The National Academy of Inventors (NAI) has named University of Iowa cystic fibrosis and gene therapy researcher John Engelhardt, PhD, a 2019 Fellow.

Engelhardt, who is professor and head of anatomy and cell biology in the UI Carver College of Medicine and director of the UI Center for Gene Therapy, is recognized for his work in developing gene therapies to treat cystic fibrosis (CF). He will receive the award during an induction ceremony at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, on April 10, 2020.

Engelhardts research primarily focuses on the molecular basis of CF, a progressive, inherited disease that causes persistent lung infections and other complications. CF is caused by well-studied mutations in a single gene, and Engelhardt has worked to develop gene therapy and gene editing methods to help treat the condition.

He also develops viral vector systems and animal models to test these methods and ultimately improve gene delivery. The animal models his laboratory has created are used by over 80 CF researchers, and he recently renewed a Research and Resource Center, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to continue this service to the research community and biotechnology companies that are developing therapies for CF and other lung diseases.

Engelhardt additionally studies airway stem cell niches, or the regulatory mechanisms that control stem cell growth and repair in the lungs, and has developed stem cell therapies for CF.

He currently holds 12 issued US patents, 41 issued foreign patents, and has 23 active patent applications. His patents and applications have been licensed to six companies, including two start-ups and a Fortune 100 company. Engelhardt provides critical tools and assistance to other researchers and companies in the field of CF research, and he is sponsored by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Engelhardt co-founded the gene therapy company Talee Bio, which was sold and is now Spirovant Sciences. The Philadelphia-based company was recently a part of a $3 billion deal to enhance the development of gene therapies for CF and other genetic diseases. Engelhardt remains on the scientific advisory board for Spirovant Sciences and serves as a key advisor as new therapies are created and tested.

NAI President Paul Sanberg says Engelhardt was selected for induction as he has demonstrated a highly prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on the quality of life, economic development, and welfare of society.

The University of Iowa Research Foundation (UIRF) nominated Engelhardt for this award to recognize his impact on creating and broadly commercializing gene therapies and his mentoring of other entrepreneurs on campus.

John has an extensive portfolio of intellectual property for advancing the commercialization of gene therapies, said Marie Kerbeshian, executive director of UIRF and an assistant vice president in the Office of the Vice President for Research. Not only is he a successful entrepreneur, as a UI researcher he is a key supporter of other researchers and other companies as they seek cures for cystic fibrosis.

He is one of 168 distinguished academic inventors across 136 research universities and institutes worldwide to join the academy this year. To date, NAI Fellows hold more than 41,500 issued U.S. patents, and the 2019 class includes six recipients of the U.S. National Medal of Technology & Innovation and U.S. National Medal of Science, four Nobel Laureates, among other honors.

We are very proud to see Dr. Engelhardts innovative and groundbreaking work recognized nationally, said Brooks Jackson, MD, MBA, UI vice president for medical affairs and the Tyrone D. Artz Dean of the UI Carver College of Medicine. He is a pioneer in his field and has set a prime example of how dedication and collaboration can lead to major advances in finding treatments for debilitating diseases.

Engelhardt is the second UI faculty member to join the academy, after UI neurosurgeon Matthew Howard, MD, was named a 2018 fellow for his work in developing brain and spinal cord neuromodulation devices.

Engelhardt joined the UI faculty in 1997 and is the Roy J. Carver Chair in Molecular Medicine and director of the Center for Gene Therapy of Cystic Fibrosis, which has received funding from the NIH continuously over the past 20 years. He earned a doctoral degree in human genetics from Johns Hopkins University and was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Michigan. He has published 263 articles and book chapters, and has received over $74 million dollars in NIH grant support for his research.

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Engelhardt named 2019 Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors - Iowa Now

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Sarepeta Therapeutics and StrideBio will collaborate to advance novel gene therapies for four genetic neurological disorders, including Rett syndrome, the companies have announced.

Under the agreement, StrideBio, which specializes in viral-based delivery systems for gene therapy, will conduct initial research, development, and manufacturing for the first four gene targets in these neurological disorders: MECP2 (Rett syndrome), SCN1A (Dravet syndrome), UBE3A (Angelman syndrome), and NPC1 (Niemann-Pick).

The main goal of the early development stage is to obtain investigational new drug approvals from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which are mandatory to start clinical trials.

In turn, Sarepta, a company focusing on precision genetic medicine, expands its gene therapy pipeline by gaining exclusive licenses on the selected targets. It also gains the possibility to extend licensing to four additional targets (for a total of eight) in neuromuscular and central nervous system diseases.

StrideBio owns aplatform to create adeno-associated viral (AAV) vectors, a class of modified viruses that are used to deliver gene therapy. They are engineered to be harmless (non-infectious) and work to deliver functioning genes directly into specific cells and tissues.

One of the current challenges in gene therapy is that some people carry a natural immunity against AAVs, in the form of neutralizing antibodies that react against these vectors and prevent gene therapies from working. In addition, immune reactions against AAVs can also become toxic for patients. This limits the number of patients who can benefit from AAV-based gene therapies, as carriers of neutralizing antibodies are excluded from gene therapy trials and treatments.

StrideBios platform addresses this problem by creating novel AAV capsids, or protein shells, that enclose the genetic material to be delivered and are able to escape pre-existing neutralizing antibodies.

As such, the platform holds promise for gene therapies to be used in a greater number of patients, the company says.

These new capsids can also be engineered to improve specific delivery of gene therapy to tissues of interest in a particular condition.

Sarepta and StrideBio plan to address re-dosing challenges as well in patients who have received some sort of AAV-based gene therapy.

With our partnership with StrideBio, Sarepta continues to build on its leadership position in gene therapies to treat rare diseases. We are excited to work with StrideBio and access its innovative AAV platform for next-generation capsids, Doug Ingram, Sareptas president and CEO, said in a press release.

Our partnership with StrideBio expands our research portfolio by up to eight new targets and ensures that we gain access to new technology and targets while not distracting Sarepta from its near-term priorities, he added.

Sapan Shah, PhD, StrideBios CEO, said: This partnership will provide significant resources and expertise to enable StrideBios continued rapid expansion of our research and manufacturing platform, as well as accelerate the development of AAV gene therapies for multiple rare disease targets.

We are looking forward to working together with Sarepta to bring novel treatments to patients as quickly as possible, he added.

Sarepta will pay StrideBio $48 million as upfront payment, in addition to future payments for development, regulatory, and commercial milestones for the four programs. StrideBio will also receive royalties on potential worldwide sales.

If the collaboration is expanded to the four additional targets, Sarepta will pay up to $42.5 million along with future milestone payments.

Ana is a molecular biologist with a passion for discovery and communication. As a science writer she looks for connecting the public, in particular patient and healthcare communities, with clear and quality information about the latest medical advances. Ana holds a PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Lisbon, Portugal, where she specialized in genetics, molecular biology, and infectious diseases.

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Jos is a science news writer with a PhD in Neuroscience from Universidade of Porto, in Portugal. He has also studied Biochemistry at Universidade do Porto and was a postdoctoral associate at Weill Cornell Medicine, in New York, and at The University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada. His work has ranged from the association of central cardiovascular and pain control to the neurobiological basis of hypertension, and the molecular pathways driving Alzheimers disease.

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Rett Among Disorders Targetted for Gene Therapies in Partnership Deal - Rett Syndrome News

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--FerGene, a new gene therapy company formed by Ferring Pharmaceuticals and Blackstone Life Sciences, announced today positive results from the pivotal Phase 3 clinical trial evaluating nadofaragene firadenovec (rAd-IFN/Syn3), an investigational gene therapy, for the treatment of high-grade, Bacillus Calmette-Gurin (BCG) unresponsive non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC). FKD Therapies Oy (FKD) has led the development and regulatory filing of nadofaragene firadenovec, which has been studied in 33 centers across the U.S. in collaboration with the Society of Urologic Oncology Clinical Trials Consortium (SUO-CTC). The results were presented during the bladder cancer session at the Society of Urologic Oncology 20th Annual Meeting in Washington D.C.

The Phase 3 study of 157 patients from the U.S. met its primary endpoint with 53% of CIS Ta/T1 patients (carcinoma in situ; bladder cancer that is confined to the superficial layer, with or without concomitant high-grade Ta or T1 papillary disease) achieving a CR at three months, and 24% continuing to show a CR at 12 months. Moreover, the study also demonstrated broad efficacy in this difficult to treat patient population with a 73% HGRF survival in patients with papillary disease at three months and 44% HGRF survival at 12 months. In the study, nadofaragene firadenovec was instilled directly into the patients bladder every three months. All responses at 12 months were confirmed by protocol-mandatory five-point biopsies.

Bladder cancer is one of the most frequently occurring cancers with an estimated 699,450 people living with bladder cancer and more than 80,000 new cases diagnosed each year in the U.S. alone.1 In high-grade NMIBC patients, BCG is the standard treatment, and, although effective, over 60% of these tumors eventually re-occur. 2,3

Currently, patients living with high-grade NMIBC who are unresponsive to BCG have few treatment options and often face bleak outcomes, including complete bladder removal, known as cystectomy, said Colin P. N. Dinney, MD, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Urology at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Cystectomy is a complex and life-altering surgical procedure for patients, so these positive results from the Phase 3 trial of nadofaragene firadenovec are highly promising for patients. It would be gratifying to provide an alternative that addresses the critical unmet need for effective second-line therapy for patients facing radical cystectomy.

Efficacy Analysis*

AssessmentPeriod

CIS Ta/T1 Disease (n=103) CR(% [n])

High-Grade Ta/T1 Papillary Disease (non CIS)

(n=48) HGRF Survival (% [n])

Month 3

53.4% (55)

72.9% (35)

Month 6

40.8% (42)

62.5% (30)

Month 9

35.0% (36)

58.3% (28)

Month 12

24.3% (25)

43.8% (21)

*151 patients

In the Phase 3 trial, the most common adverse events (AEs) included fatigue, bladder spasm and discharge around the catheter, micturition urgency, hematuria, chills, fever, headache, painful urination, urinary tract infection, and diarrhea. No grade 4 or 5 treatment-related AEs were reported in the study. Study drug-related AEs were transient and local in nature, with a median duration of less than two days, with the exception of fatigue, which had a median duration of 11 days and urinary frequency which had a median duration of 41 days. There was a 1.9% percent rate of discontinuations due to study drug-related AEs.

We are pleased with these Phase 3 data results, including the complete response rates and favorable safety profile seen with nadofaragene firadenovec, said Nigel R. Parker4, PhD, of FKD Therapies Oy. These data were part of our submission package to the FDA, and we look forward to continuing to work with the agency to potentially bring nadofaragene firadenovec to patients with BCG unresponsive disease.

As a practicing urologist and trial investigator, its encouraging to see these types of efficacy and safety results in patients with high-grade NMIBC, an area thats been in need of new innovative treatment options for more than 20 years, said Neal Shore, MD, FACS, Medical Director, Carolina Urologic Research Center. These robust clinical results further demonstrate the potential of nadofaragene firadenovec as a valuable treatment option for NMIBC patients.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has validated FKDs Biologics License Application (BLA) and granted Priority Review for nadofaragene firadenovec, which previously received Fast Track and Breakthrough Therapy Designations.

About nadofaragene firadenovec

Nadofaragene firadenovec (rAd-IFN/Syn3) is an investigational gene therapy being developed as a treatment for patients with high-grade, BCG unresponsive, NMIBC. It is an adenovirus vector-based gene therapy containing the gene interferon alfa-2b, administered by catheter into the bladder every three months. The vector enters the cells of the bladder wall, where, it breaks down, releasing the active gene to do its work. The internal gene/DNA machinery of the cells picks up the gene and translates its DNA sequence, resulting in the cells secreting high quantities of interferon alfa-2b protein, a naturally occurring protein the body uses to fight cancer. This novel gene therapy approach thereby turns the patient's own bladder wall cells into multiple interferon microfactories, enhancing the body's natural defenses against the cancer.

About Non-Muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer (NMIBC)

NMIBC is an early form of bladder cancer which is present in the superficial layer of the bladder and has not invaded deeper into the bladder or spread to other parts of the body.5 It is estimated that there will be 80,000 new cases of bladder cancer in the U.S. in 2019; more than 70% of these cases present as NMIBC.2,6 In patients with high-grade NMIBC, intravesical BCG is the recommended treatment; however, between 30% and 50% cases with high-grade disease will recur.7 The outcome for BCG unresponsive patients is poor, with total cystectomy (complete removal of the bladder) often being the next treatment option.8

About FerGene

FerGene, a new gene therapy company and Ferring subsidiary, has been created to potentially commercialize nadofaragene firadenovec in the U.S. and to advance the global clinical development. FerGenes goal is to bring this promising therapy to a patient population which has seen little improvement in their standard of care over the past twenty years. Blackstone Life Sciences will invest $400 million USD and Ferring will invest up to $170 million USD in FerGene. Ferring will also potentially launch and commercialize nadofaragene firadenovec outside of the U.S.

About FKD Therapies Oy

FKD Therapies Oy is a specialist gene therapy company based in Kuopio, Finland originally conceived by scientific and medical founders, Dr Nigel R Parker and Professor Seppo Yla-Herttuala4, for the specific purpose of undertaking the development of adenovirus mediated interferon alfa-2b. FKD has led the overall development of nadofaragene firadenovec through manufacturing at FinVector Oy, late stage clinical trials and the current BLA filing. FinVector Oy and FKD Oy are part of the Trizell Group.

About Ferring Pharmaceuticals

Ferring Pharmaceuticals is a research-driven, specialty biopharmaceutical group committed to helping people around the world build families and live better lives. Headquartered in Saint-Prex, Switzerland, Ferring is a leader in reproductive medicine and maternal health, and in specialty areas within gastroenterology and urology. Founded in 1950, Ferring now employs approximately 6,500 people worldwide, has its own operating subsidiaries in nearly 60 countries and markets its products in 110 countries.

1 National Cancer Institute. Cancer Stat Facts: Bladder Cancer. Available at: https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/urinb.html. Last accessed: December 2019.

2 Maruf, M et al., Non invasive bladder cancer: a primer on immunotherapy. Cancer Biol Med. 2016;13(2):194-205.

3 Derr, L et al., Intravesical Bacillus Calmette Guerin Combined with a Cancer Vaccine Increases Local T-Cell Responses in Non-muscle-Invasive Bladder Cancer Patients. Clin Cancer Res. 2017;23(3):717-725.

