NEW YORK (AP) -- Shares of Osiris Therapeutics Inc. fell Monday as the company said it is still negotiating with French drugmaker Sanofi about the rights to its stem cell therapy Prochymal. Osiris President and CEO Randal Mills said his company's dispute with Sanofi is "in the hands of lawyers" and that Osiris and Sanofi are trying to amicably resolve their disagreements over the status of Prochymal. The therapy is a treatment for graft vs. host disease, a condition in which transplanted bone marrow cells attack the body of the patient. The Columbia, Md., company was developing Prochymal through a partnership with biotechnology company Genzyme. French drugmaker Sanofi later acquired Genzyme, and in February, Sanofi said it discontinued late-stage testing of Prochymal. Osiris said that means the collaboration is over and it should regain the rights to Prochymal, allowing it to market the drug or find another partner. Sanofi disagrees. Shares of Osiris Therapeutics fell 95 cents, or 9.5 percent, to $9.08 in afternoon trading. Canadian regulators granted conditional approval to Prochymal in May, and regulators in New Zealand gave full approval to Prochymal in June. In a conference call, Osiris said it expects Prochymal to be available in Canada … Continue reading →

COLUMBIA, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Osiris Therapeutics, Inc. (OSIR), the leading stem cell company focused on developing and marketing products to treat medical conditions in inflammatory, cardiovascular, orthopedic and wound healing markets, announced today its results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2012. Highlights and Recent Developments This past quarter was not only memorable, but monumental, for Osiris, stated C. Randal Mills, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Osiris Therapeutics. We have set a new benchmark to measure our success, and remain as committed as ever to extending the reach of this remarkable technology. Whether through our Biosurgery or Therapeutics units, we will continue to develop innovative cell therapy solutions for patients in need. Second Quarter Financial Results Biosurgery product revenue rose 43% from the previous quarter to $1.63 million. As of June 30, 2012, Osiris had $40.1 million of cash, receivables and short-term investments. Research and development expenses for the second quarter of 2012 were $4.1 million, compared to $5.2 million incurred in the second quarter of 2011. General and administrative (G&A) expenses were $1.4 million for the second quarter of 2012 compared to $3.3 million for the same period of the prior year. The 2011 G&A expense included … Continue reading →

The quest to save her grandson's eyesight began more than four years ago when Carmie Carr discovered a business on the Internet offering experimental stem cell injections in China. At 4 months old, Cayden Baggett was diagnosed with optic nerve hypoplasia, a condition where the nerves in the eyes never fully develop. His family was told he would eventually go blind. Right now, Cayden can see light and dark, but little else. Soon after learning about the stem cell treatments, the Carr family launched a campaign to raise $50,000 to cover the costs. The 2010 Gulf oil spill, coupled with the 2011 tornadoes in Tuscaloosa that destroyed their retail business, made collecting the funds next to impossible, they said. Then, a friend told the family about a construction project he was working on just down the street. It was for a local radiologist who planned to offer stem cell injections to athletes with sports-related injuries. He introduced the Carrs to Dr. Jason Williams. After talking with the family and researching the procedures, Williams agreed to help. "There is no doubt in my mind this is the road the Lord has been leading us down," said Carmie Carr. "It connected like … Continue reading →

Miami, FL. (PRWEB) July 30, 2012 StemCellTreatment.org, is an organization that focuses on the many benefits of stem cell treatments and is proudly announcing the opening of their two, well equipped, clinics as of May 21. One of the clinics is situated in Port of Spain, Trinidad and is Trinidad and Tobagos capital city and the countrys third largest city after San Fernando and Chaguanas. The other clinic is in Kingston, Jamaica. Kingston is the capital and largest city of Jamaica and as such, it is widely visited by local and international tourists every year. It is home to some of the worlds best museums, parks, ports, and other attractions. With the two new locations of the clinic, http://www.StemCellTreatment.org and its parent company, American Stem Cell and Anti Aging Center, believe that the organization will be able to better serve patients by offering cutting edge treatments that suits their needs. For example, in Kingston, the clinic is able to offer imaging technologies such as MRI, CT and Nuclear medicine along with other amazing treatments. "Stem cell therapy has matured over the years and is a far removed from its early inception. It has gained acceptance in todays world as initial … Continue reading →

MARLBOROUGH, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Advanced Cell Technology, Inc. (ACT; OTCBB: ACTC), a leader in the field of regenerative medicine, today announced treatment of the final patient in the first patient cohort in its Phase 1/2 clinical trial for Stargardts macular dystrophy (SMD) using retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells derived from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). The surgery was performed on Friday, July 27 at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, the same site as the first two treatments, by a team of surgeons led by Professor James Bainbridge, consultant surgeon at Moorfields and Chair of Retinal Studies at University College London. The outpatient transplant surgery was performed successfully without any complications, and the patient is recovering uneventfully. This is the tenth patient overall to now be treated with the RPE cell therapy developed by the company. Our European trial is making very steady progress, having now completed enrollment of the first patient cohort, commented Gary Rabin, chairman and CEO. We are very encouraged and look forward to receiving clearance to initiate the treatment of the second patient cohort in the coming weeks. The Phase 1/2 trial is designed to determine the safety and tolerability of hESC-derived RPE cells following sub-retinal transplantation in … Continue reading →

A US federal court rules that procedures in which a patients own stem cells are extracted, manipulated, and reinjected should be regulated by the FDA. By Bob Grant | July 30, 2012 Leonardini | stock.xchng After years of legal wrangling, the US District Court in Washington, DC, last week upheld the Food and Drug Administrations power to regulate adult stem cell treatments in which the cells are more than minimally manipulated before being injected back into the patient. The court ruled that the FDA was operating within its legal mandate when it filed suit against Colorado-based stem cell treatment clinic Regenerative Sciences in 2010 to stop them from extracting, processing, and then reinjecting patients own bone marrow stem cells to treat bone and joint disorders. The FDA argued that the treatment fell under its purview and was subject to approval like any new drug because the extracted cells were significantly modified using reagents that cross state lines. Regenerative Sciences disagreed, characterizing the treatment as a simple medical procedure, which dont require FDA approval. The court sided with the FDA, making similar stem cell clinics popping up in the United States take notice. University of Minnesota bioethicist Leigh Turner told Nature … Continue reading →

One startup, H3 Biomedicines, uses genome data to design drugs aimed at small groups of patients. Scott Balmer A growing effort to personalize cancer medicine tries to link existing drugs to patients based on the specific genetic and molecular anomalies of a patient's cancer (see "Foundation Medicine: Personalizing Cancer Drugs"). But H3 Biomedicines, a startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts, wants to personalize cancer drugs from the beginning by designing drugs to target specific patient populations. The company is taking advantage of cancer genome datathe DNA sequences of tumors from thousands of patientsmade available by the National Institutes of Health as The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), and by the International Cancer Genome Consortium. When the company analyzed the first 3,000 cancer genomes in the TCGA web portal, it looked for cancer mutations that were shared by at least 1 percent of different cancer types. "Everything that occurs in greater than 10 percent was a known oncogene or known tumor suppressor [the two main classes of cancer-associated genes]," says Markus Warmuth, CEO of the company. But that was not the case for the less common mutations. For mutations shared between 1 and 10 percent of cancers, especially those shared by 5 percent or … Continue reading →