Ocata Therapeutics Inc fka OCAT

[rocky301]

Titan,

One point of confusion seen in reader comments over the story is whether ACT destroyed embryos in the study to generate the treatment cells. In 2006, ACT developed a "single-cell biopsy" method to remove a lone cell from an embryo, leaving it otherwise intact and viable, and then use that single cell to generate stem cells in laboratory research colonies.

We asked Lanza whether these sort of cells were used in The Lancet study. Here is his reply, by email:

"Yes, we used the single-cell biopsy method (but we discarded the embryo afterwards). However, we have several hESC (human embryonic stem cell) lines where the embryos were not destroyed -- we plan to switch to those hESC lines in future (phase 3/4) clinical trials."

So there you have it.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2012/01/huamn-embryonic-stem-cell-blindness-treatment-study-reaction/1