4 AIV Institute for Molecular Sciences, Kuopio, Finland.

5 Anastasiadis A, de Reijke TM. Best practice in the Treatment of Nonmuscle Invasive Bladder Cancer. Ther Adv Urol. 2012;4(1):13-32

6 Ghatalia, Pooja et al. Approved checkpoint inhibitors in bladder cancer: which drug should be used when?. Therapeutic advances in medical oncology vol. 10 1758835918788310. 30 Jul. 2018, doi:10.1177/1758835918788310.

7 Cambier S et al. EORTC Nomograms and Risk Groups for Predicting Recurrence, Progression, and Disease-specific and Overall Survival in NonMuscle-invasive Stage TaT1 Urothelial Bladder Cancer Patients Treated with 13 Years of Maintenance Bacillus Calmette-Gurin. European Urolology. 2016, Vol. 69(1): 60-69.

8 Cookson, M et al.,Use of intravesical valrubicin in clinical practice for treatment of nonmuscle-invasive bladder cancer, including carcinoma in situ of the bladder. Therapeutic Advances in Urology. 2014, Vol. 5(5):181-191.

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FerGene Announces Pivotal Phase 3 Study of Nadofaragene Firadenovec Met Its Primary Endpoint With More Than Half of Patients With High-Grade...

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

GERMANTOWN, Md., Dec. 06, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Orgenesis Inc. (NASDAQ: ORGS)(Orgenesis or the Company), a leading cell and gene therapy enabling company providing centralized CDMO manufacturing and development services through its subsidiary Masthercell Global, Inc., as well as localized point-of-care(POCare) development and processing centers for therapeutic treatments, today announced a strategic partnership agreement (Partnership) between the HYGEIA Group and the TheracellOrgenesis joint venture (JV). Under the Agreement, the JV will implement Orgenesis POCare cell therapy platform for clinical development and commercialization of cell and gene therapies within HYGEIA Groups network of three hospitals in Greece. As previously announced, Orgenesis and TheraCell Advanced Biotechnology formed a JV to advance Orgenesis POCare platform in Greece, Cyprus, the Balkan region and selected Middle Eastern countries.

The POCare platform is designed to collect, process and supply cells within the patient care setting for various therapeutic treatments. The goal of the platform is to reduce the cost and complexity of supplying cell and gene therapies, as well as elevate quality standards by integrating automated processing units and proprietary technologies.

HYGEIA is the first hospital network in this region to implement Orgenesis POCare cell therapy platform. The Partnership is intended to provide HYGEIA Group with resources to advance clinical development and deliver personalized, advanced therapies across its network for a wide range of diseases in oncology, hematology, orthopedics, nephrology, dermatology and diabetes.

This partnership with the HYGEIA Group further validates the significant value proposition of our POCare platform, as it enables the development and delivery of cell and gene therapies onsite at hospitals. We believe this platform has the potential to transform the cell and gene therapy market, by bringing life-saving therapies to market in a much more time and cost-effective manner, said Vered Caplan, CEO of Orgenesis. Theracell has proven to be an ideal partner with extensive experience and capabilities in autologous cell therapy and regenerative medicine, with operations in Greece and strong relationships throughout the region. We are in active discussions to establish PoCare locations and partnerships with hospitals and healthcare networks in other countries and regions across the world.

Andreas Kartapanis, CEO, HYGEIA Group, commented, HYGEIA Group is honored to work with Theracell and Orgenesis to become the first hospital network in Greece to provide advanced cell and gene therapies for both clinical research and patient treatment utilizing the POCare platform. We believe this Partnership will provide us a strong competitive advantage in this rapidly developing field. More importantly, this Partnership will benefit patients that will now have greater access to these important therapies.

About HYGEIA Group

HYGEIA Group operates three hospitals in Greece, with a total capacity of 1,261 beds, 52 operating rooms, 19 delivery rooms and 10 intensive care units. More than 3,100 employees and approximately 3,900 associate physicians offer their services to the HYGEIA Group, which was founded in 1970 by medical doctors, most of which were professors at the University of Athens and have since been active in providing primary and secondary care services. The following hospitals are also part of the HYGEIA Group: MITERA General, Obstetrics - Gynecology & Pediatrics Hospital and LITO Obstetrics, Gynecology & Surgical Center, licensed for 459 and 100 hospital beds, respectively.

About Theracell

TheraCell is a regenerative biotechnology company with operations in Greece, where its laboratories and primary facilities are located. The Company focuses in the areas of autologous cell therapy and regenerative medicine. TheraCell has extensive experience in the isolation, processing and application of adipose derived stem cells (ADSCs), as well as somatic cells and has developed a patented platform for tissue engineering and cell therapies in the areas of Dermatology, Chondral Defects and Chronic Kidney Injury.

About Orgenesis

Orgenesis is a biopharmaceutical company specializing in the development, manufacturing and processing of technologies and services in the cell and gene therapy industry. The Company operates through two platforms: (i) a point-of-care (POCare) cell therapy platform (PT) and (ii) a Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) platform conducted through its subsidiary, Masthercell Global. Through its PT business, the Companys aim is to further the development of Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs) through collaborations and in-licensing with other pre-clinical and clinical-stage biopharmaceutical companies and research and healthcare institutes to bring such ATMPs to patients. The Company out-licenses these ATMPs through regional partners to whom it also provides regulatory, pre-clinical and training services to support their activity in order to reach patients in a point-of-care hospital setting. Through the Companys CDMO platform, it is focused on providing contract manufacturing and development services for biopharmaceutical companies. Additional information is available at: http://www.orgenesis.com.

Notice Regarding Forward-Looking StatementsThis press release contains forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These forward-looking statements involve substantial uncertainties and risks and are based upon our current expectations, estimates and projections and reflect our beliefs and assumptions based upon information available to us at the date of this release. We caution readers that forward-looking statements are predictions based on our current expectations about future events. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Our actual results, performance or achievements could differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements as a result of a number of factors, including, but not limited to, the success of our reorganized CDMO operations, the success of our partnership with Great Point Partners, our ability to achieve and maintain overall profitability, the sufficiency of working capital to realize our business plans, the development of our transdifferentiation technology as therapeutic treatment for diabetes which could, if successful, be a cure for Type 1 Diabetes; our technology not functioning as expected; our ability to retain key employees; our ability to satisfy the rigorous regulatory requirements for new procedures; our competitors developing better or cheaper alternatives to our products and the risks and uncertainties discussed under the heading "RISK FACTORS" in Item 1A of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended November 30, 2018, and in our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We undertake no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statement for any reason.

Investor contact for Orgenesis:David WaldmanCrescendo Communications, LLCTel: 212-671-1021Orgs@crescendo-ir.com

Media contact for Orgenesis:Image Box CommunicationsNeil Hunter / Michelle BoxallTel +44 20 8943 4685neil@imageboxpr.co.uk/michelle@imageboxpr.co.uk

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Orgenesis and Theracell to Launch Point of Care Cell and Gene Therapy Centers within HYGEIA Group's Hospital Network in Greece - GlobeNewswire

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

The similar efficacy and safety results seen across this post-approval analysis and the ZUMA-1 registrational trial are extremely encouraging for appropriate patients with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma who may benefit from Yescarta, said Marcelo Pasquini, MD, MS, co-lead investigator and Senior Scientific Director of the CIBMTR; Cellular Therapy Registry Director; and Associate Professor of Medicine, Division of Hematology / Oncology at the Medical College of Wisconsin. The comparable early outcomes, including side effects, support the potential of Yescarta in older, higher risk and more difficult-to-treat patients that physicians often see in the clinic.

In October 2017, Yescarta became the first CAR T cell therapy to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma after two or more lines of systemic therapy, including diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) not otherwise specified, primary mediastinal large B-cell lymphoma (PMBCL), high grade B-cell lymphoma and DLBCL arising from follicular lymphoma. Yescarta is not indicated for the treatment of patients with primary central nervous system lymphoma. The U.S. Prescribing Information for Yescarta contains a Boxed Warning regarding the risk of cytokine release syndrome (CRS) and neurological toxicities; see below for Important Safety Information.

The post-approval study population (n=533) included a larger proportion of older patients (65 years; 37 percent versus 25 percent) and more patients with double and triple hit lymphoma (36 percent versus 11 percent) compared to ZUMA-1.

At follow-up of at least six months after a single infusion of Yescarta, the best objective response via investigator assessment among the 326 patients evaluable for efficacy showed an objective response rate (ORR) of 84 percent, with 66 percent of patients having achieved a complete response (CR). ORR was similar among older and younger patients (92 percent in patients 65 years versus 80 percent in patients <65 years). Patients 65 years (n=108) achieved a CR rate of 72 percent versus 62 percent in patients <65 years (n=218).

Among all patients evaluable for safety (n=533), those 65 years or older had comparable rates of CRS (Any Grade: 84 percent vs. 80 percent; Grade 3: 10 percent vs. 8 percent) and neurologic toxicity (Any grade: 64 percent vs. 55 percent; Grade 3: 22 percent vs. 19 percent) as those under 65 years. Four patients died due to CRS, four patients died from neurologic toxicity and one patient died from both CRS and neurologic toxicity. This Grade 5 AE rate of approximately 1 percent for CRS and neurologic toxicity each is comparable to ZUMA-1.

With more than 85 centers authorized to treat patients with Yescarta, these post-approval results reinforce its potentially transformative role in third line or later relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma, said Christi Shaw, Chief Executive Officer of Kite. The demonstrated efficacy and safety of Yescarta in the real-world setting, coupled with our industry-leading manufacturing that has delivered for thousands of patients so far, means physicians have a real opportunity to bring the potential benefits of CAR T to their patients in need.

U.S. Important Safety Information for Yescarta

BOXED WARNING: CYTOKINE RELEASE SYNDROME AND NEUROLOGIC TOXICITIES

CYTOKINE RELEASE SYNDROME (CRS): CRS occurred in 94% of patients, including 13% with Grade 3. Among patients who died after receiving Yescarta, 4 had ongoing CRS at death. The median time to onset was 2 days (range: 1-12 days) and median duration was 7 days (range: 2-58 days). Key manifestations include fever (78%), hypotension (41%), tachycardia (28%), hypoxia (22%), and chills (20%). Serious events that may be associated with CRS include cardiac arrhythmias (including atrial fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia), cardiac arrest, cardiac failure, renal insufficiency, capillary leak syndrome, hypotension, hypoxia, and hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis/macrophage activation syndrome. Ensure that 2 doses of tocilizumab are available prior to infusion of Yescarta. Monitor patients at least daily for 7 days at the certified healthcare facility following infusion for signs and symptoms of CRS. Monitor patients for signs or symptoms of CRS for 4 weeks after infusion. Counsel patients to seek immediate medical attention should signs or symptoms of CRS occur at any time. At the first sign of CRS, institute treatment with supportive care, tocilizumab or tocilizumab and corticosteroids as indicated.

NEUROLOGIC TOXICITIES: Neurologic toxicities occurred in 87% of patients. Ninety-eight percent of all neurologic toxicities occurred within the first 8 weeks, with a median time to onset of 4 days (range: 1-43 days) and a median duration of 17 days. Grade 3 or higher occurred in 31% of patients. The most common neurologic toxicities included encephalopathy (57%), headache (44%), tremor (31%), dizziness (21%), aphasia (18%), delirium (17%), insomnia (9%) and anxiety (9%). Prolonged encephalopathy lasting up to 173 days was noted. Serious events including leukoencephalopathy and seizures occurred with Yescarta. Fatal and serious cases of cerebral edema have occurred in patients treated with Yescarta. Monitor patients at least daily for 7 days at the certified healthcare facility following infusion for signs and symptoms of neurologic toxicities. Monitor patients for signs or symptoms of neurologic toxicities for 4 weeks after infusion and treat promptly.

YESCARTA REMS: Because of the risk of CRS and neurologic toxicities, Yescarta is available only through a restricted program under a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) called the Yescarta REMS. The required components of the Yescarta REMS are: Healthcare facilities that dispense and administer Yescarta must be enrolled and comply with the REMS requirements. Certified healthcare facilities must have on-site, immediate access to tocilizumab, and ensure that a minimum of 2 doses of tocilizumab are available for each patient for infusion within 2 hours after Yescarta infusion, if needed for treatment of CRS. Certified healthcare facilities must ensure that healthcare providers who prescribe, dispense or administer Yescarta are trained about the management of CRS and neurologic toxicities. Further information is available at http://www.YESCARTAREMS.com or 1-844-454-KITE (5483).

HYPERSENSITIVITY REACTIONS: Allergic reactions may occur. Serious hypersensitivity reactions including anaphylaxis may be due to dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) or residual gentamicin in Yescarta.

SERIOUS INFECTIONS: Severe or life-threatening infections occurred. Infections (all grades) occurred in 38% of patients, and in 23% with Grade 3. Grade 3 or higher infections with an unspecified pathogen occurred in 16% of patients, bacterial infections in 9%, and viral infections in 4%. Yescarta should not be administered to patients with clinically significant active systemic infections. Monitor patients for signs and symptoms of infection before and after Yescarta infusion and treat appropriately. Administer prophylactic anti-microbials according to local guidelines. Febrile neutropenia was observed in 36% of patients and may be concurrent with CRS. In the event of febrile neutropenia, evaluate for infection and manage with broad spectrum antibiotics, fluids and other supportive care as medically indicated. Hepatitis B virus (HBV) reactivation, in some cases resulting in fulminant hepatitis, hepatic failure and death, can occur in patients treated with drugs directed against B cells. Perform screening for HBV, HCV, and HIV in accordance with clinical guidelines before collection of cells for manufacturing.

PROLONGED CYTOPENIAS: Patients may exhibit cytopenias for several weeks following lymphodepleting chemotherapy and Yescarta infusion. Grade 3 or higher cytopenias not resolved by Day 30 following Yescarta infusion occurred in 28% of patients and included thrombocytopenia (18%), neutropenia (15%), and anemia (3%). Monitor blood counts after Yescarta infusion.

