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BioTime to Present at ROTH 24th Annual Growth Stock Conference

By adminMarch 9, 2012Uncategorized

ALAMEDA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

BioTime, Inc. (NYSE Amex:BTX), a biotechnology company that develops and markets products in the field of regenerative medicine, today announced that Chief Financial Officer, Peter S. Garcia, will present a corporate overview of BioTime and its subsidiaries at the ROTH 24th Annual Growth Stock Conference. The presentation will take place on Tuesday, March 13, 2012, at 9:30 a.m. PDT at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Dana Point, California. The presentation will be webcast and available online at the Investors section of the website at http://www.biotimeinc.com and at http://wsw.com/webcast/roth26/btx/.

ROTH Capital Partners will host more than 400 growth companies at its annual investment conference, March 11-14, 2012, including more than 130 healthcare companies in the biotechnology, healthcare services, medical device, and pharmaceutical sectors.

About BioTime, Inc.

BioTime, headquartered in Alameda, California, is a biotechnology company focused on regenerative medicine and blood plasma volume expanders. Its broad platform of stem cell technologies is developed through subsidiaries focused on specific fields of applications. BioTime develops and markets research products in the field of stem cells and regenerative medicine, including a wide array of proprietary ACTCellerate cell lines, culture media, and differentiation kits. BioTime's wholly owned subsidiary ES Cell International Pte. Ltd. has produced clinical-grade human embryonic stem cell lines that were derived following principles of Good Manufacturing Practice and currently offers them for use in research. BioTime's therapeutic product development strategy is pursued through subsidiaries that focus on specific organ systems and related diseases for which there is a high unmet medical need. BioTime's majority owned subsidiary Cell Cure Neurosciences, Ltd. is developing therapeutic products derived from stem cells for the treatment of retinal and neural degenerative diseases. Cell Cure's minority shareholder Teva Pharmaceutical Industries has an option to clinically develop and commercialize Cell Cure's OpRegen retinal cell product for use in the treatment of age-related macular degeneration. BioTime's subsidiary OrthoCyte Corporation is developing therapeutic applications of stem cells to treat orthopedic diseases and injuries. Another subsidiary, OncoCyte Corporation, focuses on the diagnostic and therapeutic applications of stem cell technology in cancer, including the diagnostic product PanC-DxTM currently being developed for the detection of cancer in blood samples, therapeutic strategies using vascular progenitor cells engineered to destroy malignant tumors. ReCyte Therapeutics, Inc. is developing applications of BioTime's proprietary induced pluripotent stem cell technology to reverse the developmental aging of human cells to treat cardiovascular and blood cell diseases. BioTime's newest subsidiary, LifeMap Sciences, Inc., is developing an online database of the complex cell lineages arising from stem cells to guide basic research and to market BioTime's research products. In addition to its stem cell products, BioTime develops blood plasma volume expanders, blood replacement solutions for hypothermic (low-temperature) surgery, and technology for use in surgery, emergency trauma treatment and other applications. BioTime's lead product, Hextend, is a blood plasma volume expander manufactured and distributed in the U.S. by Hospira, Inc. and in South Korea by CJ CheilJedang Corp. under exclusive licensing agreements. Additional information about BioTime, ReCyte Therapeutics, Cell Cure, OrthoCyte, OncoCyte, BioTime Asia, LifeMap Sciences, and ESI can be found on the web at http://www.biotimeinc.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

Statements pertaining to future financial and/or operating results, future growth in research, technology, clinical development, and potential opportunities for BioTime and its subsidiaries, along with other statements about the future expectations, beliefs, goals, plans, or prospects expressed by management constitute forward-looking statements. Any statements that are not historical fact (including, but not limited to statements that contain words such as "will," "believes," "plans," "anticipates," "expects," "estimates") should also be considered to be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, risks inherent in the development and/or commercialization of potential products, uncertainty in the results of clinical trials or regulatory approvals, need and ability to obtain future capital, and maintenance of intellectual property rights. Actual results may differ materially from the results anticipated in these forward-looking statements and as such should be evaluated together with the many uncertainties that affect the business of BioTime and its subsidiaries, particularly those mentioned in the cautionary statements found in BioTime's Securities and Exchange Commission filings. BioTime disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

To receive ongoing BioTime corporate communications, please click on the following link to join our email alert list:

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=83805&p=irol-alerts

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BioTime to Present at ROTH 24th Annual Growth Stock Conference

Nuvilex Points Toward Cell Encapsulation Technology Future to Expand Stem Cell Use for Late Stage Cancer Treatments

By adminMarch 9, 2012Stem Cell Treatment

SILVER SPRING, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Nuvilex, Inc. (OTCQB:NVLX), an emerging biotechnology provider of cell and gene therapy solutions, today discussed the potential use of the companys cell encapsulation technology with modified stem cells to treat late stage cancers.

Stem cell therapy is not new to physicians dealing with blood and bone cancers, with stem cell transplants being an important treatment for growing new bone marrow since the 1970s. Recent studies have indicated the potential for using stem cells across a much broader range of cancers is becoming a reality, mostly a result of advances in cell and molecular biology techniques.

