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[DewDiligence]

ReNeuron Diabetes Program Takes 'Major Step'

http://www.sharecast.com/cgi-bin/sharecast/story.cgi?story_id=1381621

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Fri 22 Jun 2007

LONDON (SHARECAST) - ReNeuron bounced off six month lows today after the stem cell group said its scientists have generated stable human pancreatic cell lines for treatment of Type 1 diabetes.

The company called the development a “major step forward” for its ReN002 diabetes programme.

It said the cell lines that form islet-like cell clusters were shown to secrete insulin in response to glucose concentrations, demonstrating their potential as a cell therapy candidate for Type 1, insulin-dependent, diabetes patients.

The cell lines were generated using ReNeuron's patented c-mycER stem cell expansion technology, and can be continuously grown in culture.

The ReN002 cells are currently being taken forward into pre-clinical models of diabetes.

“We are excited by these results, not least because having already demonstrated the ability of our c-mycER stem cell expansion platform to generate viable cell lines for neurological disorders, these new data indicate the potential of the technology to work in other significant disease areas,” said John Sinden, chief scientific officer at ReNeuron.

“We now have the basis of a scalable cell therapy approach to Type 1 diabetes, a major disease target and one in which we believe cell therapy will play an important role in addressing in the future.”
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