UNPROVEN stem cell treatments behind an increase in international 'stem cell tourism' are not just proliferating overseas. Similar treatments, without any medical evidence of their effectiveness or safety, are emerging in our own backyard, Australian stem cell experts warn. Professor Megan Munsie and Dr Dominique Martin, from the University of Melbourne, said just because the treatments were offered in Australia and were not illegal did not mean they were safe. Prof Munsie, a stem cell scientist who heads the education, ethics, law & community awareness unit at Stem Cell Australia at the university, said she had received more than 500 patient inquiries over the past year about experimental stem cell therapies offered in Australia and overseas. Most of the inquiries about so-called stem cell treatments offered in Australia related to osteoarthritis, but patients were also querying treatments for spinal cord injury, blindness, motor neurone disease, multiple sclerosis, stroke, and autism, Prof Munsie said. "It used to be that people with the same conditions would call about overseas treatments, but what I'm seeing now is that more and more people are asking about treatments here," Prof Munsie told AAP. "Because it's happening here and it's not illegal, people think it must … Continue reading →

SAN DIEGO, Nov. 27, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Fate Therapeutics, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company engaged in the discovery and development of adult stem cell modulators, announced today the initiation of a randomized, controlled, Phase 2 multi-center study of its investigational hematopoietic stem cell therapy, ProHema, in adult patients undergoing double umbilical cord blood transplantation (dUCBT) for hematologic malignancy. The advancement of ProHema into later-stage development builds upon positive results from a Phase 1b single-center study, interactions with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and refinements to the product manufacturing process. The previously completed Phase 1b study achieved its primary objective of demonstrating safety and tolerability. The study also established early clinical proof-of-concept trends of accelerated neutrophil recovery, improved 100-day survival and low rates of graft-versus-host disease were evident, and durable and preferential reconstitution with ProHema occurred in 10 of 12 evaluable patients. ProHema is produced through a proprietary, two-hour, ex vivo modulation process, which has been shown to significantly activate key biological pathways involved in hematopoietic stem cell homing, proliferation and survival in preclinical models. "Allogeneic umbilical cord blood transplantation holds great promise as a potentially curative treatment for children and adults with hematologic malignancies and many other life-threatening, non-malignant disorders," … Continue reading →

Published on 27 November 2012 Hits: 223 Written by JESS G. DUREZA CHAIRMAN, ADVOCACY MINDANOW FOUNDATION INC. DAY ONE (Thursday): It was about 6 a.m. when Cathay Pacific (CX) Flight 0289 docked at the Frankfurt International Airport Bay no. 2. Beth was nursing some stiff neck and the usual neck pains when we unbuckled to disembark. It was an 11-hour flight from Hong Kong and like all previous foreign trips, Beth never had some good sleep, despite the comfortable and totally reclinable CX modernized seats in the Business Class section. From the glass windows at the tube, we saw the heavy fog outside. After gathering our luggage, Villa Medica (VM) representative (named Sammy, an Iranian) was flashing the VM sign at the arrival gate for us. We were the only passengers in his van for the 140-kilometer trip to Edenkoben. Sammy said that there were about eight guests from Thailand and Vietnam in our batch but they were arriving later in the day. (Times Editors note: Edenkoben is a town in the Sdliche Weinstrasse district of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.) Sammy was a good source of information. I was curious and I could not wait for the briefing by the VM doctors. … Continue reading →