Traditional chemotherapy works by targeting the fast-growing cells common to cancer tumors. Unfortunately, chemotherapeutics dont differentiate between healthy and cancerous cells. Patients suffering from metastatic cancers, where tumors have spread to multiple areas of the body, often have substantial difficulties with the chemotherapy needed to treat their disease.

In one case, researchers at City of Hope and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital may have found a way to treat cancers that have spread throughout the body more effectively. They used genetically modified stem cells to activate chemotherapeutic drugs at the tumor sites, so that normal tissue surrounding the tumor and throughout the body remain relatively unharmed. The stem cells were designed to produce a specific enzyme that converts the nontoxic prodrug into the chemotherapeutic agent. This method also targets the brain tumor treatment to remain localized within the brain, similar to the pancreatic cancer clinical trial carried out by SG Austria, providing for high dosage chemotherapy without affecting surrounding tissues and avoiding the severe side effects normally associated with cancer therapy.

Nuvilex believes that incorporating Cell-in-a-Box encapsulation with this type of genetically modified stem cell, along with the proprietary cancer treatment being acquired, could significantly aid and improve patient outcomes.

Dr. Robert Ryan, Chief Executive Officer of Nuvilex, commented, We are hopeful for the day when late stage cancers can be routinely and safely treated using genetically modified cells like those used in the pancreatic cancer trial, increasing the ability of clinicians to avoid inducing side effects that typically accompany aggressive chemotherapy and/or radiation. Our cell encapsulation technology will enable practitioners to target tumors while preserving the health of the surrounding tissues. We continue to look for leading stem cell and oncology researchers to partner with us as we bring this technology to market.

About Nuvilex

Nuvilex, Inc. (OTCQB:NVLX) is an emerging international biotechnology provider of clinically useful therapeutic live encapsulated cells and services for encapsulating live cells for the research and medical communities. Through our effort, all aspects of our corporate activities alone, and especially in concert with SG Austria, are rapidly moving toward completion, including closing our agreement. One of our planned offerings will include cancer treatments using the companys industry-leading live-cell encapsulation technology.

Safe Harbor Statement

Doctor's license suspended after patient's death

By adminMarch 9, 2012Stem Cell Treatment

BONITA SPRINGS, FL -

The state Surgeon General has issued an emergency suspension of the license of Dr. Zannos Grekos for providing a stem cell treatment to a patient contrary to previous restrictions placed on his license. The patient died during the treatment.

According to the emergency suspension order, in February 2011 Dr. Grekos was ordered not to perform any stem cell treatments on patients.

On March 2, 2012, Grekos is accused of treating an elderly man with pulmonary hypertension and pulmonary fibrosis with stem cells.

The suspension order says Grekos harvested tissue from the patient's abdomen that commonly contains stem cells. That tissue was sent to a lab to have the stem cells concentrated.

Those concentrated stem cells were then injected into the patient's bloodstream, according to the order.

The patient died of cardiac arrest during the treatment.

Because the stem cell treatment violated previous restrictions on Grekos' license, the state requested the emergency suspension of his license.

One section of the emergency suspension order states, "Nothing short of the immediate suspension of Dr. Grekos' license to practice medicine would be sufficient to protect the public from the danger of harm presented by Dr. Grekos."

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Doctor's license suspended after patient's death

Stem cell treatment tricks immune system into accepting donor organs, study shows

By adminMarch 9, 2012Stem Cell Treatment

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO Scientists have found a way to trick the immune system into accepting organs from a mismatched, unrelated organ donor, a finding that could help patients avoid a lifetime of drugs to prevent rejection of the donated organ.

Of eight kidney transplant patients who have been treated with this new approach, five have managed to avoid taking anti-rejection drugs a year after their surgery, according to the study published on Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine.

And one patient, 47-year-old Lindsay Porter of Chicago, is completely free of anti-rejection drugs nearly two years after her kidney transplant.

This new approach would potentially offer a better quality of life and fewer health risks for transplant recipients

I hear about the challenges recipients have to face with their medications and it is significant. Its almost surreal when I think about it because I feel so healthy and normal, she said in a statement.

With conventional organ transplants, recipients need to take pills to suppress their immune systems for the rest of their lives. These drugs can cause serious side effects, including high blood pressure, diabetes, infection, heart disease and cancer.

This new approach would potentially offer a better quality of life and fewer health risks for transplant recipients, Dr. Suzanne Ildstad, director of the Institute of Cellular Therapeutics at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, who developed the new approach, said in a statement.

But some experts say the procedure, in which patients undergo a bone marrow transplant from an unmatched organ donor, is too risky, especially given the relative safety of kidney transplants.

We have to think about the risks and benefits. Since the current treatment is so stable, it really has to be safe, said Dr. Tatsuo Kawai, a transplant surgeon at Harvard Medical School, who wrote a commentary on the new approach in the journal.

