandchild. Miceli, a real estate agent and branch manager at Berkshire Hathaway in St. Louis, said she was blessed to receive the experimental treatment.

You have to trust those doctors and have faith, she said.

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University of Texas Medical Branch lung experiment in space – Washington Times

Posted: August 25, 2017 at 6:42 am

GALVESTON, Texas (AP) - Two hundred and fifty miles above the Earths surface, scientists have begun testing the limits of human biology. In the sterile environment of the International Space Station, cells are being prodded to grow and multiply.

The Galveston County Daily News reports the goal is to grow human body parts, without the rest of the human attached.

The experiment sounds like a plot for a science fiction movie. But its actually one of the newest experiments to be conducted on the space station. The experiment, launched earlier this month, was designed by a University of Texas Medical Branch team.

Researchers aim to study how stem cells develop in a zero-gravity environment. The results could lead to new possibilities to help with long-distance space flight and terrestrial medical treatments, said Joan Nichols, a professor of internal medicine, and microbiology and immunology and the associate director of the Galveston National Laboratory.

The experiment was developed over the past five years. It was launched as part of the payload aboard a SpaceX Dragon Cargo ship. The ship carried 6,400 pounds of equipment, experiments and supplies, including a freezer full of Blue Bell ice cream cups.

Nichols and her team spent the week before the launch in Florida, preparing the experiment. It went off without a hitch and the capsule has arrived at the space station.

Everything went smoothly, Nichols said.

Nichols has studied lungs and their development on a cellular level for 15 years. The lab, which is focused on studying how lungs grow and heal, is not new to pushing scientific boundaries. In 2015, researchers from the lab successfully transplanted a bioengineered lung into a living pig.

Over time, the limits of growing cells on Earth has become apparent, she said. Studies have already shown that stems cells grow and multiply better in a zero-gravity environment than they do down below, she said.

The results could be used to develop treatments for problems astronauts develop on a long space flight, such as lung disease or traumatic injury.

Weve discovered what our limits are for doing large tissue constructs is the fact that the stem cells dont proliferate very well, Nichols said. Stem cells stay stemmy in space, she said, they dont mature and become other types of cells as fast.

If the cells stay stemmier and produce better, thats a huge thing that we cant do here on Earth, Nichols said. It will answer some questions about these cells.

Nichols and her team will be in communication with NASA and the astronauts on the space station over six weeks as the experiment is conducted. While tests are done in space, her team will replicate the experiment at the Galveston National Laboratory, to provide a control sample to compare the results.

Being able to expand the program to the stars has been a dream come true, Nichols said.

Being at Kennedy and Cape Canaveral, and working at the lab there, at the building where all the Apollo missions happened - I grew up with that, Nichols said. We worked hard and there were really long days, but it really was the most amazing experience ever.

___

Information from: The Galveston County Daily News, http://www.galvnews.com

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Howard University Hosts ‘Be The Match’ Marrow Registry Drive – Howard Newsroom (press release)

Posted: August 25, 2017 at 6:42 am

Howard University Hospital's Dr. Ermias Aytenfisu seeks to clear up misconceptions about marrow donation in the minority community.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (August 21, 2017) Elsa Nega is an Ethiopian-Canadian mother of two young children. She loves her children and wants to watch them grow. However, Nega has a rare form of blood cancer, leukemia, and needs a bone marrow transplant to survive.

Black patients like Nega are the least likely to find their suitable blood marrow match, according to Be The Match which is hosting a Stem Cell/Bone Marrow registry event at the Howard University College of Medicine on Wednesday, Aug. 30 between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. The exact location for the registry drive is the lobby outside of room 1008 in the Numa P. Adams building.

Negas story began in February when she walked into her local ER and was rushed to intensive care. By the next morning Nega was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) and started on chemo immediately. Unlike 90 percent of patients who go into remission after the first round of chemo, she did not.

Now, after three rounds of chemo, a bone marrow transplant is her only hope of recovery. Negas siblings were not a match and she is reaching out to the Washington region because of its large population of people of Ethiopian descent.

There are a lot of myths associated with marrow donation, said Amanda Holk, community engagement representative with the Be The Match in Washington, D.C. There is so much fear surrounding the process but most donors are back to work the next day.

