Linda Powers is the managing director and co-founder of Toucan Capital Corp, a $120 million venture capital fund (SBIC) focused on seed and early-stage life science and advanced technology investments (the fund markets itself as the The Leading US Investor in Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine). Out of here insights and facts presented on the SENS3 conference (I caught some of her slides with my iPhone, see below) I’d like to highlight the following ones:
- the anti-aging market today is approx. 42 billion dollars,
- the number of issued and published U.S. stem cell patents has been decreased for the first time since 2000 compared to the earlier year,
- viable business models in regenerative medicine are still missing,
- first-to-trial and -market is not always advantageous in regmed.
A new book coedited by UC Santa Cruz Literature and Anthropology professors Helene Moglen and Nancy Chen, Bodies in the Making: Transgressions and Transformations, explores a range of practices that aren’t usually linked: tattooing, cosmetic surgery, body-building, life extension technologies, self-cutting. The common denominator is intended to be body hacking, modification and our fascination with altering our bodies. “Is there anyone not at some time obsessed with aging?” asked Moglen. “Is there anyone over 40 who is not at least thinking about what it might be like to get some kind of cosmetic surgery? Is there anyone over 60 not interested in hearing about life extension technologies?Link
Sounds like real Californian to me and real human. Agree fully with that: thinking about eliminating the effects of aging is as natural (I know it is a controversial and philosophically overloaded concept) and universal for every human being as thinking about love.
As I mentioned before, continuous regeneration treatment of the whole human body called Pimm could be interpreted as inside plastic surgery for functional reasons. And now here comes one nice example of the present biotech trend: Read the rest of this entry »
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?).
Agree fully with that: thinking about eliminating the effects of aging is as natural (I know it is a controversial and philosophically overloaded concept) and universal for every human being as thinking about love.
Businesswire