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Subsidies: A firm that received tax dollars to pursue embryonic stem cell research abandons what was touted as the most promising avenue of research for medical miracles. Then there's that "conscience thing." When Geron Corp. announced in January 2010 that the first clinical trial using its embryonic stem cells to treat an actual human patient was under way, its stock shot up 6.4%. Geron got the first Food and Drug Administration license to use embryonic stem cells to treat people in a clinical trial, in this case patients with a spinal cord injury. Last week Geron announced that it was...

Geron, the company that helped pioneer human embryonic stem (hES) cell research, said yesterday that it is stopping its first-in-the-world clinical trial and pulling out of further stem cell work. The company, based in Menlo Park, California, will instead concentrate on its anticancer therapies, CEO John Scarlett said in a statement. "Deciding to move out of the stem cell business was a very difficult decision to make," he told investors and journalists this morning. Geron helped to fund the work of James Thomson at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who in 1998 was the first to isolate hES cells. That...

Media Misreporting: Embryonic Stem Cells Not Involved in Geron's New Testing by David Prentice In its usual style, Geron has put out a press release that it has injected the first patient for its trial of embryonic stem cells for spinal cord injury. Of course their main goal is to increase their stock price and cash flow from investment. Not about science, not about helping patients. After all, this is just an announcement that the patient has been injected with millions of cells. No results, no peer-reviewed publication, nada. Contrary to what most of the news stories report, Geron is...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The human embryonic stem cells available for research are contaminated with nonhuman molecules from the culture medium used to grow the cells, researchers report. The nonhuman cell-surface sialic acid can compromise the potential uses of the stem cells in humans, say scientists at the University of California, San Diego. Their study was published Sunday in the online edition of Nature Medicine. Stem cells form very early in an embryo's development. They can develop into numerous types of cells to form organs and other parts of the body. Researchers hope to use these cells to repair damaged organs...

IN THE 1980s, Ralph Snodgrass' interest in developmental immunology led him to Switzerland, where his research allowed him to work with a profound biological discovery: embryonic stem cells—often called miracle cells or miniature fountains of youth—which, as Snodgrass would later write in scientific journals, had the ability to produce every type of cell in the body, opening the way for experiments on blood and genetic diseases. Because this was the 1980s, science was still in the stem cell dark ages. The human embryonic stem cell was isolated only six years ago by University of Wisconsin biologist James Thomson. Snodgrass was...

Cells from human embryos could be used to help some people with spinal injuries to walk again, successful work involving rats has indicated. Scientists from the University of California at Irvine college of medicine said that paralysed rats walked again after being injected with stem cells from "early-stage" human embryos. They hope that the breakthrough will prove to American policy makers that the use of human embryonic stem cells and therapeutic cloning - presently banned in the US - are justified. The team, led by Hans Keirstead, took stem cells from early-stage human embryos, and altered them in the laboratory...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An early try at making a universal cancer vaccine seems to be safe, and shows some indication that it may even work, researchers at Geron Corp. said on Monday. The first few cancer patients immunized with the vaccine showed no bad reactions and in fact seemed to mount an immune response against their own cancers, the Menlo Park, California-based company said. The results are very preliminary but suggest the research approach is valid, Geron said in a statement. Geron shares rose slightly on the news, to $6.70 a share in mid-morning trading. Geron was scheduled to present...