Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Biotech / Medical : Geron Corp. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jon Koplik who wrote (2300)	3/15/2000 11:44:00 AM
From: Savant	Respond to of 3576

Jon, fyi Some useful info on the pig story: RP/glove PPL is a licensee of the Roslin Institute. Geron UK/Cloning Patent: PPL Therapeutics has an exclusive world-wide licence for uses in production of pharmaceutical proteins in the milk of ruminants and rabbits and for nutraceutical applications. Geron Corporation of Menlo Park, California has an exclusive world-wide licence to all other areas of application as a result of a collaborative research agreement concluded with Roslin Institute in May, 1999. ri.bbsrc.ac.uk From Geron's latest 10k: "Xenotransplantation. The demand for organ transplantation far outweighs the number of human organs available. It is estimated that there are over 150,000 people worldwide waiting for an organ. In the United States, more than 60,000 individuals were registered on transplant waiting lists at the end of 1998. That year, however, less than half of the people listed received solid organ transplants. The demand for organ transplantation will continue to increase as improved technical skills and anti-rejection medication make whole organ transplantation a realistic option for groups of people previously considered not eligible for transplantation--for example, those suffering from diabetes or those over age 55. Programs to increase the number of registered donors are extremely important--but these programs alone will not solve the problem of organ shortage. One solution under consideration by the medical, pharmaceutical and biotechnology communities is xenotransplantation--the process of transplanting cells, tissues or organs from one species to another, for example, from an animal to a human. This approach potentially could be used either as a bridge to human organ transplantation or as long term therapy in the form of a permanent transplant. Pigs are the preferred source for xenotransplantation because they have organs of comparable size and anatomy to human organs. Through nuclear transfer, we intend to produce pigs that have been genetically modified to make their organs more suitable for transplantation to humans without causing an acute immune rejection. Acute immune rejection of transplanted pig organs is caused by natural human antibodies which recognize and react to certain sugar structures present in the blood vessels of the transplanted pig tissue. We intend to delete from the pig genome the gene for the enzyme which generates the key sugar structure that triggers the immune rejection. Once we have created the desired donor animal, cloning of that animal via nuclear transfer would enable the cost-effective and scalable production of identical animals for clinical trials. Cloned herds of pigs which would no longer carry the foreign sugar structure could become a commercial source of organs that would not be rejected by the recipients' immune system. Such cloned pigs would serve as sources for multiple transplantable organs such as hearts, kidneys and pancreases. Our xenotransplantation program is conducted at Geron Bio-Med, located within the Roslin Institute in Scotland."