Cell Therapy News articles from October 2002

Cell Therapy News archives from October 2002

EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS: Hepatocytes From hES Cells Patented.
October 1, 2002... Geron Corp. (230 Constitution Dr., Menlo Park, CA 94025; Tel: 650/473-7700, Fax: 650/473-7701; Website: geron.com) was issued U.S. Patent 6,458,589 with claims directed to hepatocytes derived from human embryonic stem cells. This is its first...

Regulating Functions of ES Cells.
October 1, 2002... ARIAD Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (26 Landsdowne St., Cambridge, MA 02139; Tel: 617/494-0400, Fax: 617/494-8144; Website: ariad.com) has made an agreement with the WiCell Research Institute, Inc. (WiCell, 614 Walnut St., 13th floor, Madison, WI...

Feeder-Free Culture Protocols Available.
October 1, 2002... Geron Corp. (230 Constitution Dr., Menlo Park, CA 94025; Tel: 650/473-7700, Fax: 650/473-7701; Website: geron.com) has posted on its web site detailed protocols for scalable, feeder-free growth of undifferentiated human embryonic stem cells....

CORD BLOOD STEM CELLS: Pre-Selected Baby Saves Brother's Life.
October 1, 2002... In Israel, a test-tube baby was genetically selected as an embryo from several produced by her parents to make sure her bone marrow matched that of her four-year-old brother, according to a report from the Associated Press. Cells from the...

IMMUNE SYSTEM: Adoptive Transfer Shrinks Melanoma.
October 1, 2002... Immune cells that were cultured and activated in the laboratory against patients' tumors and then administered to those patients, can attack cancer cells in the body, according to a National Cancer Institute (NCI) (Bethesda, MD) study recently...

Dendritic Cell Myeloma Vaccine.
October 1, 2002... Aastrom Biosciences, Inc. (24 Frank Lloyd Wright Dr., P.O. Box 376, Ann Arbor, MI 48106; Tel: 313/930-5555, Fax: 313/665-0485; Website: aastrom.com) has made a collaborative agreement with Leland Stanford Junior University (Stanford) for an...

NERVOUS SYSTEM: Stem Cells Improve Injured Brains.
October 1, 2002... Neural stem cells, transplanted into injured brains, survive, proliferate and improve brain function in laboratory models according to research based at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (University of Pennsylvania, 295 John...

BLOOD: Progenitor Cells Coat Stents.
October 1, 2002... Orbus Medical Technologies (5363 N.W. 35th Ave., Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33309; Tel: 954/730-711, Fax: 954/730-7601; Website: orbusmt.com) has taken the next step beyond drug-eluting stents as it investigates the utilization of the patient's own...

GROWTH, DIFFERENTIATION FACTORS Factors Cause Islet Regeneration.
October 1, 2002... Transition Therapeutics, Inc. (415 Yonge St., Suite 1103, Toronto, Ontario M58 2E7, Canada; Tel: 416/260-7770, Fax: 416/260-2886; Website: transitiontherapeutics.com) says that a study of its Islet Neogenesis Therapy (INT) has shown that the...

Peptides Support Cell Growth.
October 1, 2002... Ortec International, Inc. (3690 Broadway, New York, NY; Tel: 212/740-6999, Fax: 212/740-6963; Website: ortec.com) has initiated a research collaboration focusing on developing new wound healing and tissue regeneration products from the...

CELL BASED GENE THERAPY Drug Activates Development Switch.
October 1, 2002... In a study published September 15 in the journal Blood, a collaborative team of scientists from the University of Washington (Seattle, WA, 98195; Website: washington.edu) and ARIAD Pharmaceuticals (26 Landsdowne St., Cambridge, MA 02139; Tel:...

Adverse Event Observed in SCID.
October 1, 2002... A serious adverse event has been observed in the clinical trial of gene therapy for the X-linked form of severe combined immune deficiency disease (XSCID) being performed by Alain Fischer and colleagues at the Hospital Necker Enfants Malade,...

TEETH: New Growth From Old Teeth.
October 1, 2002... A team of scientists from Forsyth Institute (140 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02115; Tel: 617/262-5200, Fax: 617/262-4021; Website: forsythe.org) has found a technique for growing living teeth in the laboratory-actually inside rats. A report on the...

HEART: U.S. Initiates Trials of Heart Regeneration.
October 1, 2002... The U.S. Food and Drug Association has given authorization for Bioheart, Inc. (2400 N. Commerce Pkwy, Suite 408, Weston, FL 33326; Tel: 954/217-7259, Fax: 954/385-5340) to initiate clinical studies of its investigational product, MyoCell, for...

