Replies to post #343232 on Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[simple]

San Francisco and San Diego compete for $tem cell headquarters
SF Examiner ^ / 1/6/05 / By Marisa Lagos

Mayor Gavin Newsom would like to see California's new stem cell institute make its home in San Francisco, but the rest of the state plans on giving the mayor a run for his money.

Newsom told The Examiner last week that The City is mainly competing with San Diego, another biotech hub, for the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine's office headquarters. Though the $3 billion in grant money the institute will award over the next 10 years will be distributed throughout the state, each city has a marked interest in having the headquarters placed in its backyard.

"There's a potential for spinoff economic development and this is the birthplace of biotech. Where better then here to be the birthplace of stem cell research?" said Jesse Blout, head of the Mayor's Office of Economic and Work Force Development.

That birthplace has already been claimed, according to Joe Panetta, president of the San Diego-based trade group BIOCOM, which represents life science organizations in Southern California.

"This is the area where stem cell research is centered," Panetta said, naming UC San Diego and Scripps Institute as a few examples. "I see it really strategically as opportunity provide the best people to ensure success of institute, and at same time having easy access to that institute will provide greater opportunity for grant funding."

Some say it doesn't matter where the headquarters are.

"The location of the institute is not even on my radar," Bruce Cohen, president of Palo Alto-based Cellerant Therapeutics. "I don't think the location of the administrative body of the institute will have huge impact on who gets the money and how they decide who has priority."

Palo Alto is also a consideration, as is the rest of the Bay Area. But Phyllis Preciado, a board member for the institute and a Fresno-area medical doctor, has another idea.

"I would love to have it in the Central Valley," she said. "What about UC Merced?"

[Bandito]

Stem Cell News Temperance teen recovers in Portugal

January 10, 2005

BY PATRICIA ANSTETT
FREE PRESS MEDICAL WRITER

LISBON, Portugal -- A tissue sample no bigger than the tip of her baby finger, taken from high inside Cortney Hoffman's nose, holds hope of her recovery from a paralyzing spinal cord injury. The specimen contained more than 2 million adult stem cells, some of the near-magical components of the human body because of their ability to take on tasks of other cells where they are transplanted.

Place them in the heart and they help perform blood-pumping functions.

Put them in a damaged spinal cord like doctors did to Cortney on Saturday and they are believed to take on the Herculean job of sending electrical signals to the brain and back to trigger and to move damaged muscles.

Inserted into the injury site in Cortney's spinal cord by neurosurgeon Dr. Pratas Vital, the cells become the body's molecular jewelry. They even look like small, uncultured pearls, one powerful clump nestled next to each other.

"They look brand new," said Dr. Carlos Lima, chief of the spinal cord autograft team at Lisbon's Hospital de Egas Moniz.

Most important, the cells need to act brand new, creating new nerve cells, neural connections and blood vessels so Cortney, 18, of Temperance can regain some of the sensation and movement she lost two years ago in an auto accident.

Her wish is to walk again. But it will take at least two years of exhaustive rehabilitation to find out just how much recovery she might get from taking a chance on experimental surgery.

Most medical leaders in the field are taking a wait-and-see approach until more results are published. But that hasn't deterred hundreds of people with spinal cord injuries, now booked for the surgery through the end of May.

Cortney's five-hour surgery Saturday was the 37th performed by the team.


Contact PATRICIA ANSTETT at [e-mail].

http://www.freep.com/news/health/stemcells10e_20050110.htm