HYPOGAMMAGLOBULINEMIA: B-cell aplasia and hypogammaglobulinemia can occur. Hypogammaglobulinemia occurred in 15% of patients. Monitor immunoglobulin levels after treatment and manage using infection precautions, antibiotic prophylaxis and immunoglobulin replacement. The safety of immunization with live viral vaccines during or following Yescarta treatment has not been studied. Vaccination with live virus vaccines is not recommended for at least 6 weeks prior to the start of lymphodepleting chemotherapy, during Yescarta treatment, and until immune recovery following treatment.

SECONDARY MALIGNANCIES: Patients may develop secondary malignancies. Monitor life-long for secondary malignancies. In the event that a secondary malignancy occurs, contact Kite at 1-844-454-KITE (5483) to obtain instructions on patient samples to collect for testing.

EFFECTS ON ABILITY TO DRIVE AND USE MACHINES: Due to the potential for neurologic events, including altered mental status or seizures, patients are at risk for altered or decreased consciousness or coordination in the 8 weeks following Yescarta infusion. Advise patients to refrain from driving and engaging in hazardous occupations or activities, such as operating heavy or potentially dangerous machinery, during this initial period.

ADVERSE REACTIONS: The most common adverse reactions (incidence 20%) include CRS, fever, hypotension, encephalopathy, tachycardia, fatigue, headache, decreased appetite, chills, diarrhea, febrile neutropenia, infections-pathogen unspecified, nausea, hypoxia, tremor, cough, vomiting, dizziness, constipation, and cardiac arrhythmias.

About Kite

Kite, a Gilead Company, is a biopharmaceutical company based in Santa Monica, California. Kite is engaged in the development of innovative cancer immunotherapies. The company is focused on chimeric antigen receptor and T cell receptor engineered cell therapies. For more information on Kite, please visit http://www.kitepharma.com.

About Gilead Sciences

Gilead Sciences, Inc. is a research-based biopharmaceutical company that discovers, develops and commercializes innovative medicines in areas of unmet medical need. The company strives to transform and simplify care for people with life-threatening illnesses around the world. Gilead has operations in more than 35 countries worldwide, with headquarters in Foster City, California. For more information on Gilead Sciences, please visit the companys website at http://www.gilead.com.

About the CIBMTR

The CIBMTR (Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research) is a research collaboration between the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP)/Be The Match and the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW). Through a collaboration with Be The Match BioTherapies, a subsidiary of NMDP/Be The Match, the organizations offer end-to-end solutions for cell and gene therapy developers, including cell sourcing and collection support, clinical trial services, supply chain and logistics, manufacturing and commercialization support, and outcomes management. The CIBMTR collaborates with the global scientific community to advance hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) and cellular therapy worldwide to increase survival and enrich quality of life for patients. The CIBMTR has developed a dedicated cellular therapy registry which now serves as the infrastructure for the National Cancer Institute -funded Cellular Immunotherapy Data Resource (CIDR) and further expands the utilization of this resource by the general biomedical community. The CIBMTR facilitates critical observational and interventional research through scientific and statistical expertise, a large network of transplant centers, and a unique and extensive clinical outcomes database.

For more information on the CIBMTR, please visit http://www.cibmtr.org.

Forward-Looking Statement

This press release includes forward-looking statements, within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, including the possibility of unfavorable results from other ongoing and additional clinical trials involving Yescarta. There is also the risk that physicians may not see the benefits of the use of Yescarta for relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma in the older and more difficult-to-treat patient population as described herein. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements. These risks, uncertainties and other factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those referred to in the forward-looking statements. The reader is cautioned not to rely on these forward-looking statements. These and other risks are described in detail in Gileads Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2019, as filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements are based on information currently available to Gilead and Kite, and Gilead and Kite assume no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements.

U.S. Prescribing Information for Yescarta, including BOXED WARNING, is available at http://www.kitepharma.com and http://www.gilead.com.

Yescarta is a registered trademark of Gilead Sciences, Inc., or its related companies.

For more information on Kite, please visit the companys website at http://www.kitepharma.com or call Gilead Public Affairs at 1-800-GILEAD-5 or 1-650-574-3000. Follow Kite on social media on Twitter (@KitePharma) and LinkedIn.

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Kite and the CIBMTR Present Positive Findings From Real-World Use of Yescarta (Axicabtagene Ciloleucel) in Relapsed or Refractory Large B-Cell...

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

BRISBANE, Calif. & NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sangamo Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: SGMO), a genomic medicine company, and Pfizer, Inc. (NYSE: PFE), today announced updated follow-up results from the Phase 1/2 Alta study evaluating investigational SB-525 gene therapy in patients with severe hemophilia A. The data showed that SB-525 was generally well tolerated and demonstrated sustained increased Factor VIII (FVIII) levels following treatment with SB-525 through to 44 weeks, the extent of follow-up for the longest treated patient in the 3e13 vg/kg dose cohort. Data from 11 patients treated with SB-525 will be featured in a poster presentation today, December 7, 2019, at the 61st Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) in Orlando, FL. The SB-525 ASH poster, which includes the full set of data, is available on Sangamos website in the Investors and Media section under Events and Presentations.

I am pleased that all five patients in the high dose (3e13 vg/kg) cohort rapidly achieved normal levels of Factor VIII, and that Factor VIII levels have been stable and durable in the normal range for the first two patients up to 44 and 37 weeks following treatment respectively, with no bleeding events or factor usage up to a follow up of 44 weeks in the longest treated patient, said Barbara Konkle, M.D., Bloodworks Northwest, Professor of Medicine at University of Washington and a Principal Investigator of the Alta study. It is important to continue to follow these patients to determine whether these results are sustained in the longer term as the combination of a favorable safety profile coupled with sustained expression at a level that prevents bleeding and allows normal activity will be the hallmark of a successful gene therapy for hemophilia A.

Alta study data presented at ASH included 11 patients treated across four ascending dose cohorts: 9e11 vg/kg (2 patients), 2e12 vg/kg (2 patients), 1e13 vg/kg (2 patients) and 3e13 vg/kg (5 patients). The data cutoff date was October 17, 2019.

An analysis of plasma FVIII antigen was assessed by ELISA and demonstrated antigen concentrations consistent with the FVIII activity measured by the chromogenic assay. Dose dependent increases in FVIII activity over baseline were observed across the dose cohorts. The lower-dose cohorts indicate durable FVIII activity with up to 52 weeks of follow-up.

In the 3e13 vg/kg dose cohort, patients achieved normal range FVIII activity within 5-7 weeks of treatment with SB-525. The first two patients treated in this cohort (Patients 7 and 8) have achieved stable FVIII levels, demonstrating durability in the normal range through 44 and 37 weeks, respectively, as measured by the chromogenic assay. The two patients most recently treated in this cohort (Patients 10 and 11), with 22 and 12 weeks of follow-up, respectively, demonstrated a similar pattern of FVIII expression. The FVIII expression pattern observed in Patient 9 differed from that of other patients in the cohort. Seven weeks following treatment, Patient 9 achieved normal range FVIII levels. Beginning at week 13, FVIII levels in that patient fluctuated in a range below normal, but still well above the level needed to prevent spontaneous bleeding. At week 18, FVIII levels in Patient 9 began to increase, and as of the latest measurement at week 24, continued to rise. No patient in the 3e13 vg/kg dose cohort has experienced bleeding events up to 44 weeks of follow-up, and no patient in this dose cohort required factor replacement following initial use of prophylactic factor.

SB-525 was generally well tolerated across all dose cohorts. The treatment-related adverse events include: alanine aminotransferase (ALT) elevation (36.4%, n=4), pyrexia (27.3%, n=3), increased aspartate aminotransferase (18.2%, n=2), tachycardia (18.2% n=2), fatigue (9.1%, n=1), hypotension (9.1%, n=1) and myalgia (9.1%, n=1). Treatment-related serious adverse events (SAEs) of hypotension (grade 3) and fever (grade two) occurred in one patient in the 3e13 vg/kg cohort six hours following dosing with SB-525 that fully resolved within 24 hours. No similar events were reported in the other patients dosed in that cohort. No patients treated with SB-525 experienced an ALT elevation associated with loss of Factor VIII expression. In the 3e13 vg/kg dose cohort, four patients experienced transient low grade ALT elevations (>1.5 x baseline) that were managed with a tapering course of oral steroids. The study does not use corticosteroids prophylactically, initiating them only in the event of an ALT elevation that is greater than 1.5x baseline.

The updated results from the Alta study suggest that SB-525 may represent a differentiated gene therapy for patients with severe hemophilia A, said Bettina Cockroft, M.D., Chief Medical Officer of Sangamo. The results continue to suggest that if sustained over a longer duration, SB-525 has the potential to be a predictable, reliable, and safe treatment that may bring clinical benefits to patients with severe hemophilia A.

Sangamo has completed the manufacturing technology transfer and initiated the transfer of the Investigational New Drug (IND) Application to Pfizer, which is expected to be completed in the first quarter 2020. Pfizer is enrolling patients in the Phase 3 lead-in study, the data from which is expected to provide a baseline for patients who are subsequently enrolled into the Phase 3 study (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03587116).

We are pleased with the progress that we have made in progressing SB-525 gene therapy toward a Phase 3 registrational study, including enrolling the first patient in the 6-month lead-in study. We expect to dose the first patient in the Phase 3 registrational study in 2020, said Seng Cheng, Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of Pfizers Rare Diseases Research Unit. We continue to believe that if the observed safety and efficacy results are sustained, this gene therapy has the potential to transform the treatment paradigm of severe hemophilia A.

About the Alta study

The Phase 1/2 Alta study is an open-label, dose-ranging, multicenter clinical trial designed to assess the safety and tolerability of SB-525 in patients with severe hemophilia A. The mean age of the 11 patients assessed is 30 years (range 18-47 years). All 11 patients are male. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted Orphan Drug, Fast Track, and regenerative medicine advanced therapy (RMAT) designations to SB-525, which also received Orphan Medicinal Product designation from the European Medicines Agency. SB-525 is being developed as part of a global collaboration between Sangamo and Pfizer.

About SB-525 Gene Therapy

SB-525 comprises a recombinant adeno-associated virus serotype 6 vector (AAV6) encoding the complementary deoxyribonucleic acid for B domain deleted human FVIII. The SB-525 vector cassette was designed to optimize both the vector manufacturing yield and liver-specific FVIII protein expression. The SB-525 transcriptional cassette incorporates multi-factorial modifications to the liver-specific promoter module, FVIII transgene, synthetic polyadenylation signal and vector backbone sequence.

About Sangamo Therapeutics

Sangamo Therapeutics is committed to translating ground-breaking science into genomic medicines with the potential to transform patients lives using gene therapy, ex vivo gene-edited cell therapy, and in vivo genome editing and gene regulation. For more information about Sangamo, visit http://www.sangamo.com.

Pfizer Inc: Working together for a healthier world

At Pfizer, we apply science and our global resources to bring therapies to people that extend and significantly improve their lives. We strive to set the standard for quality, safety and value in the discovery, development and manufacture of health care products, including innovative medicines and vaccines. Every day, Pfizer colleagues work across developed and emerging markets to advance wellness, prevention, treatments and cures that challenge the most feared diseases of our time. Consistent with our responsibility as one of the world's premier innovative biopharmaceutical companies, we collaborate with health care providers, governments and local communities to support and expand access to reliable, affordable health care around the world. For more than 150 years, we have worked to make a difference for all who rely on us. We routinely post information that may be important to investors on our website at http://www.pfizer.com. In addition, to learn more, please visit us on http://www.pfizer.com and follow us on Twitter at @Pfizer and @Pfizer_News, LinkedIn, YouTube and like us on Facebook at Facebook.com/Pfizer.

Sangamo Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding Sangamo's current expectations. These forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements relating to the investigational hemophilia A gene therapy, SB-525, including its potential therapeutic benefits; the potential long-term durability of SB-525 gene therapy; SB-525 having the potential to be a predictable and reliable treatment that may bring clinical benefit to patients with hemophilia A and to potentially represent a transformative treatment paradigm; plans to advance SB-525 into a potential registrational study; the potential benefits of the RMAT and Orphan medicine designation for SB-525; and other statements that are not historical fact. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Factors that could cause actual results to differ include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties related to: the research and development process; additional data, including the risk that the data reported from the Alta to date may not be indicative of the final results from the Alta study or that such final results may not validate and support the safety and efficacy of SB-525; the completion of the Alta study; the possibility of unfavorable new clinical data from the Alta study and further analyses of existing clinical data from the study that may material change clinical outcomes; the risk that clinical trial data are subject to differing interpretations and assessments by regulatory authorities; whether regulatory authorities will be satisfied with the design of and results from the clincal studies relating to SB-525, any potential registrational studies or any other clinical studies of SB-525; whether Sangamo will be able to maintain or receive the benefits associated with RMAT, Orphan Drug, Fast Track and Orphan Medicinal Product designations for SB-525; Sangamo's reliance on Pfizer and other third-parties to meet their clinical and manufacturing obligations; Sangamos ability to maintain strategic partnerships; and the potential for technological developments by Sangamo's competitors that will obviate Sangamo's gene therapy technology. Further, there can be no assurance that the necessary regulatory approvals will be obtained for SB-525 or that Sangamo and its partners will be able to develop commercially viable product candidates. Actual results may differ from those projected in forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties that exist in Sangamo's operations and business environments. These risks and uncertainties are described more fully in Sangamo's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018 as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and Sangamo's most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q. Forward-looking statements contained in this announcement are made as of this date, and Sangamo undertakes no duty to update such information except as required under applicable law.

Pfizer Disclosure Notice: The information contained in this release is as of December 7, 2019. Pfizer assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements contained in this release as the result of new information or future events or developments.

This release contains forward-looking information about an investigational hemophilia A agent, SB-525, including its potential benefits, that involves substantial risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Risks and uncertainties include, among other things, the uncertainties inherent in research and development, including the ability to meet anticipated clinical endpoints, commencement and/or completion dates for our clinical trials, regulatory submission dates, regulatory approval dates and/or launch dates, as well as the possibility of unfavorable new clinical data and further analyses of existing clinical data; risks associated with interim data; the risk that clinical trial data are subject to differing interpretations and assessments by regulatory authorities; whether regulatory authorities will be satisfied with the design of and results from our clinical studies; whether and when drug applications for any potential indications for SB-525 may be filed in any jurisdictions; whether and when regulatory authorities in any jurisdictions may approve any such applications, which will depend on myriad factors, including making a determination as to whether the product's benefits outweigh its known risks and determination of the product's efficacy and, if approved, whether SB-525 will be commercially successful; decisions by regulatory authorities impacting labeling, manufacturing processes, safety and/or other matters that could affect the availability or commercial potential of SB-525; and competitive developments.

