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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Tokyo Joe's Cafe / Societe Anonyme/No Pennies -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Logistics who wrote (24724)	12/9/1998 2:15:00 PM
From: campe	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 119973

ASTM - info link...read between the lines... Message 6757065 Check out ASTM, speculative, but may be on NBC nightly news tonight. msnbc.com Wednesday on NBC ‘Nightly News' It's the lifeline between mother and child, and so much more. A new discovery shows that blood from the umbilical cord can now save other lives — when used in bone marrow transplants. Tune in for our report. ASTM recent news: biz.yahoo.com Umbilical cells seen helping cancer patients CHICAGO, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Blood cells taken from umbilical cords and enlarged in the laboratory have been successfully transplanted into the bone marrow of adult cancer patients to restore their immune systems, a researcher said on Monday. Normally, not enough of the umbilical cord cells are available for adult patients, and only children or those weighing less than 85 pounds (38.6 kg) can receive the grafts. But by using a new laboratory procedure, Dr. Patrick Stiff of Loyola University Medical Center near Chicago expanded the cells by as much as 50 times and provided enough of the rich cell material to transplant into adult patients suffering from late-stage leukemia and non-Hodgkins lymphoma. The transplanted cells were proving effective in four out of 10 patients, whose treatment options were exhausted and for whom a suitable donor could not be found, Stiff reported to the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology in Miami. Like bone marrow, umbilical cord blood contains the ''mother cells'' that can endlessly produce the cells that the body needs to fight disease, Stiff said. But cord blood cells have the advantage of being ''immunologically naive,'' making them more acceptable to the body and therefore not requiring a perfect donor match that is difficult to find. ''With our ability to expand cord blood cells, not only might most patients have a donor somewhere in the world, but mortality rates may drop significantly -- a real breakthrough,'' Stiff said in a statement released by Loyola. In the process developed by Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Aastrom Biosciences Inc (Nasdaq:ASTM - news)., the cells are placed in a bioreactor -- an apparatus used to grow useful substances from living organisms -- then fed nutrients and put in an incubator. Transplantation of expanded umbilical cord blood cells could be used to treat such blood disorders as sickle cell anemia and thalassemia, breast cancer, and other cancers for which bone marrow transplantation is an option, Stiff said.