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InVivo Therapeutics Names Veteran Biomaterials Expert Bill D'Agostino as Senior Director of Manufacturing & Engineering

Posted: Published on September 28th, 2012

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- InVivo Therapeutics Holdings Corp. (NVIV), a developer of groundbreaking technologies for the treatment of spinal cord injuries (SCI) and neurotrauma, today announced the appointment of Bill D'Agostino as Senior Director of Manufacturing & Engineering. An executive leader focused on rapid market growth, Mr. D'Agostino joins InVivo following fifteen years at Covidien and, most recently, seven years at Angiotech Pharmaceuticals as Vice President, Engineering. In his career to date, Mr. DAgostino has launched more than 100 new polymer products including families of biodegradable sutures. Mr. D'Agostino is a seasoned professional in medical devices and pharmaceutical excelling in all aspects of Research & Development, Engineering, GMP Operations and Quality Assurance, and has a wealth of expertise on technologies such as hydrogels and biodegradable sutures. He has worked on every stage of the product life cycle including end-user requirements, risk management, feasibility, development, quality systems, design verification, pilot manufacturing, validations, regulatory approvals, clinical field testing, full manufacturing, product launch, marketing and post-market surveillance. Said InVivo CEO Frank Reynolds, Bill has a unique history and expertise in getting products to market. I am confident that his wide-ranging experience with all aspects of commercializing medical devices and with FDA submissions will play … Continue reading →

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StemCells, Inc. Achieves Spinal Cord Injury Milestone With First Neural Stem Cell Transplant Into Patient With Sensory …

Posted: Published on September 28th, 2012

NEWARK, Calif., Sept. 27, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- StemCells, Inc. (STEM) today announced that the first patient with an incomplete spinal cord injury has been enrolled in the Company's Phase I/II clinical trial in chronic spinal cord injury and transplanted with the Company's proprietary HuCNS-SC(R) neural stem cells. The patient, a Canadian man who suffered a thoracic spinal cord injury from a sports-related accident, was administered the cells yesterday at Balgrist University Hospital, University of Zurich, a world leading medical center for spinal cord injury and rehabilitation. This is the first patient in the second cohort of the trial, which will be comprised of four patients who retain some sensory function below the level of trauma and are therefore considered to have an incomplete injury. "This is an important milestone for StemCells and the spinal cord injury community as it is the first time anyone has ever transplanted neural stem cells into a patient with an incomplete injury," said Stephen Huhn, MD, FACS, FAAP, Vice President and Head of the CNS Program at StemCells, Inc. "Given the encouraging interim data from the most severely injured patient cohort that we reported earlier this month, testing patients with less severe injury should … Continue reading →

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Boston Scientific Launches Verciseâ„¢ Deep Brain Stimulation System in Europe

Posted: Published on September 28th, 2012

NATICK, Massachusetts, Sept. 28, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Boston Scientific Corporation received CE Mark approval for use of its Vercise Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) System for the treatment of Parkinsons disease. The Vercise DBS System is the first and only commercially available DBS system to incorporate multiple independent current control, which is designed to selectively stimulate targeted areas in the brain. This system is an innovative technology that is designed to provide physicians fine control of stimulation. "The launch of the Vercise DBS System represents a key expansion for Boston Scientific, " said Maulik Nanavaty, senior vice president and president of Boston Scientifics Neuromodulation Division. "Vercise DBS is the only system on the market able to finely control stimulation with multiple independent current control. This unique technology underscores our commitment to improving patients lives." The first commercial implant of the Vercise DBS System was performed by a team at the University Clinic Wurzburg in Germany that included Prof. Dr. Cordula Matthies, Head of Functional Neurosurgery and Prof. Dr. Jens Volkmann, Director of the Department of Neurology. "We welcome the Vercise DBS System, " said Prof. Dr. Volkmann. "We believe it represents advancement in DBS technology through flexible and unique programming options. … Continue reading →

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Parkinson's could be detected by telephone call