ErmiasM. Aytenfisu, M.D., stroke medical director at Howard University Hospital said the most common way to donate bone marrow is through a procedure called peripheral stem cell donation. No surgery is involved. Donors receive medication to increase peripheral stem cells before the donation. On the day of donation, blood is removed through a needle on one arm and passed through a machine that separates out the blood-forming cells. Uncommonly marrow donation involves surgical techniques that use a special needle to take out blood forming cells. During the procedure, the patient is anesthetized and feels no pain.

Joining the bone marrow registry at the Howard University College of Medicine event involves a simple as a cheek swab and an application. A persons chance of being a match at that point is only 1 in 500. But, for a patient like Elsa, you could be the only one. Elsa does not have a single match on the registry although there are 30 million people signed up.

For more information, contact Amanda Holk via email AHolk@nmdp.org or 202-875-9987

For the Howard University registry drive, please note that you must be between the ages of 18 and 44 to join the registry since research has shown that the younger the cells, the better the patient outcomes. And the following conditions prevent you from joining:

Hepatitis B or C

HIV

Organ, marrow or stem cell transplant recipient

Stroke or TIA (transient ischemic attack)

Other upcoming local events to support Elsa Nega:

*Empower the community (The Helen Show)

Date: 08/26/2017 (Sat.)

Location: Washington Convention Center

*Ethiopian Day Festival

Date: 09/03/2017 (Sun.)

Location: Downtown Silver Spring

About Howard University Hospital

Over the course of its roughly 155-year history of providing the finest primary, secondary and tertiary health care services, Howard University Hospital (HUH) remains one of the most comprehensive health care facilities in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and designated a DC Level 1 Trauma Center. The hospital is the nation's only teaching hospital located on the campus of a historically Black university. For more information, visit huhealthcare.com

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8 things for spine surgeons to know for Thursday Aug. 24, 2017 – Becker’s Orthopedic & Spine

Posted: August 25, 2017 at 6:42 am

Here are eight things for spinal surgeons to know for Aug. 24, 2017.

Medtronic Q1 revenue jumps 3% to $7.4BMedtronic reported a slight revenue increase in the first quarter of the 2018 fiscal year. First quarter revenue hit $7.39 billion, up 3 percent over the same period last year. U.S. revenue increased 1 percent to $4 billion, representing 55 percent of the company's overall revenue. Non-U.S. revenue hit $2.3 billion, up 4 percent over the same period last year, and emerging market revenue was $1 billion, up 11 percent over last year.

DuPage Medical Group to grow with $1.45B investmentWith a $1.45 billion investment from Ares Management, DuPage Medical Group is looking to expand its services and the number of physicians, the Chicago Tribune reports. Currently, the group has a team of 800 providers and plans to grow to between 1,200 and 1,500. DuPage Medical Group is also considering expanding further beyond Illinois. Along with adding more physicians, DuPage Medical Group plans to add services such as imaging, immediate care, physical therapy and oncology.

Spineology receives $10M fundingDuring Spineology's latest round of funding, the company secured $10 million. Spineology began taking $25,000 investments for the recently closed round a year ago. The company has not announced its plans for the funding.

Former Yale Spine Co-Chief Dr. James Yue joins Connecticut Orthopaedic SpecialistsJames Yue, MD, joined Connecticut Orthopaedic Specialists. He previously served as the co-chief of orthopedic spine surgery at New Haven, Conn.-based Yale School of Medicine and director of the ACGME Yale Spine Fellowship. As a member of Connecticut Orthopaedic Specialists, Dr. Yue will see patients in Shelton, Hamden and Essex, Conn.

Merger: Advanced Pain Medicine now under Commonwealth Pain & Spine umbrella Lexington, Ky.-based Advanced Pain Medicine merged with Louisville, Ky.-based Commonwealth Pain & Spine. Commonwealth Pain & Spine consists of more than seven locations and 30 providers. The merger came to fruition due to Advanced Pain Medicine's Saroj Dubal, MD, deciding to retire.