Support for Cardiac Stem Cell Research.
October 1, 2002... Medtronic Foundation (MS LC110, Medtronic Parkway, Minneapolis, MN 55432-5604; Tel: 763/505-2638, Fax: 763/505-2648; Website: medtronic.com) and the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, MN 55455-0110; Tel: 612/625-5000; Website: umn.com) have...

DIAGNOSTICS, DRUG DISCOVERY Evolving Cell Types In Vitro.
October 1, 2002... Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Wyeth (5 Giralda Farms, Madison, NJ 07940; Tel: 800/934-5556; Website: wyeth.com), has accepted an evolved cancer cell line from Morphotek (210 Welsh Pool Rd., Exton, PA 19341; Tel: 610/423-6100, Fax:...

Increasing Supply of Prostate Tumor Cells.
October 1, 2002... Onyvax, Ltd. (St. George's Hospital Medical School, Cranmer Terrace, London SW17 ORE, U.K.; Tel: +44 (0)20 8682-9494, Fax: (0)20 8682-9495; Website: onyvax.com) and Asterand (Hudson Webber Cancer Research Center, Lab 815 HWCRC, 4100 John R,...

Laser Platform Receives Funding.
October 1, 2002... Oncosis (6199 Cornerstone Court, Suite 111, San Diego, CA 92121- 4740; Tel: 858/550-1770, Fax: 858/550-1774; Website: oncosis.com) has received a SBIR grant to develop drug discovery applications on its Laser Enabled Analysis and Processing...

Rapid Detection of Platelet Contamination.
October 1, 2002... Pall Corp. (2200 Northern Blvd., East Hills, NY 11548-1289; Tel: 516/484-5400, Fax: 516/484-5228; Website: pall.com) introduced a new Bacteria Detection System (Pall BDS) in Canada to detect bacterial contamination in platelets stored in...

VACCINES: Subjects Benefit From Prostate Drug.
October 1, 2002... Dendreon Corp. (291 North Bernardo Ave., Mountain View, CA; Tel: 415/964-6744, Fax: 415/964-7023; Website: dendreon.com) has released results of its first Phase III trial of Provenge (APC 8015), the company's investigational vaccine for the...

TRANSPLANTS: Why Not Use A Platypus?
October 1, 2002... They do weird things with reproduction Down Under. A mouse surrogate mother from Australia has given birth to five pups derived from mouse eggs but which had been grown in a rat, apparently the first instance of live young being born from eggs...

INDUSTRY NEWS: Nephros Completes Financing Round.
October 1, 2002... Nephros Therapeutics, Inc. (6 Court Dr., Lincoln, RI 02865; Tel: 401/333-3789, Fax: 401/333-3774; Website: nephrostherapeutics.com) has completed a Series C financing totaling $17 million to accelerate the clinical development of its lead...

Embryonic Research At a Slow Crawl.
October 1, 2002... Adult stem cell researcher and pediatric oncologist Curt I. Civin of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (720 Rutland Ave., Baltimore, MD 21205-2196; Tel: 410/955-5000; Website: infonet.welch.jhu.edu) testified September 25 on stem cell...

Abbott and Hydra to Collaborate.
October 1, 2002... Hydra Biosciences, Inc. (790 Memorial Dr., Suite 203, Cambridge, MA 02139; Tel: 617/494-5230; Website: hydrabiosciences.com) has announced two separate research collaborations with Abbott Laboratories. Under one, teams from the two companies...

Advanced Tissue Goes Bankrupt.
October 1, 2002... Advanced Tissue Sciences, Inc., (10933 North Torrey Pines Rd., La Jolla, CA 92037-1005, Tel: 619/450-5730, Fax: 619/455-6455) one of the first tissue engineering companies to go public, has filed a voluntary petition for reorganization under...

Briefly Noted:.
October 1, 2002... * The biotech cash crunch has captured Curis (45 Moulton St., Cambridge, MA; Tel: 617/876-0086, Fax: 617/876-0866; Website: curisinc.com). The company has signed an agreement under which Stryker Corp. will purchase the right to eliminate its...

EDITORIAL: Conference Bans Reporters.
October 1, 2002... The two-day Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine conference held October 8 and 9, organized by the Strategic Research Institute, drew the usual mix of researchers, biotech executives, venture capitalists, even a representative from the...

CALENDAR.
October 1, 2002... November 21-22, BioFuture 2002, Vancouver, British Columbia. Tel: 403/254-9222; Email: exhibit@biofuture.org. December 2-4, Third Annual Conference on Regenerative Medicine. Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., Tel: 800/M-LIEBERT, 914/834-3100, Fax:...