Two teams including UC Irvine scientists will receive $37 million to push stem-cell treatments toward human testing one for a condition that leads to blindness, another for Alzheimers disease. The awards, made Wednesday by the states stem-cell funding agency, include $17.3 million for a team that will cultivate retinal progenitor stem-cells to treat a disease known as retinitis pigmentosa. Human neural stem cell. COURTESY STEMCELLS, INC. ADVERTISEMENT The team includes Henry Klassen, a UC Irvine associate opthalmology professor, as well as researchers from UC Santa Barbara and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. The UC Irvine share of that award is about $6 million. The disease is often diagnosed when patients are in their teens or young adulthood, and progresses into middle age. First theres night blindness, Klassen said. Then tunnel vision, and eventually, complete blindness. The treatment hes developing relies on retinal stem cells that have matured enough to be specific to eye function. In previous testing, it has restored vision in rats. The funding will allow more preliminary work in preparation for human testing. Food and Drug Administration approval, Klassen said, could come as soon as the end of next year. Continued here: Stem-cell research: $37 million … Continue reading →

Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images Embryologist Ric Ross holds a dish with human embryos at the La Jolla IVF Clinic February 28, 2007 in La Jolla, California. Two clinical trial patients, paralyzed with chronic spinal cord injuries, have regained some sensation after undergoing stem cell treatments led by a California biotech company and researchers from the University of Zurich. The clinical trials by Newark, California-based StemCells, Inc involved three patients, two of whom regained some feeling after scientists injected them with purified human neural stem cells. The neural stem cells are essentially adult stem cells that can renew and replicate into cells of the nervous system. They were derived from donated fetal brain cells, which dont require the controversial destruction of embryos, a company spokesman said. The news comes ten months after another California biotech company Menlo-Park-based Geron Corporation surprised and disappointed many in the field when it abandoned its stem cell division including its highly-touted research into an embryonic stem cell treatment for spinal cord injuries. The three patients in the University of Zurich trials had suffered complete injury to the thoracic - or chest-level spinal cord, which left each them with no function or feeling below the injury. Four to … Continue reading →

Two patients in one of the worlds first tests of a stem-cell treatment for spinal-cord injury have reported feeling sensation in parts of their bodies below the injury where they felt no sensation before. The two patients, whose identity and gender were kept confidential, are part of a trial in Switzerland of a treatment developed by a team that included UC Irvine researchers. UC Irvine husband-wife researchers Brian Cummings and Aileen Anderson pose with their daughter, Camryn, and their dogs. FILE PHOTO: MARK RIGHTMIRE, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER ADVERTISEMENT A third patient reported no improvement in sensation, but, like the others, has suffered no ill effects from the treatment. All three patients had suffered spinal-cord injuries at the chest level that left them with no feeling below the site of the injury. Two of them, however, reported feeling touch and warmth down to their belly-button region after receiving injections of 20 million human neural stem cells at the injury site. Scientists involved in the trial did not say how long it took for the patients to feel sensation after their injections, though they did say the patients improved over a six-month period. The stem-cell treatment was developed by the UCI … Continue reading →