Sunday, October 15, 2006

Stem Cell Snippets: UC Irvine, Loring and Windows of Opportunity

Here are some links to stories of interest related to California stem cell matters

UCIThomas Yuen, chairman and CEO of Prime Cell Therapeutics of Irvine, Ca., has donated $1 million for embryonic stem cell research at UC Irvine, according to a piece by reporter Gary Robbins of the Orange Country Register. Prime Cell is a privately held stem cell engineering firm currently involved with adult stem cells, according to its web site. Robbins said Yuen, 54, has kidney disease and quoted him as saying, "My illness exposes me to a lot of people who are sick and suffering. And I believe stem-cell work holds the promise of treating a multitude of age-related and chronic diseases."


WARF
– Reporter David Wahlberg of the Wisconsin State Journal takes a crack at the WARF patent dispute. An excerpt from his balanced article: "WARF's stance, that Thomson's work is worthy of patents, 'is like saying that just because heating in water works for cooking a chicken egg, it's novel to consider using heating in water to cook a duck egg,' said Jeanne Loring, a stem-cell researcher at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in California."


Out FrontHartford Courant columnist Dan Haar writes: "The federal ban (on ESC research)has created a window of opportunity for Connecticut, California, Illinois, New Jersey, and perhaps a few other states that have had the foresight to front their own cash. 'When the ban goes away, there are only going to be a few places in the country that already have this,' said Marc Lalande, a UConn geneticist and associate dean who heads the university's stem cell working group. 'We are going to have a leg up. We will be able to compete successfully for federal funding.'"

Strategic Plan – The Red Herring web site posted a piece on CIRM's strategic plan, saying "for the most part" it received an "informal endorsement."

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