Washington University School of Medicine new spinal cord injury clinical trial siteThe St. Louis-based Washington University School of Medicine is a new clinical study site for Asterias Biotherapeuturics SCiStar clinical trial of AST-OPC1 stem cells in patients with severe cervical spinal cord injuries. W. Zachary Ray, MD, a neurological and orthopedic surgery associate professor at Washington School of Medicine, will lead the site's investigation.

EIT acquires 22 patents from spine surgeon Dr. Morgan LorioEmerging Implant Technologies acquired a portfolio of patents from Morgan P. Lorio, MD, of Nashville, Tenn.-based Hughston Clinic Orthopaedics. The portfolio includes 22 issued and pending patents for 3-D printed expandable spinal fusion cages. EIT plans to leverage this technology to enhance its cellular titanium cages.

Global minimally invasive spine surgery market to grow at 7.6% CAGR through 2021The global minimally invasive spine surgery market is anticipated to grow at a 7.57 percent compound annual growth rate between 2017 and 2021, according to an Absolute Reports analysis. DePuy Synthes, Medtronic, NuVasive, Stryker and Zimmer Biomet lead the global MIS spine market. A key market trend is an increase in MI sacroiliac joint fusion.

More articles on spine:Cord lengthening: Part of comprehensive AIS treatment6 key findings on spinal epidural hematomaThe causes and treatments for spinal hemangiomas

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COLUMN: Startling statistics concerning drug deaths in rural communities – Meadville Tribune

Posted: August 25, 2017 at 6:42 am

About five or six years ago, a cousin of mine who is an emergency medical technician in New Jersey told me something quite interesting, We're all worried about terrorists of all kinds foreign, domestic, Arab extremists, and right-wing militias, but a more dangerous and ugly threat is ... drugs.

His cautionary statement was lost on me until a couple of years ago because, for some reason, I didn't think drugs would make inroads to our rural community and its populace. Drug abuse was, in my mistaken mind, a problem of the inner city and not a concern of northwestern Pennsylvania. Anyone with any consciousness knows that I was mistaken.

The number of drug deaths in all of Pennsylvania, according to the Pennsylvania Coroners Association for 2015 was 3,505. Of those deaths, 22 percent (777) were in rural counties like ours and 85 percent of those deaths were a result of the overdose of illegal drugs.

To drill down even further, 55 percent of the illegal drug deaths resulted from heroin and 26 percent from cocaine and the balance from other drugs. Primarily, these deaths are white, single males, but 19 percent are married.

Additionally, the number of hospital admissions in Crawford County for 2015 was 150, slightly lower than admissions for alcohol abuse. Parenthetically, the number of deaths in 2016 and 2017 are well above the 2015 national number of 57,000, and drug overdose is the leading cause of death of people 50 and younger.

It's apparent that we have a problem of serious proportions. What can we do to stem the tide?

In some countries, the government supplies injection studios where the addicted can administer their drugs under supervision and, presumably, be monitored for an overdose. Given the progressive nature of the addiction/disease, this seems to not answer the root causes of the problem and just deals with the ugly outcome of it. We are left with causation of the disease and those factors most assuredly vary with each individual, though there are some causes that go across all individual circumstances.

Some individuals have an addictive personality that pre-disposes them to addictive chemicals like heroin and alcohol, while other people do not as quickly develop dependence. Additionally, some drugs, like heroin, are addictive more quickly and profoundly than others.

Of course, the basis for all behavior, addictive and otherwise, is the human search for pleasure and avoidance of pain or discomfort. So, in the case of opioids, the pleasure is especially deep in their use, the avoidance of pain extremely effective, and in detoxification, the discomfort is particularly acute.

Further, the human brain and central nervous system receptors are conditioned to opioid use and scream for it. What the addict is left with, then, is an extremely powerful physical addiction grounded in neurological and psychological dependence that makes him incapable of the rational decision to not use the drug.

Perhaps, initially, the user can decide to not try the drug, but once addicted it's well nigh impossible to stop without outside intervention. Since opioids bind with receptors in all body cells, including heart and lung, overdose leading to pulmonary and cardiac episodes become a lethal possibility. To never start, then, seems to be the answer to never having to quit or dying of the addiction.

In connection with this, it's incumbent on health care providers to rethink the use of medication containing opioids and thus avoid some medically induced addiction. Are there any concrete answers and if there are, how can a society implement them without hijacking free choice? Everyone has the right to poor judgment, don't they?

