Many in Florida applaud end to stem-cell ban

[FayeforCure]

Hmmmm, but Bush had no moral or ethical objection to throwing embryos by the thousands in the trash at fertility clinics nationwide.

How do you come up with this??  I bet he does have objections to this.  Can you provide a quote or source that Bush thinks these embryos should be thrown in the trash?  Cmon Faye.....

BT, where was Bush's Executive order closing down fertility clinics? After all THAT is where more embryos get trashed than ever would get used in embryonic stem cell research.

Excellent post Thanksgiving news today!!!!

Friday, November 27, 2009
Emory wins 1st stem cell trial for ALSAtlanta Business Chronicle - by Urvaksh Karkaria Staff Writer

joann vitelli
Dr. Jonathan Glass: “It’s going to make us the center of attention for anybody who wants to do stem cell injections into the spinal cord for other diseases.”
View Larger Emory University will be the site of the first U.S. clinical trail that focuses on using stem cells to slow the progression of adults with Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Rockville, Md.-based Neuralstem Inc. (Amex: CUR) hopes to use neural stem cells from the spinal cord of a fetus to slow the progression of adults with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

The early-stage trial, which could include up to 18 patients, will test the safety of the injection process and the implanted stem cells.

“No one’s ever injected cells directly into the gray matter of the spinal cord,” Neuralstem President and CEO Richard Garr said.

ALS is a disease of the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle movement. ALS patients typically die within three years of diagnosis. About 30,000 people in the U.S. have the degenerative condition and about 7,000 are newly diagnosed each year. There are more than 500 Georgians with ALS.

Embryonic stem cell research is controversial locally and nationally. President Barack Obama signed an executive order in March lifting restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. The Georgia Senate, however, OK’d legislation this year that would have shut down most forms of embryonic stem cell research in the state. However, the proposal, which failed in the Georgia House of Representatives, would not have prevented researchers from using new stem cell lines brought in from out of state or existing stem cell lines.

Unlike Neuralstem’s spinal cord-derived stem cells, most embryonic stem cells are derived from embryos that develop from eggs that have been fertilized in an in vitro fertilization clinic.

The internationally watched Neuralstem trial will put Emory’s ALS program â€" one of the largest ALS clinics in the country â€" on the map.

Emory was chosen as the site of the trial because it “has one of the best, if not the best, ALS clinicians and research groups,” Garr said. Emory neurosurgeon Dr. Nicholas Boulis developed the surgical techniques to implant the stem cells in the adult spinal cord.

The high-profile clinical trial will accelerate Emory’s translational research, said Dr. Jonathan Glass, principal investigator for the trial and director of the Emory ALS Center.

“It’s going to make us the center of attention for anybody who wants to do stem cell injections into the spinal cord for other diseases,” Glass said. “They’re going to come to us ... and say, ‘How do you do it?’ ‘What’s the best way to do it?’ and ‘Teach us how to do it.’ ”

The publicity surrounding the trial will also make Atlantans aware of the resources in their own back yard, Glass noted.

“When people get sick, some of them go to the Mayo Clinic,” he said. “The reality is that they have the best thing in town and maybe they need to see that.”

People are born with a specific number of spinal cord neural cells, which typically last a lifetime. In ALS patients, certain neural cells die early. When that happens, the spinal cord isn’t able to send messages to the body’s muscles, which in turn atrophy.

Neuralstem hopes its spinal cord-derived stem cells will protect healthy neural cells and repair those that have ceased communicating with the patient’s muscles. That loss of signal triggers muscle atrophy and eventual paralysis that ALS patients suffer.

“The promise of stem cells has been hanging out there for probably more than a decade,” Glass said. “Nobody has really tried it in a systematic way.”

Stem cells are able to find their way to the injured region and transform into nurturing cells, Glass said. “What I’m hoping for,” he said, “is that ... these [stem] cells will set up shop in this region of injury and provide some kind of nurturing effect that will protect the cells that are still there, and possibly even allow the sick cells to reconnect with the muscles.”

Neuralstem reported in the online journal Neuroscience that three rats paralyzed by a specific spinal cord injury returned to near-normal ambulatory function six weeks after having stems cells grafted to their spinal cords. Three others showed significant improvement after two months. In all the grafted animals, the majority of the transplanted stem cells survived and became mature neurons, Neuralstem said.

The Phase I human trial will test the safety of the procedure which involves delivering the stem cells to a delicate spot â€" the spinal cord. “Just looking at the spinal cord can hurt it,” Glass quipped.

There’s a lot more at stake than Neuralstem’s fortunes. “If we mess up,” Glass said, “we could take the whole stem cell therapeutic idea and kind of set it back 10 years.”

The trial, while small, is significant in terms of helping move the science forward and potentially develop a treatment for ALS, said Lucy Bruijn, chief scientist at The ALS Association.