Posted: Published on September 28th, 2012

New technology being developed in America analyses tremors, breathiness and other weaknesses in people's voices which are believed to be one of the condition's earliest symptoms. Experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology claim that their computer programme can pick out Parkinson's sufferers with 99 per cent accuracy simply by analysing their speech. Dr Max Little, a British researcher who is leading the initiative at MIT, now hopes to determine whether the same results could be produced from a patient speaking over the telephone. By recruiting Parkinson's patients and health volunteers to take part in a three-minute telephone call where they will say "ah", speak some sentences and answer a few questions, he said the system could be programmed to diagnose people remotely, allowing earlier treatment. He said: "Science tells us voice impairment might be an early sign of Parkinson's. It sounds counterintuitive as Parkinson's is a movement disorder but the voice is a form of movement. "Neurologists look at changes in the ability to move, which is done with the limbs, but we are looking in the vocal organs the sounds that come out of the mouth. We are fairly confident we can detect the disease over the telephone." … Continue reading →

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Boston Scientific Launches Vercise™ Deep Brain Stimulation System in Europe

Posted: Published on September 28th, 2012

NATICK, Mass., Sept. 28, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --Boston Scientific Corporation (BSX) received CE Mark approval for use of its Vercise Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) System for the treatment of Parkinson's disease. The Vercise DBS System is the first and only commercially available DBS system to incorporate multiple independent current control, which is designed to selectively stimulate targeted areas in the brain. This system is an innovative technology that is designed to provide physicians fine control of stimulation. "The launch of the Vercise DBS System represents a key expansion for Boston Scientific,"said Maulik Nanavaty, senior vice president and president of Boston Scientific's Neuromodulation Division. "Vercise DBS is the only system on the market able to finely control stimulation with multiple independent current control. This unique technology underscores our commitment to improving patients' lives." The first commercial implant of the Vercise DBS System was performed by a team at the University Clinic Wurzburg in Germany that included Prof. Dr. Cordula Matthies, Head of Functional Neurosurgery and Prof. Dr. Jens Volkmann, Director of the Department of Neurology. "We welcome the Vercise DBS System," said Prof. Dr. Volkmann. "We believe it represents advancement in DBS technology through flexible and unique programming options. We believe the … Continue reading →

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Research team fails in bid to test 'liberation therapy' for MS

Posted: Published on September 28th, 2012

Brandon Sun - ONLINE EDITION By: Larry Kusch 27/09/2012 3:41 PM | Comments: 0 Enlarge Image Dr. Brian Postl, chair of the Manitoba Health Research Council The Manitoba Health Research Council today pulled the plug on provincially sponsored trials to test the so-called liberation treatment for multiple sclerosis. The research council issued a press release saying that after a thorough review, it has determined that the sole team of researchers that applied to conduct the research did not meet its criteria for a safe, ethical clinical trial. Eighteen months ago, after considerable pressure from some MS sufferers, Premier Greg Selinger committed $5 million for conducting clinical trials on the worthiness of the liberation therapy, which unblocks veins in a patients neck. The province handed the task of assessing research proposals to the council. "MHRC has a duty to ensure any funded research meets criteria for safety and ethics, and the scientific review team, consisting of leading national and international researchers, determined the application we received did not meet that criteria," said the research councils chair, Dr. Brian Postl. See the article here: Research team fails in bid to test 'liberation therapy' for MS … Continue reading →

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Woman 'faked cancer for cash, wedding'