Joseph Stalin once remarked, The death of thousands is but a statistic, while the death of one person is a tragedy. So it is with opioid overdose and fatality. The one death is projected upon the mother, father, husband, wife, children, brother, sister or other family and friends of the user/victim and the incomparable pain experienced by them is a human tragedy of immense proportions and as indescribable as the breaking of a human heart.

Society also suffers in the use of valuable resources in the treatment and prevention of addiction but ultimately pays a deep and most grievous price in the loss of human talent and potential.

Everyone loses. Everyone.

Gary DeSantis is a Meadville resident and author of a book titled The 6th Floor.

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News | Misericordia University: Alumnus tells first-year students they … – Misericordia University

Posted: August 25, 2017 at 6:40 am

Alumnus tells first-year students they can change the world during address at convocation

With a processional led by a contingent of bagpipers, Misericordia University welcomed 436 first-year students, the third largest class in school history, during the annual convocation ceremony on Thursday, Aug. 24 in the Wells Fargo Amphitheater. Misericordia University received 2,397 applications for the first-year class, which hails from 13 states, including Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington.

The university also welcomed 75 transfer students. With the new class of students, the university expects to have between 2,750-2,775 undergraduate and graduate students in full- and part-time academic programs for the fall semester. Misericordia has 960 students scheduled to live in residence halls and townhomes on campus.

The convocation program included a welcome by President Thomas J. Botzman, Ph.D., and an address by alumnus Tariq Adwan '05, Ph.D., chief scientific officer of Alpha Genomix of Lawrenceville, Georgia, a member of the Class of 2005. During the ceremony, the Misericordia University Alumni Association presented Dr. Adwan with the Young Alumnus Award. The award is bestowed, from time to time, to a traditional undergraduate alumna or alumnus who has graduated within the past ten years and who has demonstrated outstanding professional achievements and/or community or civic service.

In his address, the native of Palestine talked about how Dr. Carol Rittner, RSM, a member of the Misericordia Board of Trustees, was instrumental in his decision to make the 10,000-mile trip from his home on the West Bank to the Misericordia campus in 2001. Dr. Rittner, a chaired scholar of Holocaust studies at Stockton State University, had met Dr. Adwan's father, who with a colleague of the Jewish faith, was working in support of the Middle East peace process.

"Although my interaction with Sister Carol at the time was relatively brief, she expressed enough compassion, selflessness, acceptance and respect that it did not take much thought before I decided that Misericordia was where I wanted to spend the next four years of my life," Dr. Adwan said of his decision. He was a student at Misericordia for only three weeks when terrorists attacked the United States on Sept. 11.

"Being the only Muslim student on campus at the time, I was devastated. I was afraid and I even contemplated going back to Palestine for fear of retaliation. Much to my surprise, by the evening of that day, my dorm room was filled with fellow students where we gathered in solidarity with the victims and their families as we tried to make sense of what just happened.

"Needless to say, what I experienced that night left a lasting impression on me, and the friendships I have made were nothing like I have ever experienced before or since," he stated. "I realized that day, that changing the world was possible, but that I needed people to do it with.

"So as you embark on your journey I encourage you to get to know as many people that are different from you as possible. Engage in face-to-face interaction with them and you will find that the people that are most different from you are those that will inspire you the most. You will also find that even though these people may seem different from you, they are, after all, people just like you."

He added, "Share your story; it matters. You might be a first-generation college student or a first-generation immigrant ... Whoever you are and whatever your story might be, it is a chapter in the American story that makes us who we are. When we know who we are, we realize that we are a nation of all creeds, colors, races and national origins. It is then that we become less threatened and more welcoming of the stranger. For we, once upon a time, were the strangers."

As a Misericordia sophomore, Adwan participated in designing and helping prepare an experiment that was placed on the 16-day Columbia shuttle mission. "Growth of Bacterial Biofilm on Surfaces During Spaceflight" was done under the direction of the Israeli Aerospace Medical Institute and Johnson Space Center Astrobiology Center. It combined a proposal from Adwan, submitted from his Misericordia residence hall, and another from Yuval Landau, a student at Tel Aviv University. Sadly, the shuttle broke up on re-entry and all members of the crew, including the first Israeli astronaut, were killed on Feb. 1, 2003.

