Husband testifies wife 'was looking for a cure' and found Bonita stem-cell doctor

The Grekos hearing is scheduled to resume today. The location is the Collier County Courthouse in room 4-D, according to a case filing Monday.

The hearing before J. Lawrence Johnson, an administrative law judge from Tallahassee, is scheduled to last four days. The Collier County Courthouse is located at 3315 U.S. 41 E.

Photo by Allie Garza

Zannos Grekos

EAST NAPLES The patient was friends with the mother of Dr. Zannos Grekos, a Bonita Springs cardiologist who performed stem cell therapy on people with debilitating illnesses.

Chemotherapy for breast cancer several years earlier had left the 69-year-old patient, Domenica Fitzgerald, with numbness in her legs. She was unable to walk for more than 10 minutes. She hoped Grekos and his stem cell treatment could help.

"She was looking for a cure. She wanted to get well," her husband, John "Jack" Fitzgerald, testified Tuesday.

A four-day administrative hearing started Tuesday in a Collier County courtroom for a state Department of Health complaint against Grekos. The state says he committed medical malpractice and violated other standards of care when he performed a stem cell treatment on the patient on March 24, 2010. The patient suffered brain damage.

The state is only identifying the patient in its complaint by her initials, D.F. The Daily News learned of her identity by a public records request to the Collier County Medical Examiner's Office of all people who died on April 4, 2010, in the county. That was the day that Fitzgerald died after being taken off life support.

The state last year restricted Grekos' license after her death and ordered him not to do anything with stem cells with other patients. His license was fully suspended earlier this year when the state said he violated the order by treating another patient who also died.

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Husband testifies wife 'was looking for a cure' and found Bonita stem-cell doctor

ReNeuron progresses stroke clinical trial

LONDON (ShareCast) - ReNeuron has reported further progress in the clinical trial of its ReN001 stem cell therapy for disabled stroke patients, known as the PISCES study.

The third and penultimate batch of three patients have all been successfully treated with ReN001 and discharged from hospital with no acute safety issues arising. This follows approval last month by the independent Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) for the study to proceed to completion of dosing of this batch of patients.

The PISCES study continues to run to plan, with no cell-related serious adverse events reported in any of the patients treated to date, the clinical-stage stem cell specialist reported. The remaining three, high-dose cohort patients to be treated in the PISCES study have been identified and evaluated as potentially eligible for treatment, with patient enquiries continuing to come into the Glasgow clinical site and a number of patients consequently identified as reserve candidates for the study. Subject to DSMB approval, these final three patients are scheduled to be treated in January and March 2013.

In June of this year, interim data from the PISCES study from the first five patients treated was presented by the Glasgow clinical team at the 10th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) in Yokohama, Japan (EUREX: FMJP.EX - news) . Reductions in neurological impairment and spasticity were observed in all five patients compared with their stable pre-treatment baseline performance and these improvements were sustained in longer term follow-up.

Based on the above progress, the company announced last month that, ahead of plan, it had submitted an application to the UK regulatory authority to commence a multi-site Phase II clinical trial to examine the efficacy of ReN001 in patients disabled by an ischaemic stroke.

This trial is designed to recruit from a well-defined population of patients between two and four months after their stroke, which the company and its clinical collaborators currently believe will be the optimum treatment window for the therapy. Subject to continuing positive progress with the PISCES study, and subject to regulatory and ethical approvals, the company hopes to be able to commence the Phase II stroke study in mid-2013. The proposed study is expected to take up to 18 months to complete.

ReNeuron's ReN001 stem cell therapy is being administered in ascending doses to a total of 12 stroke patients who have been left disabled by an ischaemic stroke, the most common form of the condition.

This news should also have positive read-across for Aim-listed Angel Biotechnology (Berlin: A3G.BE - news) , which supplies the stem cells used in the study.

CM

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Research firm reaped stem cell funds despite panel's advice

StemCells Inc. has a history not much different from those of dozens, even hundreds, of biotech companies all around California.

Co-founded by an eminent Stanford research scientist, the Newark, Calif., firm has struggled financially while trying to push its stem cell products through the research-and-development pipeline. It collects about $1 million a year from licensing patents and selling cell cultures but spends well more than $20 million annually on R&D, so it runs deeply in the red.

On the plus side, StemCells Inc. has had rather a charmed relationship with the California stem cell program, that $3-billion taxpayer-backed research fund known formally as the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

The firm ranks first among all corporate recipients of approved funding from CIRM, with some $40 million in awards approved this year. That's more than has gone to such established California nonprofit research centers as Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute.

The record of StemCells is particularly impressive given that one of the two proposals for which the firm received a $20-million funding award, covering a possible Alzheimer's treatment, was actually rejected by CIRM's scientific review panel twice. Nevertheless, the stem cell agency's governing board went ahead and approved it last month.