Posted: Published on September 28th, 2012

A New Jersey woman has been accused of faking cancer and scamming concerned friends and family out of thousands of dollars. Source: Supplied WHEN Lori Stilley told her friends and family that she had bladder cancer, they delivered meals, held raffles and a T-shirt sale, hastily planned and paid for her wedding and raised more than $10,000 for her treatment. But prosecutors say it was all a scam. Ms Stilley, a 40-year-old who lives in Delran, New Jersey, was charged on Wednesday with theft by deception, charges her lawyer denies. Authorities say Ms Stilley told family and friends in February 2011 that she had stage 3 bladder cancer and would need chemotherapy and radiation. Two months later, she told them - and posted on her Facebook page and personal website - that it was now stage 4, which means the cancer was spreading to other parts of her body. Her friends and supporters pitched in the way people often do for sick loved ones: making a schedule of meal deliveries and - when she said she didn't have medical insurance - raising money. The Burlington County Prosecutor's Office said family and friends also hastily planned and paid for her wedding … Continue reading →

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Making it easier to make stem cells

Posted: Published on September 28th, 2012

The process researchers use to generate induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs)-a special type of stem cell that can be made in the lab from any type of adult cell-is time consuming and inefficient. To speed things up, researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) turned to kinase inhibitors. These chemical compounds block the activity of kinases, enzymes responsible for many aspects of cellular communication, survival, and growth. As they outline in a paper published September 25 in Nature Communications, the team found several kinase inhibitors that, when added to starter cells, help generate many more iPSCs than the standard method. This new capability will likely speed up research in many fields, better enabling scientists around the world to study human disease and develop new treatments. "Generating iPSCs depends on the regulation of communication networks within cells," explained Tariq Rana, Ph.D., program director in Sanford-Burnham's Sanford Children's Health Research Center and senior author of the study. "So, when you start manipulating which genes are turned on or off in cells to create pluripotent stem cells, you are probably activating a large number of kinases. Since many of these active kinases are likely inhibiting the conversion to iPSCs, it made sense to … Continue reading →

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Deadly complication of stem cell transplants reduced in mice

Posted: Published on September 28th, 2012

Public release date: 27-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ] Contact: Julia Evangelou Strait straitj@wustl.edu 314-286-0141 Washington University School of Medicine Studying leukemia in mice, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have reduced a life-threatening complication of stem cell transplants, the only curative treatment when leukemia returns. About 50 percent of leukemia patients who receive stem cells from another person develop graft-versus-host disease, a condition where donor immune cells attack the patient's own body. The main organs affected are the skin, liver and gut. Now, the scientists have shown they can redirect donor immune cells away from these vital organs. Steering immune cells away from healthy tissue also leaves more of them available for their intended purpose killing cancer cells. "This is the first example of reducing graft-versus-host disease not by killing the T- cells, but simply by altering how they circulate and traffic," says John F. DiPersio, MD, PhD, the Virginia E. and Sam J. Golman Professor of Medicine. "Donor T-cells do good things in terms of eliminating the recipient's leukemia, but they can also attack normal tissues leading to death in a number of patients. The goal is to minimize graft-versus-host disease, while maintaining … Continue reading →

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RBCC: Stem Cell Market Poised for Billion-Dollar Growth

Posted: Published on September 28th, 2012

NOKOMIS, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- As Rainbow BioSciences, the biotech subsidiary of Rainbow Coral Corp. (RBCC), works to acquire licensing for commercial use of NASA-developed stem cell expansion technology, the company received good news from a Wall Street analysts forecast on Wednesday. Writing for Seeking Alpha, George Kesarios predicted major growth for the global stem cell market in coming years. Its estimated that the market will be worth about $64 billion by 2015, up from $21.5 billion in 2010. Kesarios attributed the growth largely to a potential revolution in drug companies research and development made possible by an abundance of induced pluripotent stem cells. With these stem cells, scientists can actually create working facsimiles of living human tissue, introduce diseases and observe how they unfold under a microscope, said RBCC CEO Patrick Brown. Spending a decade on research only to discover in trials that a drug doesnt work could become a thing of the past. Stem cells hold the key to the future of profitable, effective drug development. Thats why RBCC has engaged Regenetech in discussions regarding the potential acquisition of a license to perform cell expansion using that companys Rotary Cell Culture SystemTM. The Rotary Cell Culture SystemTM is a rotating-wall … Continue reading →

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