A further description of risks and uncertainties can be found in Pfizer's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2018 and in its subsequent reports on Form 10-Q, including in the sections thereof captioned "Risk Factors" and "Forward-Looking Information and Factors That May Affect Future Results", as well as in its subsequent reports on Form 8-K, all of which are filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and available at http://www.sec.gov and http://www.pfizer.com.

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Sangamo and Pfizer Announce Updated Phase 1/2 Results Showing Sustained Increased Factor VIII Activity Through 44 Weeks Following SB-525 Gene Therapy...

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

One of the most popular methods for the insertion of therapeutic genes into cells to treat the disease is to transport using a virus that has been stripped of their infectious properties. But non-infectious virus can still sometimes trigger immune responses dangerous.A team of Johns Hopkins Medicine proposes an alternative method for transporting large therapies cellsincluding genes and even gene-CRISPR system edition. It is a nano-container made of a polymer that biodegrades once their inside the cell, triggering therapy. The researchers describe the invention in the journal Advances Science.The team, led by biomedical engineer Jordan Green, Ph.D., was inspired by viruses, which have many properties that make them ideal vehicles. They have both negative and positive charges, for example, allowing the cells to approach them. Thus Green and his colleagues developed a polymer containing four molecules with positive and negative charges. I used to make a container that interacts with the cell membrane and eventually enveloped by it.How ICON, Lotus and Bioforum are improving the efficiency of modern studio with EDCCRO are often at the forefront of adopting new technologies to make clinical trials more efficient. Listen how ICON, Lotus Clinical Research, and Bioforum are accelerating the basis of building data and automating tasks management information data.RELATED: Could a grape-based compound to improve the efficiency of gene therapy?Hopkins researchers conducted four experiments to test the nanocontainers travel in cells and deliver complex therapies once inside. First, a small protein packaged in the polymeric material and mixed with mouse kidney cells in a laboratory dish. The use of fluorescent tags confirmed that the protein made in the cell. Experiment with immunoglobulinand noted a medicinehuman much larger than the 90% of renal cell received treatment was then repeated.From there, they made the payload, even bulkier packaging the nanocontainers with gene-CRISPR system edition. With the help of fluorescent signals that were able to confirm that CRISPR was to work once inside the cells, the inactivation of a gene 77% of the time.Thats pretty effective considering with other genes editing systems, it is possible to obtain the result of cutting right genes less than 10 percent of the time, said graduate student Rui Yuan said in a statement.Finally, the Hopkins researchers injected CRISPR components in mouse models of brain cancer using polymer nanocontainers. Again evidence that had taken place editing gene was successful.The development of improved methods for gene therapy is a priority in the field. In October, for example, scientists at Scripps Research describes a way to use a small molecule called caraphenol A to reduce levels of transmembrane induced by interferon (IFITM) proteins, which could, in turn, will allow viral vectors to pass more easily into cells. And earlier this year, an Italian equipment described a method for including the CD47 protein lentiviral vectors to improve the transfer of therapeutic genes into cells of the liver.The next step for researchers Hopkins Rui and green is to improve the stability of nanocontainers so they can be injected into the bloodstream. They hope to be able to direct them to cells that have certain genetic markers, it was reported.

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Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

The "Gene Therapy Market" report includes an in-depth analysis of the global Gene Therapy market for the present as well as forecast period. The report encompasses the competition landscape entailing share analysis of the key players in the Gene Therapy market based on their revenues and other significant factors. Further, it covers the several developments made by the prominent players of the Gene Therapy market. The well-known players in the market are Sangamo, Spark Therapeutics, Dimension Therapeutics, Avalanche Bio, Celladon, Vical, Advantagene.

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Global Gene Therapy Market Executive Summary and Analysis by Top Players 2019-2025: Sangamo, Spark Therapeutics, Dimension Therapeutics, Avalanche...

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

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Cancer Gene Therapy Market 2019, Trend, CAGR Status, Growth, Analysis and Forecast to 2025 - Drnewsindustry

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

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Some of the leading key players areAdmedus, Aziyo Biologics Inc., Coloplast Group, COOK BIOTECH INC, DSM Biomedical, Lattice Biologics Ltd., Medtronic, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, MTF Biologics, and Smith & Nephew

The report aims to provide an overview of the Extracellular matrix market with detailed market segments by application, raw materials and geography. The global extracellular matrix market is expected to witnessing massive growth during the forecast period. The report provides important statistics on the market conditions of the leading extracellular matrix market players and offers key trends and opportunities in the market.

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Biggest Innovations In Gene Therapy Market Technological Advancement, Emerging Trends And Forecast To 2025 Including Top Key Players Sangamo...

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Global Gene Therapy for Inherited Genetic Disorders Market From TMRRs Viewpoint

Decorated with a team of 300+ analysts, TMRR serves each and every requirement of the clients while preparing market reports. With digital intelligence solutions, we offer actionable insights to our customers that help them in overcoming market challenges. Our dedicated team of professionals perform an extensive survey for gathering accurate information associated with the market.

TMRR, in its latest business report elaborates the current situation of the global Gene Therapy for Inherited Genetic Disorders market in terms of volume (x units), value (Mn/Bn USD), production, and consumption. The report scrutinizes the market into various segments, end uses, regions and players on the basis of demand pattern, and future prospect.

In this Gene Therapy for Inherited Genetic Disorders market study, the following years are considered to project the market footprint:

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On the basis of product type, the global Gene Therapy for Inherited Genetic Disorders market report covers the key segments, such as

Key Drivers

Since 2000, scores of clinical trials involving patients with inherited genetic disorders have raised hopes of the medical fraternity of the potential of gene therapies. Thus far, more than 5000 clinical trials on gene therapy have been conducted, especially for hard-to-treat diseases. Diseases such as inherited blindness and leukemia have seen the efficacy and safety of gene therapies. Advances in bioengineering are expected to invigorate pre-clinical pipelines. In the not-so-distant future, success of more protocols will catalyze the prospects of the gene therapy for inherited genetic disorders market.

Further, advances have been made in viral and non-viral vectors with the purpose of making gene transfer more efficient, thereby boosting the gene therapy for inherited genetic disorders market. Particularly, new approaches emerged with the aim of making vectors more powerful.

Global Gene Therapy for Inherited Genetic Disorders Market: Regional Assessment

On the regional front, Asia Pacific bears considerable potential in the gene therapy for inherited disorders market. Of note, numerous strategic alliances have shifted their focus on the region, particularly China. The North America market has also been rising at a promising pace, driven by several gene-therapy tools and related drugs in the final stages of clinical trials. Favorable reimbursement models has also encouraged research into the gene therapy for inherited disorders.

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Gene Therapy for Inherited Genetic Disorders market players Player 1, Player 2, Player 3, and Player 4, among others represent the global Gene Therapy for Inherited Genetic Disorders market. The market study depicts an extensive analysis of all the players running in the Gene Therapy for Inherited Genetic Disorders market report based on distribution channels, local network, innovative launches, industrial penetration, production methods, and revenue generation. Further, the market strategies, and mergers & acquisitions associated with the players are enclosed in the Gene Therapy for Inherited Genetic Disorders market report.

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Gene Therapy for Inherited Genetic Disorders Market To Witness A Considerable CAGR Growth Through The Forecast Period 2017 - 2025 - Weekly Spy

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

The letter follows.

Dear AgeX Stockholders,

In this, our first year as a public company, we have built a foundation for a revolutionary company in the fields of cell therapy and tissue regeneration. To date, conventional pharmaceutical approaches to the chronic degenerative conditions associated with aging have provided little benefit, often only offering relief from the symptoms of disease, rather than targeting underlying disease processes. Our belief is that this is about to change through harnessing the power of new cellular and molecular technologies. We aim to lead this coming revolution with our pioneering technologies which could generate and deliver new cells to patients through our cell therapy focus, and which may reverse the age of cells already in the body through our iTR platform. We believe that our new technologies will lead to true cell regeneration and replacement to potentially cure degenerative diseases by targeting aged or damaged cells, tissues and organs.

Over the last year, we have worked hard to achieve certain goals to set the fundamental basis to create shareholder value going forward:

To optimize shareholder value, we have undertaken a strategic review of our business opportunities, and we have four key take-away messages for the coming year and beyond:

UniverCyte would potentially be game-changing for the whole cell therapy industry by allowing the transplantation of non-self, donor cells into all patients without the need for powerful immunosuppressant drugs, which are associated with serious side effects, including infections and cancers, as well as kidney and liver toxicity. The UniverCyte platform aims to utilize a proprietary, novel, modified form of the powerful immunomodulatory molecule HLA-G, which in nature seems to be a dominant player in protecting a baby from destruction by the mother's immune system during pregnancy, the only known physiological state of immune tolerance toward foreign tissue in humans.

On the other hand, our pluripotent stem cell-based PureStem platform could potentially overcome numerous industry barriers. PureStem cells would have eight potential advantages compared to other adult stem cell- or pluripotent stem cell-based therapies, including lower manufacturing costs, industrial scalability, off-the-shelf usage, high purity, non-tumorgenicity, young age (so they are not prone to the disadvantages associated with older cells), aptitude for permanent cell engraftment, and potential to manufacture any human cell type.

We have two in-house product candidates, both targeting highly prevalent diseases of old age, with a high unmet medical need, and which are for multi-billion-dollar markets. Our lead internal program going forward will be AgeX-BAT1, which is brown fat cells for the treatment of type II diabetes. The last year has seen significant investment in cell therapy product candidates for diabetes by investors and large biotech. Earlier this year, we published a paper, Clonal Derivation of White and Brown Adipocyte Progenitor Cell Lines from Human Pluripotent Stem Cells, in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Stem Cell Research & Therapy, which showed that our PureStem platform generated highly pure, identifiable and scalable brown adipose cells, expressing active adipokines. Our second internal program will be AgeX-VASC1, composed of vascular endothelial progenitor cells for tissue ischemia, such as peripheral vascular disease and potentially cardiac and CNS ischaemia. Once we have a UniverCyte-modified pluripotent stem cell cGMP master cell bank, we will re-derive universal versions of AgeX-BAT1 and AgeX-VASC1 and then work to establish proof-of-concept in animal models.

We care deeply about our mission and the needs of our stockholders. We appreciate your support and the dedication of our scientists and employees as we forge a new future for medicine. We invite you to join us for the Annual Meeting of Stockholders on Monday, December 30, 2019. For those of you who cannot attend in person, our corporate update from that meeting will be webcast for your convenience.

Sincerely,

Michael D. West, Ph.D.

Gregory Bailey, M.D.

Chief Executive Officer

Chairman of the Board

About AgeX Therapeutics

AgeX Therapeutics, Inc. (NYSE American: AGE) is focused on developing and commercializing innovative therapeutics for human aging. Its PureStem and UniverCyte manufacturing and immunotolerance technologies are designed to work together to generate highly-defined, universal, allogeneic, off-the-shelf pluripotent stem cell-derived young cells of any type for application in a variety of diseases with a high unmet medical need. AgeX has two preclinical cell therapy programs: AGEX-VASC1 (vascular progenitor cells) for tissue ischemia and AGEX-BAT1 (brown fat cells) for Type II diabetes. AgeXs revolutionary longevity platform induced Tissue Regeneration (iTR) aims to unlock cellular immortality and regenerative capacity to reverse age-related changes within tissues. AGEX-iTR1547 is an iTR-based formulation in preclinical development. HyStem is AgeXs delivery technology to stably engraft PureStem cell therapies in the body. AgeX is developing its core product pipeline for use in the clinic to extend human healthspan and is seeking opportunities to establish licensing and collaboration agreements around its broad IP estate and proprietary technology platforms.

For more information, please visit http://www.agexinc.com or connect with the company on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this release are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements that are not historical fact including, but not limited to statements that contain words such as will, believes, plans, anticipates, expects, estimates should also be considered forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from the results anticipated in these forward-looking statements and as such should be evaluated together with the many uncertainties that affect the business of AgeX Therapeutics, Inc. and its subsidiaries, particularly those mentioned in the cautionary statements found in more detail in the Risk Factors section of AgeXs Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commissions (copies of which may be obtained at http://www.sec.gov). Subsequent events and developments may cause these forward-looking statements to change. AgeX specifically disclaims any obligation or intention to update or revise these forward-looking statements as a result of changed events or circumstances that occur after the date of this release, except as required by applicable law.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191209005356/en/

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AgeX Therapeutics Issues Year-End Letter to Shareholders - BioSpace

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Organ donation involves removing a healthy organ from a donor and transplanting it into the body of a recipient who has a diseased organ that has failed irreversibly. The recipients survival often depends on getting an organ transplant.

There is a large need for organs by people affected with end-stage ailments, like diseases of the liver, lung, heart and kidney. A major obstacle to treating such people is that there arent enough donated organs around the world. In many countries, including in the West, the number of patients in the waiting list for organ transplants has progressively increased compared to the number of donor organs available.

And while the number of donors per million people is very low in many parts of the world, about 20-30 per million, its many times lower than this in India: less than 0.5 donor per million. Experts have estimated that a few lakh organs are required per year in India, although no more than 2-3% of this requirement is really met. The severe shortfall may need more effective propaganda, retrieval and use of donated organs.

There are also personal, religious and cultural barriers that make it hard for people to accept the idea of organ donation. Most religions dont appear to oppose organ donation, but people are often uncertain about these recommendations and so they are reluctant to donate. Judaism and Islam prohibit the desecration of corpses and stress on a complete body, timely rituals and burial within 24 hours after death. People may not prefer to donate organs of their near and dear after death, due to the mutilating effect of dissecting the body and removing its parts.

There are often logistical issues as well. Due to a lack of awareness of the donation procedure and its consequences, most people prefer receiving organs from live, instead of recently deceased, donors.

* * *

Organ donation came to be thanks to advances in surgical procedures that allowed doctors to replace a diseased or dying organ with a healthy foreign organ. These advances reflected the rise of the exchangeability of body parts. That is, clinicians began to view the body as a collection of organs and independent entities, such that they could be removed from one body and placed in another. By contrast, the older and more traditional view of the body regarded it as a complex, indivisible whole interacting with its environment. As the idea of exchangeability gained traction, organs became commodities with market value.