Adwan holds a Bachelor of Science degree in biology and chemistry with honors from Misericordia, and a Ph.D. in cell biology from the University of Colorado, Denver, Colorado, specializing in stem cells and development. As chief scientific officer at Alpha Genomix, he oversees all scientific, technological and research operations, and helps identify new opportunities for growth with industry partners. Alpha Genomix is a personalized medicine testing and molecular diagnostics laboratory for pharmacogenetics, the field of research on how a person's genetic makeup affects that individual's response to medications and drugs. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Georgia Gwinnet College, Lawrenceville, Georgia, where he teaches biology.

The annual convocation ceremony welcomes first-year students and their families to Misericordia University, and acts as the official start to the new academic year. Orientation begins later in the afternoon and continues until the first day of class on Monday, Aug. 28. The orientation program includes the Orientation Days of Service on Aug. 26-27 in which first-year students and other members of the campus community volunteer in the region.

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Washington University School of Medicine; Asterias Biotherapeutics … – STL.News

Posted: August 25, 2017 at 6:40 am

FREMONT, Calif., Aug. 23, 2017 (STL.NEWS) Asterias Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NYSE MKT:AST), a biotechnology company pioneering the field of regenerative medicine, today announced that Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO, has been added as a clinical site in the companys ongoing SCiStar Phase 1/2a clinical trial of AST-OPC1, a stem-cell derived investigational therapy, in patients with severe cervical spinal cord injury (SCI). There are now nine clinical sites enrolling patients in the study.

Washington University and its partner Barnes-Jewish Hospital have one of the largest clinical spine care practices in the United States. W. Zachary Ray, MD, Associate Professor of Neurological and Orthopedic Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine, will be the sites principal investigator. Patients enrolled in the trial will receive the AST-OPC1 treatment during surgery at Barnes-Jewish.

Given the studys encouraging early results, we look forward to evaluating whether AST-OPC1 can advance treatment options for patients with severe cervical spinal cord injuries. This investigational therapy is an important contribution to our comprehensive program to treat spinal cord injuries here at Washington University and Barnes-Jewish, said Dr. Ray.

Barnes-Jewish Hospitals Trauma Center was the first in Missouri to receive the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Level I verification, which is the highest national recognition possible from ACS.

Washington University School of Medicine is a great addition to our current AST-OPC1 SCiStar study. We hope Washington University School of Medicine will also participate in a future randomized controlled trial of AST-OPC1, stated Dr. Edward Wirth III, Chief Medical Officer of Asterias Biotherapeutics.

About the SCiStar Trial

The SCiStar trial is an open-label, single-arm trial testing three sequential escalating doses of AST-OPC1 administered at up to 20 million AST-OPC1 cells in as many as 35 patients with subacute motor complete (AIS-A or AIS-B) cervical (C-4 to C-7) SCI. These individuals have essentially lost all movement below their injury site and experience severe paralysis of the upper and lower limbs. AIS-A patients have lost all motor and sensory function below their injury site, while AIS-B patients have lost all motor function but may have retained some minimal sensory function below their injury site. AST-OPC1 is being administered 21 to 42 days post-injury. Patients will be followed by neurological exams and imaging procedures to assess the safety and activity of the product.

The study is being conducted at nine centers in the U.S. Clinical sites involved in the study include the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, Shepherd Medical Center in Atlanta, University of Southern California (USC) jointly with Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center in Los Angeles, Indiana University, Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose jointly with Stanford University, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in partnership with Magee Rehabilitation Hospital in Philadelphia, UC San Diego Health in San Diego, California, and Washington University School of Medicine in partnership with Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, MO.

Asterias has received a Strategic Partnerships Award grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which provides $14.3 million of non-dilutive funding for the Phase 1/2a clinical trial and other product development activities for AST-OPC1.

Additional information on the Phase 1/2a trial, including trial sites, can be found at http://www.clinicaltrials.gov, using Identifier NCT02302157, and at the SCiStar Study Website (www.SCiStar-study.com).