“It’s a disease that’s desperately looking for a good treatment,” she said. “Stem cells have been extremely promising, but there haven’t been very many rigourous efforts, at least in the clinic ... to try this out.”

ALS involves a complicated systems of cells that connect the brain to the spinal cord, which then connect to muscles, Bruijn said. “Clearly, it’s a tricky thing as to where exactly do you put these [stem] cells to have the best benefit,” she said.

Using technology, developed at the National Institutes of Health, Neuralstem can expand stem cells taken from the donated fetus, up to a “billion-billion times.”

Neuralstem is able to produce enough cells to “transplant every spinal cord patient we have to ever transplant with these cells,” Garr said.

The company has invested more than $50 million in developing its stem-cell technology and getting ready for human trials. It expects to spend about $8 million to $10 million more to complete the clinical trial process.

If the Phase I trial is successful, Garr said, the next step would be a larger, possibly multi-site trial that would focus on the therapy’s effectiveness.

“Some day,” Garr said, “neural stem cells will be the universal delivery vehicle for all large-molecule therapies in the (central nervous system).”



Reach Karkaria at ukarkaria@bizjournals.com

http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2009/11/30/story1.html?b=1259557200%5E2505061&t=printable

Excellent news!!!!

[FayeforCure]

Bill Clark


Polling supports stem cell research


By Bill Clark

Monday, August 29, 2011





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It has occurred to me that I was born a quarter-century too soon. For whatever reason, I have cartilage that doesn’t wear well. In the past 17½ years, I’ve had both knees, both hips and my right shoulder totally replaced. None of the five joints was ever damaged â€" the cartilage simply grew thin and then turned to dust, leaving the joints rubbing bone on bone.

Now I’m “blessed” with vanishing cartilage in my left shoulder, neck and lower spine. Maybe, if I had been born a quarter-century later, I wouldn’t be overloaded with steel, plastic and ceramic parts. Maybe stem cell research would have solved my problem. Maybe not. But the opportunity exists to find out.

In 2006, Missouri voters very wisely approved a law allowing stem cell research in our state. In our ultra-conservative tea party society, there simmers a desire to overturn such research. Ol’ Clark cannot understand why anyone would be opposed to making life better at the expense of nobody. I know the arguments, but I also understand the safeguards.

For your information, here’s what the voters approved in 2006:
•Missouri has the right to treatment with any stem cell cures that are allowed by the federal government and are available to all Americans.
•Medical institutions have the right to provide and help find new stem cell cures.
•Clear ethical boundaries and oversight requirements are in place for stem cell research, including a ban on human cloning.

I am a proud member of Missouri Cures, one of 150,000 members who feel stem cell research must continue and expand. In fact, a recent voter poll showed 62 percent of Missouri voters favor stem cell research, and 73 percent of Americans support use of embryonic stem cells left over from in vitro fertilization procedures, according to an October Harris poll.

The Harris poll listed 58 percent of Republicans in favor of stem cell research and 24 percent opposed. The poll also showed 69 percent of Catholics and 58 percent of born-again Christians in favor. Only 28 percent of those polled were against such research because it put the interests of medical science ahead of the preservation of human life â€" which includes human embryos.

Seems like Americans have spoken.

I recently received a list of stem cell advances and was elated to discover that cartilage damage was on the list of advancements. The list of successes includes Lou Gehrig’s disease, spinal cord injuries, macular degeneration, blindness, rare blood duplication for battlefield use, brain damage, multiple sclerosis, cancer, hearing loss, memory loss, both heart disease and damage, lung damage, Parkinson’s disease, stroke, tissue damage and diabetes.

Diabetes is the subject of a pair of upcoming Missouri Cures presentations.

The first is at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday at Stadium Grill in Columbia. Breakfast is on Missouri Cures. The program is twofold. Michael Nichols will discuss the University of Missouri as an engine for economic development. He will then be followed by Dana Ladd, the executive director of Missouri Cures, who will discuss how MU can work with not-for-profit organizations in supporting a pro-research, pro-science environment in our state.

To attend, call Debbie Davis at (800) 829-4133 or email ddavis@missouricures.com.

Then on Sept. 29, physician Camilio Ricordo, one of the world’s leading diabetes researchers, will speak at 7:30 p.m. at the Clayton Ritz-Carlton Hotel. He is the scientific director at the University of Miami Diabetes Research Institute. For more information, contact Jim Goodwin at jgoodwin@missouricures.com and tell him Ol’ Clark sent you.

And to the voters of Missouri, if the question of stem cell research should ever again appear on your ballot, make sure the research goes forward, not backward. There might still be time for such research to find relief for what cartilage I have left.

Bill Clark’s columns appear Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 474-4510.

This article was published on page A2 of the Monday, August 29, 2011 edition of The Columbia Daily Tribune. Click here to Subscribe.

http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2011/aug/29/polling-supports-stem-cell-research/