What was the company's secret? StemCells says it's addressing "a serious unmet medical need" in Alzheimer's research. But it doesn't hurt that the company also had powerful friends going to bat for it, including two guys who were instrumental in getting CIRM off the ground in the first place.

There's nothing improper about the state stem cell agency funding private enterprise; that's part of its statutory duties, and potentially valuable in advancing the goals of research. In part that's because CIRM is in a good position to help biotech firms leapfrog the "valley of death" the territory between basic research and the much more expensive and speculative process of moving a technology to clinical testing and, hopefully, the marketplace. Unfortunately, that's also the point where outside investment often dries up.

But private enterprise is new territory for CIRM, which has steered almost all its grants thus far to nonprofit institutions. Those efforts haven't been trouble-free: With some 90% of the agency's grants having gone to institutions with representatives on its board, the agency has long been vulnerable to charges of conflicts of interest. The last thing it needed was to show a similar flaw in its dealings with private companies too.

That brings us back to StemCells Inc. First, consider the firm's pedigree. Its co-founder was Irving Weissman, director of Stanford's Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and a stem cell research pioneer. Weissman was one of the most prominent and outspoken supporters of Proposition 71, the 2004 ballot initiative that established the stem cell agency.

He's also been a leading beneficiary of CIRM funding, listed as the principal researcher on three grants worth a total of $24.5 million. The agency also contributed $43.6 million toward the construction of his institute's glittering $200-million research building on the Stanford campus. As of mid-April Weissman was still listed as a shareholder of StemCells, where his wife, Ann Tsukamoto, is an executive. Weissman, who is traveling in Africa, could not get back to me by deadline to talk about his relationship with the company.

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Research firm reaped stem cell funds despite panel's advice

stem cell treatment for copd – Video

14-10-2012 23:59 - Angeles Health initiated the Adult Autologous Stem Cell (A-ASC) Therapy program to manage a variety of syndromes, including COPD. Like many other conditions COPD is treated using autologous adult stem cells.

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Beauty salon ‘offers’ stem cell therapy

With all the publicity about the miraculous effects of stem cell therapy, the Department of Health (DOH) should prepare itself for the possibility that the new procedure would be performed by unqualified, and completely clueless, people.

I passed a beauty parlor recently and saw a huge poster on its door announcing the arrival of stem cell therapy. I was instantly reminded of botched breast enhancement and nose jobs performed by salon personnel who seemed to think it was as easy to learn complicated surgical procedures as it was to train to cut hair or do manicures and pedicures.

The DOH should start warning the public not to fall for these special offers just because they are available at giveaway rates.

Modern lifestyle problem

Experts have repeatedly talked about problems brought about by modern lifestyles. Changing diets and stress are two of the best known. Dr. Jaime G. Ignacio, section chief of gastroenterology at Veterans Hospital and head of the Digestive Malignancy Council of the Philippine Society of Gastroenterology, said constipation could be one of the consequences of the combination of these two factors.

Speaking at an event hosted by Boehringer Ingelheim, maker of Dulcolax (generic name Bisacodyl), a formulation for constipation relief, Ignacio, who, as a gastroenterologist is a specialist in digestive system disorders, defined the problem as having fewer than three bowel movements in a week (normal ranges from three times a week to three times a day).

He said constipation itself was not a disease but it could sometimes be a symptom of something serious, like colorectal cancer. But he said about 95 percent of cases were acuteoccurring suddenly and lasting for only a short periodresulting from some sudden lifestyle or hormonal changes, the taking of medication, lack of exercise, etc.

Ignacio said acute was easy to treat, with products like Dulcolax to solve the problem. But, if left unattended, acute constipation could lead to a chronic or long-term condition, which was the more worrisome, and would need medical attention.

He said constipation should be treated as soon as the problem had lasted for four or more days.

Constipation is part of modern living. [Like other diseases] prevention is the key. Safe and effective treatment is available [if needed], Ignacio stressed.

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Beauty salon ‘offers’ stem cell therapy

Chinese bid to save girl's sight

Chloe Wilson, from Forrester, Edinburgh, was born with septo-optic dysplasia a rare condition which means her pituitary gland has not developed properly.

As a result, the 19-month-old's optic nerve is underdeveloped, leaving her with hormone deficiencies and very little vision.

Her parents, Kayleigh and Scott Wilson, both 22, started a campaign in April to raise 15,000 to take her to the Chinese city of Guangzhou to undergo a controversial stem-cell treatment not available in the UK.

But thanks to the efforts of many other fundraisers and donors, some of whom have never even met the family, the total raised now stands at nearly 25,000.

The total means the young family can afford far more stem- cells, vastly increasing the chance of success.

Mrs Wilson, a nursery assistant, said: "I thought we were looking at a year-and-a-half before we hit our target. Now we've gone nearly ten grand over it in less than half that time.

"We just want to thank everyone who has helped give us this chance. People have been amazing,. Their generosity will stay with us forever, and we'll make sure Chloe knows all about it when she is older."

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Chinese bid to save girl's sight