Also read:The Seamy Underbelly of Organ Transplantation in India

The advent of organ transplantation was a landmark in the history of medicine. Researchers had developed transplantation surgeries for small animals such as dogs, pigs and goats well before the 20th century. The organs in the human body that doctors most transplant are the kidney, heart and liver.

Murray and Merrill performed the first kidney transplant in the 1950s, from one monozygotic twin to another. Since the twins were genetically identical, they survived and lived for eight years after the procedure.

The first heart and liver transplants were undertaken in the mid-1960s. Christian Bernard, the famous South African surgeon, performed the first heart transplant in 1967, from a 25-year-old who was brain dead after an accident and to a 50-year-old man suffering from heart failure. In the same year, other doctors performed more than 100 heart transplants around the world, but the recipients in these transplants didnt live for more than a few days after. There were problems related to the health of the transplanted organs and the aftereffects of surgery.

An American surgeon named Thomas Starzl performed the first liver transplant in the mid-1960s. The first patient died immediately and after the surgery; a few more patients who received transplanted organs also died from infections and other illnesses within a few weeks.

Corneal grafts are a very well-known and effective form of organ or tissue donation. The cornea, which is the transparent structure on the front of the eye, consists of multiple layers of cells designed to be transparent. The cornea refracts light towards the eyes lens, located just behind it. Its relatively simpler to transplant cornea because it lacks blood vessels (i.e. since one doesnt need to restore blood vessels in the grafted tissue).

Another advantage is that the cornea is in a state of immune privilege: it is relatively protected from immune responses. So persons who undergo a corneal transplant dont need lifelong treatment with systemic drugs to suppress the immune system.

Corneal donation and transplantation have continuously evolved in theory and practice, and have a high rate of success. Franz Reisinger first attempted corneal grafts in the early 19th century, trying to transplant animal corneas into humans. He failed in repeated attempts. Reisinger also coined the term keratoplasty, which means surgery to the cornea.

Also read:Why Moral Exhortations Alone Will Not Boost Organ Donation in India

Only a few years later, Samuel Bigger, an Irish surgeon, treated a gazelle that had been blinded by a corneal scar by transplanting cornea from another gazelle.

A Viennese ophthalmologist named Edward Zirm performed the first successful corneal graft between two humans in the early 20th century.

* * *

One possible reason why organ transplants often dont have long-term success is the recipient. A person who is already sick due to a failed heart or liver is not likely to respond well to major surgery, and may have difficulty recovering from it. Similarly, an older patient may not be able to withstand the effects of surgery.

Another important factor is the recipients immune system, which could reject the donated organ. In 1979, doctors who just performed a liver transplant used a drug called cyclosporine to dampen the bodys immune response and thus spare the transplanted organ from attack. This occasion was a new step in the history of liver transplants. Cyclosporine improved the survival of over 70% of patients up to at least one year after surgery, and many patients survived for up to five yrs. Doctors have followed up with newer, better drugs to improve patients health outcomes since.

A third issue relates to an ethical question that researchers have flagged: a living donor has to undergo a major surgical procedure to donate an organ, and such procedures carry their own risks. Moreover, close relatives of a patient may be under pressure to agree to donate their organs, so they may not be necessarily free to decide for themselves. Another issue regards commercialisation: its very easy to provide monetary incentives to the poor and convince them to donate an organ in return. In such circumstances, the decision to donate an organ will not have been the result of free choice where it should be.

Such a market for kidneys is all too visible in India, where one finds advertisements for the sale of kidneys with hospitals involved in the business. Often, poor people are ready to donate their organs to make a lakh or two. Apart from theft and the black market for organs, monetary compensation for organs is legal in some parts of the world.

* * *

An alternative to overcome the shortage of organs for transplants is a xenotransplant: transplanting animal organs into humans. The principal animals that can potentially donate to humans are monkeys, since theyre most closely related to humans.

However, due to differences between the sizes of monkey and human organs, researchers have also considered pigs, whose organs are closer in dimensions as well as because pigs are easy to breed. Researchers are currently exploring these procedures in experiments.

Also read:Why Does Spain Lead the World in Organ Donation?

Another alternative for intact organs is stem cells, which scientists can grow in controlled environments, such as in a laboratory, and develop into miniature organs, or organoids. Using bioengineering techniques, they removed cells from an intact organ, such as a lung or trachea, such that the cells retain a skeleton of proteins and carbohydrates. Next, they populate these cells with stem cells and maintained them in a laboratory so that different types of cells grow inside the container. For example, scientists have grown multilayered corneas in a dish using a culture of stem cells and certain biomolecules.

Such advances in preserving and engineering tissues are help plug the gap between the demand for and supply of organs.

* * *

Its very important to preserve and properly store organs to ensure theyre in the best possible condition and retain their nature following transplantation. One particular concern here stems from the time and temperature of storage, which need to be carefully controlled to remain within specific limits depending on the organ and the type of death. Maintaining the right conditions ensures the organ remains viable after the recipient has received it. A heart may be stored for up to four hours, the lungs for up to six hours and the kidneys for longer periods, up to 18 hours.

A critical question to be addressed with regard to organ donation is the distinction between brain death and cardiac, or circulatory, death. A brain-dead patient will still have a functioning heart and may be on life support. However, brain-death means brain function has been completely and irreversibly lost.

For an organ donor, a criterion of either brain death or cardiac death may be taken under the definition of death. Indian law mentions two possibilities. One is in the Registration of Births and Deaths Act and the other, in the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues (THOT) Act. The former defines death as the permanent disappearance of all evidence of life at any time after live-birth has taken place. The THOT Act, on the other hand, defines a deceased person as one in whom permanent disappearance of all evidence of life occurs, by reason of brain stem death or in a cardiopulmonary sense, at any time after live-birth has taken place.

In many countries, both forms of death are considered acceptable for organ donation.

Chitra Kannabiranleads research on molecular genetics at the L.V. Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad.

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The Ins and Outs of Organ Donation - The Wire

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Autologous Stem Cell and Non-Stem Cell Based Therapies Market Report 2018-2026includes a comprehensive analysis of the present Market. The report starts with the basic Autologous Stem Cell and Non-Stem Cell Based Therapies industry overview and then goes into each and every detail.

Autologous Stem Cell and Non-Stem Cell Based Therapies Market Report contains in depth information major manufacturers, opportunities, challenges, and industry trends and their impact on the market forecast. Autologous Stem Cell and Non-Stem Cell Based Therapies also provides data about the company and its operations. This report also provides information on the Pricing Strategy, Brand Strategy, Target Client, Distributors/Traders List offered by the company.

Description:

Autologous stem-cell transplantation (also known as autogeneic, autogenic, or autogenous stem-cell transplantation or auto-SCT) is the autologous transplantation of stem cellswhich is, transplantation in which the undifferentiated cells or stem cells (cells from which other types of cells develop) are taken from a person, accumulated, and given back to the same person later. Even though it is most often executed by means of hematopoietic stem cells (antecedent of cells that forms blood) in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, in some cases cardiac cells are used productively to fix the damages due to heart attacks. Stem cell transplantation can be of two types Autologous stem-cell transplantation and allogenic stem cell transplantation. In the later, the recipient and the donor of stem cells are dissimilar people. In a good number of allogeneic transplants, the stem cells are taken from a donor whose cell type matches closely with the patients cell type.

Autologous Stem Cell and Non-Stem Cell Based Therapies Market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Autologous Stem Cell and Non-Stem Cell Based Therapies sales volume, Price (USD/Unit), Revenue (Million USD) and Market Share for each manufacturer/player; the top players including: NeoStem, Inc., Aastrom Biosciences, Fibrocell Science, Inc., Genzyme Corporation, BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics, Regeneus Ltd., and Dendreon Corporation.

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Important Features that are under offer & key highlights of the report:

What all regional segmentation covered? Can the specific country of interest be added?Currently, the research report gives special attention and focus on the following regions:North America (U.S., Canada, Mexico), Europe (Germany, U.K., France, Italy, Russia, Spain etc), South America (Brazil, Argentina etc) & Middle East & Africa (Saudi Arabia, South Africa etc)** One country of specific interest can be included at no added cost. For inclusion of more regional segment quote may vary.

What all companies are currently profiled in the report?The report Contain the Major Key Players currently profiled in this market.** List of companies mentioned may vary in the final report subject to Name Change / Merger etc.

Can we add or profiled new company as per our need?Yes, we can add or profile new company as per client need in the report. Final confirmation to be provided by the research team depending upon the difficulty of the survey.** Data availability will be confirmed by research in case of a privately held company. Up to 3 players can be added at no added cost.

Can the inclusion of additional Segmentation / Market breakdown is possible?Yes, the inclusion of additional segmentation / Market breakdown is possible to subject to data availability and difficulty of the survey. However, a detailed requirement needs to be shared with our research before giving final confirmation to the client.** Depending upon the requirement the deliverable time and quote will vary.

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Autologous Stem Cell and Non-Stem Cell Based Therapies Market Dynamics in the world mainly, the worldwide 2018-2026 Autologous Stem Cell and Non-Stem Cell Based Therapies Market is analyzed across major global regions. CMI also provides customized specific regional and country-level reports for the following areas:

Region Segmentation:

North America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)

Further in the report, the Autologous Stem Cell and Non-Stem Cell Based Therapies market is examined for Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin. These points are analyzed for companies, types, and regions. In continuation with this data, the sale price is for various types, applications and region is also included. The Autologous Stem Cell and Non-Stem Cell Based Therapies industry consumption for major regions is given. Additionally, type wise and application wise figures are also provided in this report.

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In this study, the years considered to estimate the market size of 2018-2026 Autologous Stem Cell and Non-Stem Cell Based Therapies Market are as follows:History Year: 2015-2017Base Year: 2017Estimated Year: 2018Forecast Year 2018 to 2026

Excerpt from:
Autologous Stem Cell and Non-Stem Cell Based Therapies Market share, size, opportunities, producers, growth factors by 2026 - Health Opinion

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Our lives have been transformed by the information age. But what's coming next is likely to be more profound, call it the genetic information age. We have mapped the human genome and in just the last few years we have learned to read and write DNA like software. And you're about to see a few breakthroughs-in-waiting that would transform human health. For a preview of this revolution in evolution we met George Church, a world leading geneticist, whose own DNA harbors many eccentricities and a few genes for genius.

We found George Church in here.

Cory Smith: Most of these are frozen George. Little bits of George that we have edited all in different tubes.

Church threw himself into his work, literally. His DNA is in many of the experiments in his lab at Harvard Medical School. The fully assembled George Church is 6'5" and 65. He helped pioneer mapping the human genome and editing DNA. Today, his lab is working to make humans immune to all viruses, eliminate genetic diseases, and reverse the effects of time.

Scott Pelley: One of the things your lab is working on is reversing aging.

George Church: That's right.

Scott Pelley: How is that possible?

George Church: Reversing aging is one of these things that is easy to dismiss to say either we don't need it or is impossible or both.

Scott Pelley: Oh, we need it.

George Church: Okay. We need it. That's good. We can agree on that. Well, aging reversal is something that's been proven about eight different ways in animals where you can get, you know, faster reaction times or, you know, cognitive or repair of damaged tissues.

Scott Pelley: Proven eight different ways. Why isn't this available?

George Church: It is available to mice.

In lucky mice, Church's lab added multiple genes that improved heart and kidney function and levels of blood sugar. Now he's trying it in spaniels.

Scott Pelley: So is this gene editing to achieve age reversal?

George Church: This is adding genes. So, it's not really editing genes. It's, the gene function is going down, and so we're boosting it back up by putting in extra copies of the genes.

Scott Pelley: What's the time horizon on age reversal in humans?

George Church: That's in clinical trials right now in dogs. And so, that veterinary product might be a couple years away and then that takes another ten years to get through the human clinical trials.

Human trials of a personal kind made George Church an unlikely candidate to alter human evolution. Growing up in Florida, Church was dyslexic, with attention deficit, and frequently knocked out by narcolepsy.

Scott Pelley: What was it that made you imagine that you could be a scientist?

George Church: The thing that got me hooked was probably the New York World's Fair in 1964. I thought this is the way we should all be living. When I went back to Florida, I said, "I've been robbed," you know? "Where is it all?" So, I said, "Well, if they're not going to provide it, then I'm gonna provide it for myself."

With work and repetition, he beat his disabilities and developed a genius for crystallography, a daunting technique that renders 3D images of molecules through X-rays and math. But in graduate school at Duke, at the age of 20, his mania for the basic structures of life didn't leave time for the basic structure of life.

Scott Pelley: You were homeless for a time.

George Church: Yeah. Briefly.

Scott Pelley: Six months.

George Church: Six months.

Scott Pelley: And where were you sleeping when you were homeless?

George Church: Well, yeah. I wasn't sleeping that much. I was mostly working. I'm narcoleptic. So, I fall asleep sitting up anyway.

His devotion to crystallography was his undoing at Duke.

George Church: I was extremely excited about the research I was doing. And so, I would put in 100-plus hours a week on research and then pretty much didn't do anything else.

Scott Pelley: Not go to class.

George Church: I wouldn't go to class. Yeah.

Duke kicked him out with this letter wishing him well in a field other than biology. But, it turned out, Harvard needed a crystallographer. George Church has been here nearly 40 years. He employs around 100 scientists, about half-and-half men and women.

Scott Pelley: Who do you hire?

George Church: I hire people that are self-selecting, they see our beacon from a distance away. There are a lot of people that are a little, you know, might be considered a little odd. "Neuroatypicals," some of us are called.

Scott Pelley: "Neuroatypical?"

George Church: Right.

Scott Pelley: Unusual brains?

George Church: Right, yeah.

Parastoo Khoshakhlagh: One thing about George that is very significant is that he sees what you can't even see in yourself.

Parastoo Khoshakhlagh and Alex Ng are among the "neuroatypicals." They're engineering human organ tissue.

Cory Smith: I think he tries to promote no fear of failure. The only fear is not to try at all.

Cory Smith's project sped up DNA editing from altering three genes at a time to 13,000 at a time. Eriona Hysolli went to Siberia with Church to extract DNA from the bones of wooly mammoths. She's editing the genes into elephant DNA to bring the mammoth back from extinction.

