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This interview was conducted by George S. Mack of The Life Sciences Report (5/10/13) Stem cell companies have languished long enough in micro-cap territory. The industry is now approaching highly visible phase 2 and phase 3 catalysts that will produce results never before seen in medicine. Managing Director and Senior Biotechnology Analyst Jason Kolbert of the Maxim Group has staked out a select group of nascent cell therapy companies positioned to reap huge gains for investors willing to diversify. In this interview with The Life Sciences Report, Kolbert reflects on the regenerative medicine space following the recent RegenMed Investor Day...

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state’s controversial, $3 billion stem-cell research agency, has yet to follow recommendations from a December report by the Institute of Medicine, a division of the National Academy of Sciences. The report, which urged the agency to overhaul its board of directors, did not fully convey the magnitude of CIRM’s failure—but it did confirm that CIRM might be better described as Conflict of Interest Research Money. Almost all members of the CIRM board, investigators noted, “are interested parties with a personal or financial stake in the allocation of CIRM fundings.” In fact, CIRM directed...

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Two scientists who have fought a 3-year, losing court battle to block federal funding for human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research have now taken their case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Yesterday, attorneys for the plaintiffs in Sherley v. Sebelius filed what's known as a writ of certiorari with the land's highest court. In their 36-page petition(PDF), they ask the court to consider two questions that were raised when a federal appeals court ruled against them in August. One is whether the appeals court should have relied on its own earlier, split decision finding that federally funded hESC research doesn't...

A treatment for eye diseases that is derived from human embryonic stem cells might have improved the vision of two patients, bolstering the beleaguered field, researchers reported Monday. Dr. Steven Schwartz, a retina specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles, conducted the trial with two patients. Sue Freeman said her vision improved in a meaningful way after the treatment, which used embryonic stem cells. The report, published online in the medical journal The Lancet, is the first to describe the effect on patients of a therapy involving human embryonic stem cells. The paper comes two months after the Geron...

Stem Cells, Life, and the LawA federal court steps into the debate. Monday’s decision from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia halting all federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research is a surprising milestone in the decade-long debate over this morally fraught field — and another opportunity to make the case that medical research must proceed hand-in-hand with respect for life and human dignity. First, a little background. Human embryonic stem cells, which many scientists hope will someday lead to new therapies for a range of diseases, can be obtained only through the destruction of human embryos. But...

When scientists play politics with science, society and science both suffer, sometimes with life-threatening implications.  One recent example is Climategate, with revelations that leading global warming researchers played with the data, concealed and tried to suppress data that challenged their assertions and attempted to game the peer-review system.  And as a result of scientists caught playing politics with science, claims of man-made global warming have been met with growing skepticism. But a similar scenario has played out regarding human embryonic stem cell research (hESCR),  With the introduction of legislation to codify the Obama administration's rules expanding the federal role in...

Monya Baker is Technology Editor at Nature and Nature Methods Correspondence to: Monya Baker1 e-mail: m.baker@us.nature.com Abstract Now that the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells is becoming routine, researchers can get on to the more exciting prospect of using the cells to make discoveries in disease and basic biology. Monya Baker reports. Introduction As Shinya Yamanaka finished the experiments that would win him the 2009 Lasker prize, a stem-cell fraud was prominent in his thoughts. In 2005, Woo Suk Hwang had rocketed to star status for reportedly developing a technique to generate human embryonic stem (ES) cells genetically matched...

The decision to offer New York women up to $10,000 to donate their eggs for stem cell research, payable by taxpayers, is "incredibly irresponsible and immoral," critics told FOXNews.com. New York's decision to offer women in the state up to $10,000 to donate their eggs for stem cell research, payable by taxpayers, is "incredibly irresponsible and immoral," critics told FOXNews.com. Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, said the move -- the first of its kind nationwide -- treats women as "commodities, almost like cows" and could lead to cash-strapped women in other states to partake in similar programs....

“The development of a human being begins with fertilization, a process by which the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote.” — Langman’s Medical Embryology, 7th edition, 1995 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For people who advocate the killing of embryonic human beings in the cause of biomedical research, the Holy Grail is an argument that would definitively establish that the human embryo, at least early in its development, is not a living human organism and therefore not a human being at all. The problem for these advocates is that all...

Less than two years ago, it looked like the ethical debate over human embryonic stem cells might be coming to an end. In November 2007, two research groups, one at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and another at Kyoto University in Japan, announced that they had succeeded in directly reprogramming human skin cells into stem cells. Earlier this year, Canadian and British researchers reported even better news. They have developed a new way to create such cells without using viruses, which pose a risk of producing tumors by damaging the transformed cells' genes. Yesterday, as many as 700 new stem cell...

