Public release date: 1-Apr-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ] Contact: Caroline Arbanas arbanasc@wustl.edu 314-286-0109 Washington University School of Medicine Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are using powerful DNA sequencing technology not only to identify mutations at the root of a patient's tumor considered key to personalizing cancer treatment but to map the genetic evolution of disease and monitor response to treatment. "We're finding clinically relevant information in the tumor samples we're sequencing for discovery-oriented research studies," says Elaine Mardis, PhD, co-director of The Genome Institute at the School of Medicine. "Genome analysis can play a role at multiple time points during a patient's treatment, to identify 'driver' mutations in the tumor genome and to determine whether cells carrying those mutations have been eliminated by treatment." This work is helping to guide the design of future cancer clinical trials in which treatment decisions are based on results of sequencing, says Mardis, who is speaking April 1 at the opening plenary session of the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting in Chicago. She also is affiliated with the Siteman Cancer Center at the School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital. To date, Mardis and her colleagues … Continue reading →

By Mary Ann Roser AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF An Austin-based group funded mainly by a company that develops stem cell therapies is petitioning the Texas Medical Board for a less-strict rule on adult stem cells an issue the board has struggled with for more than a year. The board will hold a hearing April 13 on its proposed rule, which would require doctors to get informed consent from patients before performing a stem cell procedure as well as approval from an institutional review board. Such boards review research to protect patients and are overseen by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. At the meeting, the board must either adopt or pull down the much-revised rule, said Mari Robinson, executive director of the medical board. The group, MedRebels Foundation, which seeks to raise awareness and educate the public about stem cells, will present its petition at the hearing. It has more than 2,500 signatures, many of them gathered near the company's Red River Street office during the South by Southwest Music Conference and Festival, Executive Director Shay McBurney said Friday. The office space is provided by SpineSmith and its parent, Celling Biosciences, which develops products and therapies using a person's own adult stem … Continue reading →

Daniel Leonard is doing all he can to walk again, and after a recent course of stem cell treatment hes as close as he has been since a few months after the 2005 injury that put him a wheelchair. He was 22 years old and about to begin his third year of college when he woke up one August morning on the floor at his familys Johnson City home unable to move and struggling to breathe. While the cause of his injury remains a mystery, what is known is that three vertebrae near the top of his spine had been crushed, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down, on a ventilator and not expected to never walk or even breathe on his own again. Six months after undergoing surgery to remove the bone fragments from his spinal cord, Leonard, who had played several sports in high school and was boxing at the Johnson City Athletic club prior to his injury, was exceeding all expectations. In treatment at the Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center in Knoxville, he was not only breathing independently, he was pulling himself up on parallel bars and being fitted with leg braces to help him take his first … Continue reading →