Eriona Hysolli: We are laying the foundations, perhaps, of de-extinction projects to come.

Scott Pelley: De-extinction.

Eriona Hysolli: Yes.

Scott Pelley: I'm not sure that's a word in the dictionary yet.

Eriona Hysolli: Well, if it isn't, it should be.

Scott Pelley: You know there are people watching this interview who think that is playing God.

George Church: Well, it's playing engineer. I mean, humans have been playing engineer since the dawn of time.

Scott Pelley: The point is, some people believe that you're mucking about in things that shouldn't be disturbed.

George Church: I completely agree that we need to be very cautious. And the more powerful, or the more rapidly-moving the technology, the more cautious we need to be, the bigger the conversation involving lots of different disciplines, religion, ethics, government, art, and so forth. And to see what it's unintended consequences might be.

Church anticipates consequences with a full time ethicist in the lab and he spends a good deal of time thinking about genetic equity. Believing that genetic technology must be available to all, not just those who can afford it.

We saw one of those technologies in the hands of Alex Ng and Parastoo Khoshakhlagh. They showed us what they call "mini-brains," tiny dots with millions of cells each. They've proven that cells from a patient can be grown into any organ tissue, in a matter of days, so drugs can be tested on that patient's unique genome.

Scott Pelley: You said that you got these cells from George's skin? How does that work?

Alex Ng: We have a way to reprogram essentially, skin cells, back into a stem cell state. And we have technologies where now we can differentiate them into tissue such as brain tissue.

Scott Pelley: So you went from George's skin cells, turned those into stem cells, and turned those into brain cells.

Alex Ng: Exactly. Exactly.

Scott Pelley: Simple as that.

Organs grown from a patient's own cells would eliminate the problem of rejection. Their goal is to prove the concept by growing full sized organs from Church's DNA.

George Church: It's considered more ethical for students to do experiments on their boss than vice versa and it's good to do it on me rather than some stranger because I'm as up to speed as you can be on the on the risks and the benefits. I'm properly consented. And I'm unlikely to change my mind.

Alex Ng: We have a joke in the lab, I mean, at some point, soon probably, we're going to have more of his cells outside of his body than he has himself.

Church's DNA is also used in experiments designed to make humans immune to all viruses.

George Church: We have a strategy by which we can make any cell or any organism resistant to all viruses by changing the genetic code. So if you change that code enough you now get something that is resistant to all viruses including viruses you never characterized before.

Scott Pelley: Because the viruses don't recognize it anymore?

George Church: They expect a certain code provided by the host that they replicate in. the virus would have to change so many parts of its DNA or RNA so that it can't change them all at once. So, it's not only dead. But it can't mutate to a new place where it could survive in a new host.

Yes, he's talking about the cure for the common cold and the end of waiting for organ transplants. It's long been known that pig organs could function in humans. Pig heart valves are routinely transplanted already. But pig viruses have kept surgeons from transplanting whole organs. Church's lab altered pig DNA and knocked out 62 pig viruses.

Scott Pelley: What organs might be transplanted from a pig to a human?

George Church: Heart, lung, kidney, liver, intestines, various parts of the eye, skin. All these things.

Scott Pelley: What's the time horizon on transplanting pig organs into human beings?

George Church: you know, two to five years to get into clinical trials. And then again it could take ten years to get through the clinical trials.

Church is a role model for the next generation. He has co-founded more than 35 startups. Recently, investors put $100 million into the pig organ work. Another Church startup is a dating app that compares DNA and screens out matches that would result in a child with an inherited disease.

George Church: You wouldn't find out who you're not compatible with. You'll just find out who you are compatible with.

Scott Pelley: You're suggesting that if everyone has their genome sequenced and the correct matches are made, that all of these diseases could be eliminated?

George Church: Right. It's 7,000 diseases. It's about 5% of the population. It's about a trillion dollars a year, worldwide.

Church sees one of his own genetic differences as an advantage. Narcolepsy lulls him several times a day. But he wakes, still in the conversation, often, discovering inspiration in his twilight zone.

Scott Pelley: If somebody had sequenced your genome some years ago, you might not have made the grade in some way.

George Church: I mean, that's true. I would hope that society sees the benefit of diversity not just ancestral diversity, but in our abilities. There's no perfect person.

Despite imperfection, Church has co-authored 527 scientific papers and holds more than 50 patents. Proof that great minds do not think alike.

The best science can tell, it was about 4 billion years ago that self-replicating molecules set off the spark of biology. Now, humans hold the tools of evolution, but George Church remains in awe of the original mystery: how chemistry became life.

Scott Pelley: Is the most amazing thing about life, then, that it happened at all?

George Church: It is amazing in our current state of ignorance. We don't even know if it ever happened ever in the rest of the universe. it's awe-inspiring to know that it either happened billions of times, or it never happened. Both of those are mind boggling. It's amazing that you can have such complex structures that make copies of themselves. But it's very hard to do that with machines that we've built. So, we're engineers. But we're rather poor engineers compared to the pseudo engineering that is biological evolution.

Produced by Henry Schuster. Associate producer, Rachael Morehouse. Broadcast associate, Ian Flickinger.

Read the original post:
Harvard geneticist George Church's goal: to protect humans from viruses, genetic diseases, and aging - 60 Minutes - CBS News

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Pigs engineered to have a small amount of monkey cells have been brought to full term and were even born alive, surviving for a few days after birth. Although the piglets died, it is claimed the experiment - performed in China - marks a major milestone for the future of lab-grown organs.

"This is the first report of full-term pig-monkey chimeras," Tang Hai of the State Key Laboratory of Stem Cell and Reproductive Biology in Beijing told New Scientist.

The research is part of an ongoing effort to develop animals - whether they are sheep or pigs - that can grow human organs we could then harvest for transplants, a process called xenogeneic organogenesis.

Research has been done on both pig and sheep embryos with transplanted human stem cells; in both cases, the embryos continued to develop until the experiment was deliberately terminated.

That's because, due to ethical concerns, these chimeras - organisms that incorporate the genetic material of another species - cannot be cultivated or studied in the later stages of embryonic development. Some scientists worry that some of the human stem cellscould end upin other parts of the animal or even in its brain, with unintended consequences.

For that reason, in this experiment the team used stem cells from crab-eating macaques (Macaca fascicularis). These were imbued with fluorescent proteins so that they would glow under fluorescent light, and derived to produce fluorescing embryonic cells.

These cells were then injected into over 4,000 five-day-old pig embryos fertilised using IVF; the modified pig embryos were subsequently implanted into sows.

This fiddly and painstaking work produced just 10 piglets that made it to full term and were born alive. And only two of these were chimeric, with between one in 1,000 and one in 10,000 functional monkey cells to pig cells.

The monkey cells had migrated to the heart, liver, lungs, spleen and skin of the piglet hosts, but were not found in other organs, such as testes and ovaries, due to the low rate of chimerism, the researchers said.

Sadly, before a week was out, the piglets died - not just the two chimeras, but the other eight normal piglets, too. Because all the pigs died, Hai told New Scientist, the cause of death likely had less to do with chimerism, and more to do with IVF - a procedure that is notoriously tricky in pigs.

The low chimerism rate is also somewhat discouraging. However, the researchers remain optimistic. Although the birth rate was low, and the pigs didn't survive, the team now has a wealth of data they can apply to future experiments.

The scientists are planning to try again, increasing the chimeric cell ratio. And they believe their data may help other scientists working in the field.

"Here, we have used monkey cells to explore the potential of reconstructing chimeric human organs in a large animal model," they wrote in their paper.

"We believe this work will facilitate the development of xenogeneic organogenesis by providing a better understanding of the processes of xenogeneic recognition, fate determination, and the proliferation and differentiation of primate stem cells during porcine development.

"The findings could pave the way toward overcoming the obstacles in the re-engineering of heterogeneous organs and achieve the ultimate goal of human organ reconstruction in a large animal."

The research has been published in Protein & Cell.

Originally posted here:
Pig-Monkey Chimeras Have Been Brought to Term For The First Time - ScienceAlert

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

By Michael Le Page

Tang Hai

Pig-primate chimeras have been born live for the first time but died within a week. The two piglets, created by a team in China, looked normal although a small proportion of their cells were derived from cynomolgus monkeys.

This is the first report of full-term pig-monkey chimeras, says Tang Hai at the State Key Laboratory of Stem Cell and Reproductive Biology in Beijing.

The ultimate aim of the work is to grow human organs in animals for transplantation. But the results show there is still a long way to go to achieve this, the team says.

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Hai and his colleagues genetically modified cynomolgus monkey cells growing in culture so they produced a fluorescent protein called GFP. This enabled the researchers to track the cells and their descendents. They then derived embryonic stem cells from the modified cells and injected them into pig embryos five days after fertilisation.

More than 4000 embryos were implanted in sows. Ten piglets were born as a result, of which two were chimeras. All died within a week. In the chimeric piglets, multiple tissues including in the heart, liver, spleen, lung and skin partly consisted of monkey cells, but the proportion was low: between one in 1000 and one in 10,000.

It is unclear why the piglets died, says Hai, but because the non-chimeric pigs died as well, the team suspects it is to do with the IVF process rather than the chimerism. IVF doesnt work nearly as well in pigs as it does in humans and some other animals.

The team is now trying to create healthy animals with a higher proportion of monkey cells, says Hai. If that is successful, the next step would be to try to create pigs in which one organ is composed almost entirely of primate cells.

Something like this has already been achieved in rodents. In 2010, Hiromitsu Nakauchi, now at Stanford University in California, created mice with rat pancreases by genetically modifying the mice so their own cells couldnt develop into a pancreas.

In 2017, Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmontes team at the Salk Institute in California created pig-human chimeras, but only around one in 100,000 cells were human and, for ethical reasons, the embryos were only allowed to develop for a month. The concern is that a chimeras brain could be partly human.

This is why Hai and his team used monkey rather than human cells. But while the proportion of monkey cells in their chimeras is higher than the proportion of human cells in Belmontes chimeras, it is still very low.

Given the extremely low chimeric efficiency and the deaths of all the animals, I actually see this as fairly discouraging, says stem cell biologist Paul Knoepfler at the University of California, Davis.

He isnt convinced that it will ever be possible to grow organs suitable for transplantation by creating animal-human chimeras. However, it makes sense to continue researching this approach along with others such as tissue engineering, he says.

According to a July report in the Spanish newspaper El Pas, Belmontes team has now created human-monkey chimeras, in work carried out in China. The results have not yet been published.

While interspecies chimerism doesnt occur naturally, the bodies of animals including people can consist of a mix of cells. Mothers have cells from their children growing in many of their organs, for instance, a phenomenon called microchimerism.

Journal reference: Protein & Cell, DOI: 10.1007/s13238-019-00676-8

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Exclusive: Two pigs engineered to have monkey cells born in China - New Scientist News

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ORLANDO, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Amnion of Florida, a leading provider of alternative medicine utilizing cryopreserved placental cell allograft and advanced bioactive facial rejuvenation, is pleased to announce their vendor choice to round out regenerative anti-aging therapies.

Amnion announces a partnership with Merakris Therapeutics, LLC to advance the development of Merakris topical bioactive anti-aging hydrogel technology. Christopher Broderick, President, and Founder of Merakris Therapeutics stated, dedication to science-based outcomes is our primary focus, thus were delighted to be selected based upon our scientific approach to youth maintenance and rejuvenation technologies.

Amnion is focused on attracting women and men seeking affordable non-surgical options for youth maintenance via cell activated procedures, hair restoration, joint repair, dermal rejuvenation, and anti-aging treatments.

Our team of experienced medical professionals and aestheticians at Amnion are excited to utilize the Merakris Therapeutics product suite, including medical-grade, sterile filtered amniotic fluid serums and hydrogels at our newest Spa in Sanford, FL, said Eusebio Coterillo, President of Amnion.

In a constantly changing field, Amnion of Florida, under the guidance of the on-site medical staff, provides the highest level of quality products and procedures in cosmetic medicine. They offer cutting edge treatments that are proven by research, the use FDA cleared or registered products, and are widely published and peer endorsed.

More about Amnion of Florida

Amnion of Florida, based in Central Florida, is a leading provider of alternative medicine using cryopreserved placental cell transplants or allografts, processed from donated cellular birth tissue, which are natural alternatives to autologous regenerative medicine products. The primary function of our allogeneic regenerative treatments is to promote soft tissue joint/skin repair and regeneration mediated by growth factors and cells naturally found in placental tissue. These treatments have shown safety and efficacy in treating a variety of ailments including osteoarthritis, chronic ulcerative wounds, joint pain, skin rejuvenation, hair restoration, urinary incontinence, and ED. Learn more http://www.amnion.us.

More about Merakris Therapeutics, LLC

Merakris Therapeutics, based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, is focused on researching, developing, and marketing regenerative healthcare products. Merakris is pioneering commercially scalable biotherapeutic technologies derived from stem cells that have various clinical applications. Our vision is to improve global patient care and outcomes through the pioneering and innovation of acellular regenerative biotechnologies. Learn more at http://www.merakris.com.

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Top Florida Medical Spa, Amnion of Florida, Partners With Merakris Therapeutics to Advance Their Non-Surgical Treatment Options - Business Wire

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Millions of people around the world have some form of sight or hearing loss, have no sense of smell or taste or have lost limbs, taking away their sense of touch. Fortunately, the science of senses is the most advanced its ever been. Biotech researchers are developing methods that merge humans and machines in ways that could restore human abilities to hear, see, taste, smell and touch. From neuro-prosthetic limbs that mimic touch to bionic eyes and smart glasses that restore sights, the innovations could drastically improve the quality of life of people around the world.

Some of the most advanced technology developed around the science of senses comes from the field of prosthetic limbs, where researchers are finding ways to connect tissue to metal. Systems called brain-machine interfaces literally wire robotic limbs to a persons nervous system. Two of the latest achievements were reported in July 2019 in the journal Science Robotics.

In the first, a team from the University of Utah connected a robotic hand and partial forearm to the remaining nerves in the mans arm. The man trained his brain to control the motion of the hand. At the same time, artificial zaps sent to the robotic hand were designed to mimic the skins natural response patterns to touch. Remarkably, the man could more easily discriminate between small and large objects as well as soft and hard items while blindfolded and wearing headphones. Another team, based at the National University of Singapore, engineered flexible, electronic skin that contains artificial nerves that transmit signals 1,000 times faster than nerves in human skin. The skin is able to sense temperature, pressure and humidity and is also durable enough to function even if it is scratched or damaged.

