16.10.2012 - (idw) Schweizerischer Nationalfonds SNF Jacques Fellay receives the National Latsis Prize 2012 The medical researcher Jacques Fellay is studying the human genome in search of genetic variations that influence how the body reacts to a virus and to the drugs fighting it. He is to be awarded the National Latsis Prize 2012 for his research. Jacques Fellay is a "bridge builder" and an advocate of translational research, a discipline that allows the results of basic research to be transferred to medical practice. Always on the borderline between laboratory and hospital, he is of the opinion that, in order to discover medically useful solutions, an exchange between the two worlds is needed. Jacques Fellay applies this thinking in his own research, which is conducted at the intersection of genomics and infectious diseases and for which he receives the National Latsis Prize 2012. The information stored in our genes can be of great value for developing new treatments. Different responses to drugs At the beginning of the millennium, the treatment of HIV patients - persons who were infected with the virus that causes AIDS - still involved serious, undesired side-effects. Jacques Fellay, then a doctoral student of Amalio Telenti in … Continue reading →

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Oct. 16, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- NextGxDx, a healthcare information technology company, today announced the release of its online genetic testing platform that curates information on the more than 10,000 genetic testing products currently offered by FDA and CLIA certified labs in the U.S. According to NextGxDx's research, the database is the most comprehensive catalog of all the genetic testing products available to U.S. healthcare providers. The company also found the number of available tests is tenfold greater than previously estimated by industry experts. The company intends to help implement strategies that further clinical integration of genetic testing. The goal of the platform is to speed the process of diagnosing, and thus treating, patients with genetic diseases. The NextGxDx platform allows healthcare providers and hospitals to easily identify the appropriate genetic tests for their patients by searching the database by symptoms or browsing by clinical specialty. The platform also allows side-by-side comparison of tests, and the company's partnerships with laboratories across the country enable physicians to order tests directly from the NextGxDx website. "Our research shows there are nearly ten times more genetic tests available today than commonly thought, and yet there has not been a centralized, well-curated, user-friendly … Continue reading →

StemCells Inc. has a history not much different from those of dozens, even hundreds, of biotech companies all around California. Co-founded by an eminent Stanford research scientist, the Newark, Calif., firm has struggled financially while trying to push its stem cell products through the research-and-development pipeline. It collects about $1 million a year from licensing patents and selling cell cultures but spends well more than $20 million annually on R&D, so it runs deeply in the red. On the plus side, StemCells Inc. has had rather a charmed relationship with the California stem cell program, that $3-billion taxpayer-backed research fund known formally as the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The firm ranks first among all corporate recipients of approved funding from CIRM, with some $40 million in awards approved this year. That's more than has gone to such established California nonprofit research centers as Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute. The record of StemCells is particularly impressive given that one of the two proposals for which the firm received a $20-million funding award, covering a possible Alzheimer's treatment, was actually rejected by CIRM's scientific review panel twice. Nevertheless, the stem cell … Continue reading →

Grants Pass, OR (PRWEB) October 16, 2012 Harvard Ophthalmologist and Corneal Stem Cell Researcher Ula Jurkunas, MD, has announced an important new stem cell transplant procedure for the eyes. Speaking on the Sharon Kleyne Hour Power of Water radio show, Dr. Jurkunas, predicted that the procedure will offer a significant benefit to patients with certain corneal diseases, and corneal injuries such as chemical and thermal burns (The cornea is the eyes clear portion). Stem cell research has been in the news because the 2012 Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded for stem cell research. Dr. Jurkunas explained to host Sharon Kleyne that the human eye produces its own adult (non-embryonic) stem cells. These are found between the limbus (where the clear cornea meets the white of the eye) and the conjunctiva (the red meaty tissue in the eyes inner corner). Their function is to replenish corneal cells to keep the cornea clear and healthy. Production of corneal stem cells, according to Dr. Jurkunas, can become impaired due to a disease entity such as an infection, severe allergy, severe dry eye, immunological disorder or chronic inflammation; or due to injury such as a chemical or thermal burn. These traumas can cause … Continue reading →

The Grekos hearing is scheduled to resume today. The location is the Collier County Courthouse in room 4-D, according to a case filing Monday. The hearing before J. Lawrence Johnson, an administrative law judge from Tallahassee, is scheduled to last four days. The Collier County Courthouse is located at 3315 U.S. 41 E. Photo by Allie Garza Zannos Grekos EAST NAPLES The patient was friends with the mother of Dr. Zannos Grekos, a Bonita Springs cardiologist who performed stem cell therapy on people with debilitating illnesses. Chemotherapy for breast cancer several years earlier had left the 69-year-old patient, Domenica Fitzgerald, with numbness in her legs. She was unable to walk for more than 10 minutes. She hoped Grekos and his stem cell treatment could help. "She was looking for a cure. She wanted to get well," her husband, John "Jack" Fitzgerald, testified Tuesday. A four-day administrative hearing started Tuesday in a Collier County courtroom for a state Department of Health complaint against Grekos. The state says he committed medical malpractice and violated other standards of care when he performed a stem cell treatment on the patient on March 24, 2010. The patient suffered brain damage. The state is only identifying … Continue reading →

LONDON (ShareCast) - ReNeuron has reported further progress in the clinical trial of its ReN001 stem cell therapy for disabled stroke patients, known as the PISCES study. The third and penultimate batch of three patients have all been successfully treated with ReN001 and discharged from hospital with no acute safety issues arising. This follows approval last month by the independent Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) for the study to proceed to completion of dosing of this batch of patients. The PISCES study continues to run to plan, with no cell-related serious adverse events reported in any of the patients treated to date, the clinical-stage stem cell specialist reported. The remaining three, high-dose cohort patients to be treated in the PISCES study have been identified and evaluated as potentially eligible for treatment, with patient enquiries continuing to come into the Glasgow clinical site and a number of patients consequently identified as reserve candidates for the study. Subject to DSMB approval, these final three patients are scheduled to be treated in January and March 2013. In June of this year, interim data from the PISCES study from the first five patients treated was presented by the Glasgow clinical team at the 10th … Continue reading →

Kochi, Oct 15 (UNI) Amrita Centre for Nanosciences and Molecular Medicine, part of the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre has claimed to have discovered a potential cure for drug resistant leukemia. Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) responds well to a drug named 'Imatinib', however, when drug resistance sets in, which is in about 20-25 per cent of the cases, the patients has little chance of survival, a press release said here today. Drug resistance was due to certain point mutations in the leukemia cells as a result of which the cells find an alternative pathway for survival, preventing the drug from killing the cancer cells, it said. The Centre has developed a nanomedicine which had shown significant ability to kill the drug reststant cancer cells. The nanomedicine was developed over the past three years and has shown success in in-vitro (or cell line based) studies, it added. The Centre was now conducting animal trials or pre-clinical studies of the drug, it said, adding that it is expected that if pre-clinical trials are successful the new nano medicine can be submitted for clinical trial after approval from the government. This was the first such discovery in the world of … Continue reading →