$16Million Israeli fund for anti leukemia treatment StemEx

$16-million round of financing goes for Gamida Cell to bring StemEx, a treatment for leukemia and lymphoma to the market. From Red Herring: The funds will be used to expand the Israeli stem cell startup’s pipeline and bring products to market. …The company reported extremely favorable clinical results from phase I and II studies of umbilical cord blood highly enriched with stem cells. If all goes well, the company plans to begin marketing StemEx in 2009 in partnership with Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Israel’s largest drug company and an investor in Gamida Cell. Link

Crucial here is the cooperation of a stem cell biotech startup with a Big Pharma Giant. It is a whole new phenomenon.

Logo sources: Gamida, Teva.

American epigenetics expert in Mprize competition for Methuselah mice

From Market Wire: University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Biochemist Dr. Craig Cooney today announced that he is entering the competition to win the Methuselah Mouse Prize (Mprize). Cooney is a epigenetics expert, which is the selective silencing of gene activity along specific segments of a DNA strand mainly through the methylation of the nucleotides. Trick is that Dr. Cooney’s group treats female mice before they give birth, instead of treating only the progeny. Link

Fixing the ageing process via this way is an indirect and different approach than partial immortalization through regenerative medicine. In the hypothetical Pimm process there is no need to experiment with Methuselah mice, because theoretically every tissue and every organ of the whole human body could be replaced and regenerated separately with the help of stem cells and tissue engineering. If an adult body was regenerated once, then it could be regenerated n times. Eventually all the separate regenerative stem cell work on animals and humans will converge on the whole regeneration of a complete human body.

Rumors on Amatokin: a skin stem cell wrinkle cream?

Is Amatokin the first product to harness the potential of your own stem cells to reduce serious wrinkles? From Businesswire: This “super-secret” wrinkle cream, called Amatokin, is not really a cream at all, but a “highly efficient ‘barrier-neutral’ emulsion” containing a unique polypeptide compound (known in official circles as polypeptide #153). This meta-peptide was developed 62 miles north of St. Petersburg, Russia in a high-security lab . The original goal was to find a better way to help burn victims heal, but the real money is in harnessing the power of stem cells to renew old skin and make it young. … Amatokin is the most controversial anti-aging skin cream in more than three decades. …While the public debate rages about the use of stem cells from fertilized human eggs, most people don’t realize that human skin is the largest repository of stem cells in the body. …If Voss Laboratories succeeds in bringing Amatokin to the American market for a price of under $200 for a 30-day supply, industry sources say Amatokin could be the most sought-after formula to ever hit the “anti-wrinkle, anti-aging market.” Bottom line: The ability of Amatokin and stem-cell science to deliver wrinkle-free skin remains mostly rumor – but a very persistent one. Link

Ok, it is one thing to use a polypeptide or a mix of them to make the endogenous, natural born skin stem cells move and divide and regenerate, but to put exogenous stem cells into a cream as a compound: that is a completely different project. For the latter you need to glue the cells somewhere with something (gelatin, colloid emulsion?).

Tony Blair: if America does not want stem-cell research – we do

From BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair’s last speech as Labour leader at the party’s annual conference: How to be the world’s number one place of choice for bio-science – if America does not want stem-cell research – we do. …The Google generation has moved beyond the idea of 9 to 5, closed on weekends and Bank Holidays. Today’s technology is profoundly empowering. … We can only protect liberty by making it relevant to the modern world. That is why Identity Cards using biometric technology are not a breach of our basic rights, they are an essential part of responding to the reality of modern migration and protecting us against identity fraud. I remember when I introduced the DNA database. On it go all those who are arrested. We were told it was a monstrous breach of liberty. Link

Pimm in the Growing Blogs list

Ladies and gentlemen: due to the heavy traffic yesterday Pimm is now on the list (updated every 6 hours) of the blogs experienced the greatest gain in traffic in the last 24 hours. Thank you. I have tremendous information to share you, but now I am doing an experiment in the lab. CU soon.