Since the mid-1980s, a tiny electronic device called a cochlear implant has been providing the sense of sound to hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, according to the National Institutes of Health. Part of the implant is surgically placed under the skin behind the ear, with another part attached in the same position externally. A third part is inserted inside the ear canal. Unlike a hearing aid that amplifies sound, a cochlear implant senses sounds and converts them into an electric signal that it uses to stimulate a persons auditory nerve. Even people who are profoundly deaf can learn to discern sounds as long as some fraction of their nerve still functions.

But cochlear implants are not perfect. They are only capable of sensing and transmitting part of a sound waves full audio spectrum, producing a sound that has a metallic quality. That can make it difficult to filter out background noise, such as a crowd conversations or traffic. In 2019, a team from the University of Greenwich in England reported on new research that improves upon this technology, reports MedicalXpress. It deconstructs sounds from the environment and then reconstructs them with 90% to 100% percent efficiency. This means patients will be able to better distinguish noises from background sounds.

Smell loss, called anosmia, affects about 5% of the general population, according to the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. The condition may be the result of something temporary, such as a sinus infection or swelling or polyps in the nasal cavity or it could be the result of damage to the sensory nerves. Permanent loss of smell can impact daily enjoyment of life and even affect safety. The inability of smelling smoke or natural gas could put someone in harms way.

Although there is no proven therapy, researchers at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear have, for the first time, invented a device that stimulates different smells. Their technology, which they reported in 2018 in the International Forum of Allergy & Rhinology, uses an array of tiny electrodes to send an electrical signal to the olfactory bulb, a structure in the brain involved in smell. In a small experiment, the scientists created different electrical stimulation in five patients, producing smells similar to onions and antiseptic as well as sour and fruity aromas. Although the innovation is still in the early stage, it demonstrates a possible path forward for a cochlear implant for the nose, the scientists say.

Although smell is connected to taste, its the receptor cells on the taste buds of a persons tongue that discern sweet, salty, sour, bitter or savory flavors. Medical procedures inside the mouth or ear can alter a persons taste, as can head trauma or ear infections, according to MedicineNet. Scientists have made a couple of attempts to solve the problem with technology. Back in 2013, a team from the National University of Singapore developed a taste simulator that used a kind of electronic tongue depressor to simulate taste sensations, New Scientist reported. Later, another team at City University of London invented a similar device called Taste Buddy that also stimulated taste buds to alter the flavor of foods, reported Digital Trends.

Unfortunately, neither gadget went beyond the research lab. For now, solutions may lie within human DNA. Lynnette McCluskey, a neurobiologist at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, and her team are investigating whether a protein called interleukin-1, or IL-1, secreted during an injury could help rebuild a persons sense of taste. The protein promotes inflammation and also helps regulate nerve growth. In 2018, she and her colleagues received grant money to study whether manipulating the proteins after an injury could help the nerves associated with taste recover faster, reports MedicalXpress. It could take a few more years to find out.

Worldwide, 36 million people are legally blind, according to Nature. Some biotechnological solutions, such as growing stem cells into those that can repair damage to the retina or using techniques from gene therapy to correct genetic defects, are showing promising results. But technology is also playing a big role.

A bionic eye, called the Argus II, is a retinal prosthesis system that, since its development in early 2000, has restored some vision capabilities to more than 300 people. Its reserved for people who have no vision or almost no vision due to a genetic condition called retinitis pigmentosa. Patients undergo surgery, in which a tiny electronic device is attached to the persons retina. Its connected wirelessly to a pair of smart glasses that have a portable video-processing unit that project images from the outside world onto the persons retina. Clinical trials done in 2015 showed that visual function improved in 90% of people wearing the prosthesis and that 80% of patients reported improved quality of life, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

Advances in technology are allowing machines to merge with the human body. Coupled with our growing ability to correct genetic defects or repair cellular damage, the science of senses is moving into the future. One day all humans could move through the world with all five of their senses intact seeing the unseen, hearing the unheard and tasting, touching and smelling new wonders that evoke all of the pleasures of being alive.

Being on the forefront of change, especially regarding space, physics, and engineering has been part of the Northrop Grumman culture for generations. Click here tosearch jobs in these areas of scientific innovation.

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Global Stem Cell Therapy Market From TMRRs Viewpoint

Decorated with a team of 300+ analysts, TMRR serves each and every requirement of the clients while preparing market reports. With digital intelligence solutions, we offer actionable insights to our customers that help them in overcoming market challenges. Our dedicated team of professionals perform an extensive survey for gathering accurate information associated with the market.

TMRR, in its latest business report elaborates the current situation of the global Stem Cell Therapy market in terms of volume (x units), value (Mn/Bn USD), production, and consumption. The report scrutinizes the market into various segments, end uses, regions and players on the basis of demand pattern, and future prospect.

In this Stem Cell Therapy market study, the following years are considered to project the market footprint:

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On the basis of product type, the global Stem Cell Therapy market report covers the key segments, such as

Key Trends

The key factors influencing the growth of the global stem cell therapy market are increasing funds in the development of new stem lines, the advent of advanced genomic procedures used in stem cell analysis, and greater emphasis on human embryonic stem cells. As the traditional organ transplantations are associated with limitations such as infection, rejection, and immunosuppression along with high reliance on organ donors, the demand for stem cell therapy is likely to soar. The growing deployment of stem cells in the treatment of wounds and damaged skin, scarring, and grafts is another prominent catalyst of the market.

On the contrary, inadequate infrastructural facilities coupled with ethical issues related to embryonic stem cells might impede the growth of the market. However, the ongoing research for the manipulation of stem cells from cord blood cells, bone marrow, and skin for the treatment of ailments including cardiovascular and diabetes will open up new doors for the advancement of the market.

Global Stem Cell Therapy Market: Market Potential

A number of new studies, research projects, and development of novel therapies have come forth in the global market for stem cell therapy. Several of these treatments are in the pipeline, while many others have received approvals by regulatory bodies.

In March 2017, Belgian biotech company TiGenix announced that its cardiac stem cell therapy, AlloCSC-01 has successfully reached its phase I/II with positive results. Subsequently, it has been approved by the U.S. FDA. If this therapy is well- received by the market, nearly 1.9 million AMI patients could be treated through this stem cell therapy.

Another significant development is the granting of a patent to Israel-based Kadimastem Ltd. for its novel stem-cell based technology to be used in the treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS) and other similar conditions of the nervous system. The companys technology used for producing supporting cells in the central nervous system, taken from human stem cells such as myelin-producing cells is also covered in the patent.

Global Stem Cell Therapy Market: Regional Outlook

The global market for stem cell therapy can be segmented into Asia Pacific, North America, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East and Africa. North America emerged as the leading regional market, triggered by the rising incidence of chronic health conditions and government support. Europe also displays significant growth potential, as the benefits of this therapy are increasingly acknowledged.

Asia Pacific is slated for maximum growth, thanks to the massive patient pool, bulk of investments in stem cell therapy projects, and the increasing recognition of growth opportunities in countries such as China, Japan, and India by the leading market players.

Global Stem Cell Therapy Market: Competitive Analysis

Several firms are adopting strategies such as mergers and acquisitions, collaborations, and partnerships, apart from product development with a view to attain a strong foothold in the global market for stem cell therapy.

Some of the major companies operating in the global market for stem cell therapy are RTI Surgical, Inc., MEDIPOST Co., Ltd., Osiris Therapeutics, Inc., NuVasive, Inc., Pharmicell Co., Ltd., Anterogen Co., Ltd., JCR Pharmaceuticals Co., Ltd., and Holostem Terapie Avanzate S.r.l.

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The Stem Cell Therapy market research addresses the following queries:

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Stem Cell Therapy market players Player 1, Player 2, Player 3, and Player 4, among others represent the global Stem Cell Therapy market. The market study depicts an extensive analysis of all the players running in the Stem Cell Therapy market report based on distribution channels, local network, innovative launches, industrial penetration, production methods, and revenue generation. Further, the market strategies, and mergers & acquisitions associated with the players are enclosed in the Stem Cell Therapy market report.

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Growing Focus on Product Innovation Likely to Impact the Growth of the Stem Cell Therapy Market 2017 - 2025 - Weekly Spy

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Beijing: In a world first, researchers have been able to produce pig-monkey hybrids in a Chinese laboratory, a media report said. Two piglets - having monkey tissues in their hearts, liver and skin - were born in the State Key Laboratory of Stem Cell and Reproductive Biology in Beijing but died within a week, the Mirror reported.

The announcement to this effect was made by Tang Hai. The experiment comes in the wake of Spanish scientist Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte's attempt to create pig-human hybrids two years ago. Tang and his team injected genetically modified monkey cells into more than 4,000 pig embryos before these were implanted into sows, the New Scientist magazine reported.

Only two of the 10 piglets thus born were hybrids - with tissues in the heart, liver, spleen, lung and skin, partly consisting of monkey cells. Experts suspected that the failure has to do with the IVF process.

Critics have now warned that the scientific development will create "disturbing" dilemmas over the ethics of human-animal hybrids. Doctor Angel Raya, director of the Barcelona Regenerative Medicine Centre, told the Spanish daily El Pais: "What happens if the stem cells escape and form human neurons in the brain of the animal? Would it have consciousness? And what happens if these stem cells turn into sperm cells?''

Link:
Meet the world's first pig-monkey hybrid - Free Press Journal

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Researchers in China are laying claim to the first ever pig-monkey chimeras to be born in what they hope will be a breakthrough for biomedicine, not just fuel for your nightmares.

The worlds first monkey-pig hybrids have been born in a Chinese lab amid scientific attempts to grow human organs inside animals. The incredible experiment saw two chimera piglets born with DNA from both pigs and cynomolgus monkeys. However, the experiment was short-lived as the two piglets both died within a week.

According to the researchers, the baby piglets had genetic material from cynomolgus monkeys in their heart, liver, spleen, lung and skin.

However, the success rate was significantly low as only 10 piglets were born from more than 4,000 implanted in sows.

From those, only two were chimeras in a result that has been deemed discouraging by other leading stem cell scientists.

Lead researcher Tang Hai at the State Key Laboratory of Stem Cell and Reproductive Biology in Beijing said: This is the first report of full-term pig-monkey chimeras.

Ms Hai confirmed that it was unclear why the piglets died, but the non-chimeric pigs died as well.

The Chinese research team suspect that the deaths could have been due to the IVF process instead than the chimerism

According to research study, stem cells from macaque monkeys were grown in a lab and then injected into pig embryos five days after fertilisation.

Ms Hai said that the next step in their research was to create healthy animals with a higher proportion of monkey cells before creating pigs in which one organ is composed almost entirely of primate cells.

The ultimate research goal is to grow human organs inside live animals as a way to resolve the crisis of organ transplantation.

University of California stem cell biologist Paul Knoepfler said: Given the extremely low chimeric efficiency and the deaths of all the animals, I see this as fairly discouraging.

Reaction to the study has prompted many social media users to question if this is a step too far.

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Researchers Manage to Create Pig-Monkey Chimeras for the First Time - Tdnews

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WALTHAM, Mass., Dec. 10, 2019 /PRNewswire/ --Syndax Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ("Syndax," the "Company" or "we") (Nasdaq: SNDX), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing an innovative pipeline of cancer therapies, today announced that it plans to commence a Phase 2 expansion cohort based on encouraging clinical activity and a well-tolerated safety profile observed to date in the ongoing Phase 1 dose escalation trial of SNDX-6352 in patients with chronic graft versus host disease (cGVHD). SNDX-6352 is the Company's anti-CSF-1R monoclonal antibody.

The ongoing Phase 1, open-label, modified 3+3 dose escalation trial is designed to evaluate the safety and preliminary efficacy of SNDX-6352 in up to 30 patients with cGVHD who have received at least two prior lines of therapy. As of a November 25, 2019 data cutoff date, a total of five patients, all of whom received prior treatment with ibrutinib, steroids, and a calcineurin inhibitor, have been enrolled across three dose cohorts: one patient was treated at 0.15 mg/kg every two weeks (Q2W, Cohort 1), one is receiving a dose of 0.5 mg/kg Q2W (Cohort 2), and three patients are receiving 1.0 mg/kg Q2W (Cohort 3).

Responses have been observed in all evaluable patients as of the data cutoff date, with no dose limiting toxicities (DLTs) reported. Among the three patients dosed in Cohort 3 (1.0 mg/kg Q2W), one patient recently cleared the DLT period and has not yet been evaluated for efficacy, two patients experienced a partial response, and all three patients remain on therapy. The patient in Cohort 2 experienced a partial response and is currently in their ninth month of treatment with SNDX-6352 following prior treatment with ibrutinib and both Jakafi (ruxolitinib) and KD025, two agents currently being investigated for the treatment of cGVHD. The first patient (Cohort 1) achieved a partial response but discontinued in their third cycle due to elevated LFTs attributed to progression in their liver cGVHD. Cohort 4, which will explore a 3.0 mg/kg Q2W dose, is now open for enrollment.

"The initial results from our Phase 1 trial underscore the potential of SNDX-6352 to serve as an effective therapy for patients with cGVHD who are lacking alternative options," said Briggs W. Morrison, M.D., Chief Executive Officer of Syndax. "We had not anticipated commenting on data from this initial trial until the second half of 2020, so it is quite encouraging to see the early signs of activity in patients with this difficult to treat disease. Based on these results, we have decided to advance into a Phase 2 expansion cohort to evaluate additional patients at the 1.0 mg/kg dose while we continue the dose escalation to 3.0 mg/kg. We continue to expect to present the Phase 1 trial results in the second half of 2020.

"Published preclinical data have demonstrated that CSF-1R blockade can prevent and treat disease in animal models of cGVHD1," said Peter Ordentlich, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer and Co-founder of Syndax."The initial data from our trial provide the first clinical evidence that targeting CSF-1R dependent macrophages may benefit patients with cGVHD."

To date, SNDX-6352 has been safe and well-tolerated, with no DLTs observed. Dose escalation is ongoing in the Phase 1 portion of the trial. The Phase 2 expansion cohort is expected to enroll up to 22 patients to further characterize the safety and efficacy at an initial dosing schedule of 1.0 mg/kg of SNDX-6352 administered every two weeks.