SVC = superior vena cavaAo = aortaPA = pulmonary arteryPV = pulmonary veinRA = right atriumLA = left atriumLV = left ventricleRV = right ventricle Enlarge ImageKey to the heart? Scientists have identified what they say are the heart's "master" stem cells.Credit: Lei Bu et al., Nature 460, 113 (2009) Scientists have identified a cardiac stem cell that gives rise to all of the major cell types in the human heart. The find opens the way to using patients' own cells to heal their damaged hearts. The cells in question express a protein, called Islet 1, which is present in...

Look to the retina as a likely site for the first success in stem-cell therapy. "The eye is the best place to test proof-of-concept for stem cell-based therapies," says Martin Friedlander of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. Friedlander is co-founder of EyeCyte, also in La Jolla, whose investors include industry heavyweight Pfizer. Several laboratories are exploring stem-cell-derived transplants to delay or prevent blindness, and Pfizer recently put up funds for a project nearing human trials at University College London (UCL). Why the eye appeal? As organs go, it is easily accessible, somewhat protected from the immune system's...

WASHINGTON: Scientists have found that a protein abundant in embryonic stem cells plays a major role in cancer, which they claim offers a possible new target for drug development. A team at the Stem Cell Program at Children's Hospital Boston, led by Indian-origin scientist Srinivas Viswanathan, has discovered that LIN28 protein can transform cells to a cancerous state, and that it is abundant in a variety of advanced human cancers like liver cancer and ovarian cancer. According to them, LIN28 and a related protein, LIN28B, may be involved in some 15% of human cancers. By blocking or suppressing LIN28, it...

British scientists are among the world leaders in stem cell research - and their latest discoveries could transform medicine forever We have been told for almost a decade that stem cells are the future of medicine: that these tiny clumps of tissue could become a biological "repair kit", able to regenerate or heal almost any part of the body. But amid all the prophecies of patches for damaged hearts, new nerve cells for spinal injuries or stroke victims, and insulin-producing cells for diabetics, few people predicted that it would be British-based scientists who would be leading the way in mapping...

Some research advocates and scientists are upset that techniques they support would get no federal money. Many scientists hoped President Obama would end what they saw as the politicization of embryonic stem cell research. They thought all Bush administration funding bans would vanish, easing the way for unimpeded research that could yield interventions for physicians to use in treating everything from Parkinson's disease to diabetes. But those hopes may be running into political reality.The National Institutes of Health in April proposed overturning some Bush-era restrictions on federal funding for stem cell research while leaving others in place. The rules would...

The growing blue state-red state gap over this research shows that science has serious economic and political muscle in America today. When Barack Obama removed George W. Bush's ban on federal funding for new embryonic stem cell research in March, the president cast his decision as part of a larger effort to remove politics from science. No longer would research, Obama said, be shackled by a "false choice between sound science and moral values." It turns out the president cannot separate politics and science so easily. No sooner had Obama issued his order than conservative lawmakers in state legislatures began...

Democrats have spent years congratulating themselves on being smarter than conservatives. You can expect the media therefore to ignore appallingly stupid gaffes on the part of Ivy-educated leaders. Hillary's "smart power" diplomacy  is looking oxymoronic in the wake of her stupid question about who painted the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe on a visit to Mexico. The image, a miraculous apparition, is central to Mexican culture. Her host politely responded, "God" to her question. Now her husband Bill has revealed incredible ignorance of basic biology. In this CNN interview, he stoutly maintains the embryos are not fertilized. George W....

UK scientists plan a major research project to see if synthetic human blood can be made from embryonic stem cells. Led by the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service, the three year trial could provide an unlimited supply of blood for emergency transfusions. The blood should be free of infections like the human form of mad cow disease. Teams will test human embryos left over from IVF treatment to find those destined to develop into the universal "O-negative" blood donor group.

When a Democratic president goes from being wrong to being damn wrong is always an interesting moment: Bay of Pigs, Great Society, Jimmy Carter waking up on the morning after his inauguration, HillaryCare. Barack Obama condemned himself (and a number of human embryos to be determined at a later date) on March 9 when he signed an executive order reversing the Bush administration's restrictions on federal funding of stem cell research. President Obama went to hell not with the stroke of a pen, but with the cluck of a tongue. His executive order was an error. His statement at the...