About AST-OPC1

AST-OPC1, an oligodendrocyte progenitor population derived from human embryonic stem cells originally isolated in 1998, has been shown in animals and in vitro to have three potentially reparative functions that address the complex pathologies observed at the injury site of a spinal cord injury. These activities of AST-OPC1 include production of neurotrophic factors, stimulation of vascularization, and induction of remyelination of denuded axons, all of which are critical for survival, regrowth and conduction of nerve impulses through axons at the injury site. In preclinical animal testing, AST-OPC1 administration led to remyelination of axons, improved hindlimb and forelimb locomotor function, dramatic reductions in injury-related cavitation and significant preservation of myelinated axons traversing the injury site.

In a previous Phase 1 clinical trial, five patients with neurologically complete, thoracic spinal cord injury were administered two million AST-OPC1 cells at the spinal cord injury site 7-14 days post-injury. Based on the results of this study, Asterias received clearance from FDA to progress testing of AST-OPC1 to patients with cervical spine injuries in the current SCiStar study, which represents the first targeted population for registration trials. Asterias has completed enrollment in the first four cohorts of this study. Results to date have continued to support the safety of AST-OPC1. Additionally, Asterias has recently reported results suggesting reduced cavitation and improved motor function in patients administered AST-OPC1 in the SCiStar trial.

About Asterias Biotherapeutics

Asterias Biotherapeutics, Inc. is a biotechnology company pioneering the field of regenerative medicine. The companys proprietary cell therapy programs are based on its pluripotent stem cell and immunotherapy platform technologies. Asterias is presently focused on advancing three clinical-stage programs which have the potential to address areas of very high unmet medical need in the fields of neurology and oncology. AST-OPC1 (oligodendrocyte progenitor cells) is currently in a Phase 1/2a dose escalation clinical trial in spinal cord injury. AST-VAC1 (antigen-presenting autologous dendritic cells) is undergoing continuing development by Asterias based on promising efficacy and safety data from a Phase 2 study in Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), with current efforts focused on streamlining and modernizing the manufacturing process. AST-VAC2 (antigen-presenting allogeneic dendritic cells) represents a second generation, allogeneic cancer immunotherapy. The companys research partner, Cancer Research UK, plans to begin a Phase 1/2a clinical trial of AST-VAC2 in non-small cell lung cancer in 2017. Additional information about Asterias can be found at http://www.asteriasbiotherapeutics.com.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Statements pertaining to future financial and/or operating and/or clinical research results, future growth in research, technology, clinical development, and potential opportunities for Asterias, along with other statements about the future expectations, beliefs, goals, plans, or prospects expressed by management constitute forward-looking statements. Any statements that are not historical fact (including, but not limited to statements that contain words such as will, believes, plans, anticipates, expects, estimates) should also be considered to be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, risks inherent in the development and/or commercialization of potential products, uncertainty in the results of clinical trials or regulatory approvals, need and ability to obtain future capital, and maintenance of intellectual property rights. Actual results may differ materially from the results anticipated in these forward-looking statements and as such should be evaluated together with the many uncertainties that affect the businesses of Asterias, particularly those mentioned in the cautionary statements found in Asterias filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Asterias disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

source; Asterias Biotherapeutics , published on STL.NEWS by St Louis Media, LLC

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Researchers find new glioblastoma inhibitor – Patient Daily

Posted: August 24, 2017 at 5:47 am

Neuro-oncologists from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Jiaotong University have found a new treatment that inhibits glioblastoma growth.

Researchers led by the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Dr. Ichiro Nakano and the Xi'an Jiaotong University's Dr. Maode Wang found a way glioma stem cells are maintained inside molecules, and they experimented to see it could be used in treating glioblastoma. The scientists created a small molecule inhibitor that they tested to see if could be used as a therapeutic target in glioblastoma.

The group conducted the test after it found that an another inhibitor of cancers that were past early stages, called OTS167, did not work in treating glioblastoma in another experiment.

Nakano's research facility unveiled that NEK2, kinase enzyme, grew following OTS167 treatment. Researchers then built a different inhibitor, CMP3a, via computer to slow growth in pre-clinical models. They experimented with CMP3a, which revealed that the CMP3a prevented glioblastoma from getting bigger in mice.

When the CMP3a was used with radiation, researchers unveiled that the combination kept glioblastoma from getting bigger in culture.

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