About Chronic Graft Versus Host Disease

Chronic graft versus host disease (cGVHD), an immune response of the donor-derived hematopoietic cells against recipient tissues, is a serious, potentially life-threatening complication of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) which can last for years. cGVHD is estimated to develop in approximately 40% of transplant recipients, and affect approximately 14,000 patients in the US. 2-4 cGVHD typically manifests across multiple organ systems, with the skin and mucosa being commonly involved, and is characterized by the development of fibrotic tissue.

About SNDX-6352

SNDX-6352 is an investigational monoclonal antibody that targets colony stimulating factor-1 receptor, or CSF-1R, a cell surface protein thought to control the survival and function of monocytes and macrophages. In pre-clinical models, inhibition of signaling through the CSF-1 receptor has been shown to reduce the number of disease-mediating macrophages and the development of cutaneous and pulmonary chronic graft versus host disease (cGVHD), as well as to lead to the depletion of cells known as Tumor Associated Macrophages, or TAMS. SNDX-6352 is currently being evaluated in a Phase 1 multiple ascending dose clinical trial in cGVHD, and a Phase 1 multiple ascending dose clinical trial as monotherapy and in combination with Infinzi (durvalumab) in solid tumors. SNDX-6352 has the potential to treat a variety of solid tumor and immune-related diseases.

About Syndax Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Syndax Pharmaceuticalsis a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing an innovative pipeline of cancer therapies. The Company's lead product candidate, entinostat, a once-weekly, oral, small molecule, class I HDAC inhibitor, is being tested in a Phase 3 combination trial with exemestane for treatment of advanced HR+, HER2- breast cancer and has been evaluated in combination with several approved PD-1/PD-(L)1 antagonists. The Company's pipeline also includes SNDX-6352, a monoclonal antibody that blocks the colony stimulating factor 1 (CSF-1) receptor, and SNDX-5613, a highly selective inhibitor of the MeninMLL binding interaction. For more information, please visitwww.syndax.comor follow the Company on TwitterandLinkedIn.

Syndax's Cautionary Note on Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as "may," "will," "expect," "plan," "anticipate," "estimate," "intend," "believe" and similar expressions (as well as other words or expressions referencing future events, conditions or circumstances) are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on Syndax's expectations and assumptions as of the date of this press release. Each of these forward-looking statements involves risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements contained in this press release include, but are not limited to, statements about the progress, timing, clinical development and scope of clinical trials and the reporting of clinical data for Syndax's product candidates, and the potential use of our product candidates to treat various cancer indications. Many factors may cause differences between current expectations and actual results including unexpected safety or efficacy data observed during preclinical or clinical trials, clinical trial site activation or enrollment rates that are lower than expected, changes in expected or existing competition, changes in the regulatory environment, failure of Syndax's collaborators to support or advance collaborations or product candidates and unexpected litigation or other disputes. Other factors that may cause Syndax's actual results to differ from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements in this press release are discussed in Syndax's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including the "Risk Factors" sections contained therein. Except as required by law, Syndax assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in expectations, even as new information becomes available.

References

1. Alexander, KA. et al. J Clin Invest. 2014;124(10):42664280.

2.Kantar GVHD Expert Interviews N=8 interviews

3. SmartAnalyst 2017 SmartImmunology Insights chronic GVHD report.

4. Bachier, CR. et al. ASH annual meeting 2019; abstract #2109 Epidemiology and Real-World Treatment of Chronic Graft-Versus-Host Disease Post Allogeneic Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation: A U.S. Claims Analysis.

Syndax Contacts

Investor ContactMelissa ForstArgot Partnersmelissa@argotpartners.com212.600.1902

Media ContactCraig HeitGCI Healthcraig.Heit@gcihealth.com347.451.4733

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Syndax Pharmaceuticals Announces Plans to Commence Phase 2 Expansion Cohort of SNDX-6352 for the Treatment of Chronic Graft Versus Host Disease -...

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SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Alpine Immune Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALPN), a leading clinical-stage immunotherapy company focused on developing innovative treatments for cancer and autoimmune/inflammatory diseases, presented Phase 1 data yesterday from the healthy volunteer study of ALPN-101, a first-in-class dual CD28/ICOS antagonist, and details on its upcoming Phase 1/2 BALANCE study of ALPN-101 in steroid-resistant or steroid-refractory acute graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) at the 61st American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting (ASH) in Orlando, FL.

Jan Hillson, MD, Senior Vice President of Clinical Development at Alpine, presented An Open Label Study of ALPN-101, a First-in-Class Dual CD28/ICOS Antagonist, in Subjects with Steroid-Resistant or Steroid-Refractory Acute Graft Versus Host Disease (BALANCE) as part of the oral session, Chemical Biology and Experimental Therapeutics: Novel Compounds and Mechanisms of Action.

Highlights included:

Despite decades of intense research, GVHD remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, commented Sophie Paczesny, MD, PhD, Professor of Immunology and Pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine and lead of the Biomarkers Stem Cell Transplantation Program and one of Alpine's research collaborators. Current therapies are associated with significant toxicities or are simply insufficient to control the disease. CD28 and ICOS appear to be key pathways in the pathogenesis of GVHD, and the presented data with ALPN-101 appear uniquely strong. I look forward to the BALANCE study, which may demonstrate the therapeutic potential of ALPN-101.

About Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD)

Graft versus host disease (GVHD) is the most common life-threatening complication of a hematopoietic cell transplant. It occurs when donor cells see recipient cells as foreign and attack them. Acute GVHD typically occurs within the early weeks and months after transplant, usually involving the skin, liver, and gastrointestinal tract. GVHD patients remain at risk of organ system damage and increased mortality due to the disease and to high dose glucocorticoids.

About ALPN-101

ALPN-101 is a novel Fc fusion protein of a human inducible T cell costimulator ligand (ICOSL) variant immunoglobulin domain (vIgD), and a first-in-class therapeutic designed to inhibit simultaneously the CD28 and ICOS inflammation pathways. CD28 and ICOS are closely-related costimulatory molecules with partially overlapping roles in T cell activation likely playing a role in multiple autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. In preclinical models of graft versus host disease, inflammatory arthritis, connective tissue disease, and multiple sclerosis, ALPN-101 demonstrates efficacy superior to agents blocking the CD28 CD80/86 or ICOS - ICOSL pathways alone.

About Alpine Immune Sciences, Inc.

Alpine Immune Sciences, Inc. is committed to leading a new wave of immune therapeutics, creating potentially powerful multifunctional immunotherapies to improve patients lives via unique protein engineering technologies. Alpine has two lead programs. The first, ALPN-101 for autoimmune/inflammatory diseases, is a selective dual T cell costimulation blocker engineered to reduce pathogenic T and B cell immune responses by blocking ICOS and CD28. ALPN-101 has recently completed enrollment in a Phase 1 healthy volunteer trial. The second, ALPN-202 for cancer, is a conditional CD28 costimulator and dual checkpoint inhibitor. Alpine is backed by world-class research and development capabilities, a highly-productive scientific platform, and a proven management team. For more information, visit http://www.alpineimmunesciences.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are not based on historical fact and include statements regarding our platform technology and potential therapies, the timing of and results from clinical trials and pre-clinical development activities, clinical and regulatory objectives and the timing thereof, expectations regarding the sufficiency of cash to fund operations, the potential efficacy, safety profile, future development plans, addressable market, regulatory success, and commercial potential of our product candidates, the timing of our public presentations and potential publication of future clinical data, the efficacy of our clinical trial designs, expectations regarding our ongoing collaborations, and our ability to successfully develop and achieve milestones in our development programs. Forward-looking statements generally include statements that are predictive in nature and depend upon or refer to future events or conditions and include words such as may, will, should, would, expect, plan, intend, and other similar expressions, among others. These forward-looking statements are based on current assumptions that involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause actual results, events, or developments to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, include, but are not limited to: clinical trials may not demonstrate safety and efficacy of any of our product candidates; our ongoing discovery and pre-clinical efforts may not yield additional product candidates; our discovery-stage and pre-clinical programs may not advance into the clinic or result in approved products; any of our product candidates may fail in development, may not receive required regulatory approvals, or may be delayed to a point where they are not commercially viable; we may not achieve additional milestones in our proprietary or partnered programs; the impact of competition; adverse conditions in the general domestic and global economic markets; as well as the other risks identified in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof and we undertake no obligation to update forward-looking statements, and readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements.

Secreted Immunomodulatory Proteins, SIP, Transmembrane Immunomodulatory Protein, TIP, Variant Ig Domain, vIgD and the Alpine logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Alpine Immune Sciences, Inc. in various jurisdictions.

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Alpine Immune Sciences Presents ALPN-101 Phase 1 Healthy Volunteer Study Data and Details of Upcoming Phase I/II BALANCE GVHD Study at the 61st...

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Dec. 7, 2019 22:30 UTC

LYON, France--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- MaaT Pharma announced today that leading hemato-oncological experts presented clinical data on the compassionate use of MaaT Pharmas lead full-ecosystem microbiome restoration biotherapeutic, MaaT013. The data included eight patients that developed gastrointestinal-predominant, acute Graft-versus-Host-Disease (GI aGvHD) after receiving an allogeneic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation (allo-HSCT) to treat their hematologic malignancies. All patients were positively impacted by the MaaT013 treatment, with three patients achieving complete response. GvHD, a condition where the transplant donors immune cells attack the patients tissues, is one of the most serious complications of allo-HSCT, and its acute GI form is fatal in most cases. MaaT013 features a consistently high diversity and richness of microbial species in their natural environment. It aims to restore the symbiotic relationship between microbes in the gut and the immune system of the patient to correct the responsiveness and tolerance (homeostasis) of immune functions and thereby contain GI GvHD. The results were presented in a poster presentation on December 7, 2019 during the 61st American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition held in Orlando, Florida.

The GI aGvHD patients who were treated with MaaT013 had a very poor prognosis with no other therapeutic options. The results following MaaT013 administration showed a positive impact on all patients, commented Professor Mohamad Mohty, MD, PhD, Head of the Hematology and Cellular Therapy Department at Sorbonne University, Saint Antoine Hospital in Paris. The most impressive results were seen in those patients who achieved a complete response and who were able to taper and stop using steroids and other immunosuppressants without relapse of gastrointestinal symptoms.

In the presented evaluation, eight patients with a median age of 67 were treated for classical aGvHD, late-onset aGvHD or aGvHD with overlap syndrome that were either steroid-resistant or steroid-dependent following stem cell transplantation. These patients had previously been treated with and failed up to five lines of systemic therapy for aGvHD. Each patient received at least one and up to three doses of MaaT013 and treatment response was evaluated seven days after each administration and on day 28 after the first dose. Based on the best response to the treatment, all eight patients experienced at least a partial response with three patients achieving complete response, two patients with very good partial response and three patients with partial response. Overall, the data demonstrated that reintroduction of a full-ecosystem microbiota provided therapeutic effect and was tolerated in a satisfactory manner in these patients.

Herv Affagard, Co-founder and CEO of MaaT Pharma added, We provided our cGMP-manufactured lead biologic drug, MaaT013, to hospitals as part of a compassionate use program to give GI GvHD patients a therapeutic option where there are no other available treatments after steroids and additional lines of treatment. These findings indicate that reestablishing the gut microbiome improved outcomes in these patients.

Moreover, MaaT Pharma is currently conducting the HERACLES Phase II clinical trial (NCT03359980) to evaluate the safety and efficacy of MaaT013 in steroid-refractory, GI aGvHD patients, with more than half of the patients enrolled.

To date, a total of 46 patients with GI GvHD have been treated with MaaT013, including patients under compassionate use and patients enrolled in the Phase II clinical trial. MaaT Pharma is actively developing an oral formulation of MaaT013 (a capsule, MaaT033) to provide easier administration for patients while delivering a similar effect of regenerating the microbial ecosystem with the goal of restoring immune homeostasis in the gut.

The poster can be viewed on the companys website under News.

About HERACLES

The HERACLES study is a multi-center, single-arm, open-label study, enrolling 32 patients to evaluate the efficacy and safety of MaaT Pharmas lead microbiome restoration drug candidate, MaaT013, in steroid-resistant, gastrointestinal-predominant aGvHD patients. Acute GvHD is a serious, often fatal syndrome typically involving the gut, skin, and liver. Treatments up to now focused largely on suppressing the immune reaction that is induced by the donor cells derived from the hematopoietic stem cell graft reacting against the host. These strategies have remained clinically unsuccessful in most cases, with mortality rates around 80% after twelve months in steroid-resistant cases. Patients with hematological malignancies receive multiple courses of chemotherapy, antibiotics, and ultimately conditioning before HSCT, which are known to severely impact the gut microbial composition.

About MaaT013

MaaT013 is the first full-ecosystem, off-the-shelf, reproducible, enema formulation manufactured using MaaT Pharmas integrated Microbiome Restoration Biotherapeutic (MMRB) platform. The product has a stability of up to 24 months and is characterized by a high diversity and consistent richness of microbial species derived from pooled healthy donors and manufactured at the companys centralized European cGMP production facility. MaaT013 has been granted Orphan Drug Designation by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and is already being administered in compassionate use.

About MaaT Pharma

MaaT Pharma, a clinical stage company, has established the most complete approach to restoring patient-microbiome symbiosis to improve survival outcomes in life-threatening diseases. Committed to treating blood cancers and Graft-versus-Host-Disease, a serious complication of allogeneic stem cell transplantation, MaaT Pharma has already achieved proof of concept in acute myeloid leukemia patients. Supporting the further expansion of our pipeline into improving outcomes of immunotherapy in solid tumors, we have built a powerful discovery and analysis platform, GutPrint, to evaluate drug candidates, determine novel disease targets and identify biomarkers for microbiome-related conditions. Our biotherapeutics are produced under the strictest cGMP manufacturing and quality control process to safely deliver the full diversity and functionality of the microbiome. MaaT Pharma benefits from the commitment of world-leading scientists and established relationships with regulators to spearhead microbiome treatment integration into clinical practice.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191207005042/en/

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MaaT Pharma Announces the Presentation of Positive Data with Its Lead Microbiome Biotherapeutic in Intestinal-Predominant Acute...

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith