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

To: Winston Kim who wrote (612)	1/13/1998 5:02:00 PM
From: Tech Investor	Respond to of 3576

sounds like you already shorted some ;) I still think it will touch 17 sometime in the next 2 days. They will have a conference on Thursday discussing about the new findings. I sold some of my holding just to lock in profits and cover costs, no matter which way it goes tomorrow, it's a matter of how much profit I will gain, not "will I make a profit on this", so I can sit tight and enjoy the ride :) I will short after 2 days, when I think they reached a top, but with news like this, it's hard to call a top. Will have to watch the charts carefully. Regards

To: Winston Kim who wrote (612)	1/13/1998 6:24:00 PM
From: Rob-Chemist	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3576

I agree with your assessment of this report. It has been known for some time that with some tissue culture cells, telomere shortening is a major cause of death (senescence). Hence, this process can be reversed by activating telomerase in these cells. However, there is no evidence that telomere shortening is involved in aging of normal human cells and/or humans. Even in very old people, they have plenty of telomere left. Furthermore, even if telomere shortening were important for aging (and adding telomerase back to these cells could reverse the aging process), this finding is completely irrelevant in terms of Geron having a product. Presently, there is no way to specifically "turn on" the telomerase gene in cells, and these findings do not address this question. Alternatively, one might consider gene therapy to add an active copy of telomerase to cells. This possibility is complete pie-in-the-sky for at least another 10-20 years due to the lack of technology for efficient incorporation of genes into living cells. Presently, the best gene therapy approaches in living organisms result in the gene being incorporated into 0.1-1% of the cells in a small area in the organism (i.e., a localized tumor). I have never shorted a stock before, but if this one goes up a bit more, I will short GERN since when people stop to think about the meaning of this finding, I believe they will conclude that it has no importance with regard to product development.