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Stem cell treatment tricks immune system into accepting donor organs, study shows

Florida suspends doctor accused of illegal stem cell therapy

By adminMarch 9, 2012Stem Cell Treatment

By David Fitzpatrick and Drew Griffin, Special Investigations Unit

updated 1:34 PM EST, Thu March 8, 2012

Dr. Zannos Grekos, seen here in 2009, could have his license suspended.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

(CNN) -- A Florida cardiologist could have his medical license revoked by state authorities who have accused him of performing illegal stem cell therapy treatment on an elderly patient who died during the procedure.

Florida's Department of Health ordered the emergency suspension of Dr. Zannos Grekos' medical license Wednesday, accusing the Bonita Springs doctor of violating an emergency order against using stem cell treatments in Florida and allegedly causing the death of an unnamed elderly patient. Grekos can appeal the order.

According to the license suspension order, Grekos performed a stem cell treatment earlier this month on the patient, who was suffering from pulmonary hypertension and pulmonary fibrosis. Both diseases restrict blood flow to the heart.

"During said stem cell treatment, patient R.P. suffered a cardiac arrest and died," the suspension order said.

CNN first investigated Grekos's activities in 2009 and, at that time, he said he was using stem cell therapy for a company he called Regenocyte Therapeutic. His profile, listed on the company's website, describes Grekos as having "extensive experience in the field of stem cell therapy" and says he "was recently appointed to the Science Advisory Board of the United States' Repair Stem Cell Institute."

At the time of CNN's interview, Grekos said he extracted stem cells from patients and then sent the blood to Israel for laboratory processing. That processing, he said, resulted in "regenocytes," which he claimed would help heal crippling diseases, mostly associated with lung problems.

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Florida suspends doctor accused of illegal stem cell therapy

Eastday-Student who twice backed out of cell donation divides opinion

By adminMarch 8, 2012Stem Cell Medical Center

A SHANGHAI student who registered as a stem cell donor but then twice backed out of donating at the last moment has found herself at the center of public debate.

The would-be recipient, a leukemia patient in neighboring Jiangsu Province, had already received medication to stop blood-forming functions in preparation for the transplant when the intended donor pulled out.

It was said that the would-be donor, who has not been named, had faced pressure from her family not to go ahead with the procedure.

The incident has stirred up discussion online, with some web users accusing the student of putting the patient's life in danger through her actions.

Some argued that donors should be legally prevented from backing out once the intended recipient has been given preparatory medication.

However, local medical officials said that donations should be based on freewill and that a donor must be allowed to change his or her mind.

The 23-year-old leukemia patient, Jiang Jing, is being treated in a hospital in Suzhou. As an emergency solution, a partial match was found yesterday using a sample from the Shanghai Stem Cell Blood Bank and cells from Jiang's mother. The success rate is likely to be around 60 percent, local doctors told Shanghai Daily.

Jiang was diagnosed with leukemia last April and a full match was found with the Shanghai college student who had registered as a donor with the Red Cross in the city.

The transplant had been scheduled for Tuesday and the patient had been receiving medication since late last month to stop her body forming blood cells.

But last Thursday, the donor said she did not want to proceed.

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Eastday-Student who twice backed out of cell donation divides opinion

Stem Cells Help Kidney-Transplant Patients Skip Rejection Drugs in Study

By adminMarch 8, 2012Stem Cell Medicine

By Michelle Fay Cortez - Wed Mar 07 19:16:55 GMT 2012

Kidney transplant patients given a mixture of stem cells from their organ donor were able to quit taking anti-rejection medicine in a small study, suggesting that life-long reliance on the toxic drugs may be avoidable.

Five of eight patients treated were able to stop taking about a dozen pills a day to suppress their immune systems. The drugs, which prevent rejection and stop tissue from a donated kidney from attacking the patient, can damage the transplant and cause diabetes, infections, heart disease and cancer.

The breakthrough, reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine, mixed stem cells from the donors infection-fighting immune system with the patients natural immune system. The result enabled tissue from both to co-exist in the transplant patient without either being seen as foreign by the immune system, researchers said.

The results may potentially have an enormous, paradigm- shifting impact on solid-organ transplantation, wrote James Markmann and Tatsuo Kawai from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, in an editorial accompanying the study. Although only a taste of things to come, few transplant developments in the past half-century have been more enticing than these that put transplantation tolerance within our grasp.

The findings are particularly striking since the patients werent perfect tissue matches with the living donors. The mismatch traditionally makes it more difficult for the donated organ to survive since the patients immune system perceives the unfamiliar tissue as a threat.

Its been a longstanding goal in transplantation to achieve tolerance, to get the recipient to see the donor organ as part of itself, said Joseph Leventhal, a surgeon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago and the lead author. A road to tolerance now exists, he said.

Having two immune systems blend into one is called a chimerism. The long-lasting effect seen in the study may stem from the manipulation of stem cells taken from the donor in advance of the surgery, according to the report.

The cells were sent to Suzanne Ildstad, director of the Institute of Cellular Therapeutics at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. There facilitating cells that help transplants take hold were identified and used to enrich the mixture, which was given to the patient the day after surgery.

The researchers didnt provide details on how they crafted the stem cell mix, which may make it difficult for other investigators to confirm the findings, Markmann and Kawai wrote.

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Stem Cells Help Kidney-Transplant Patients Skip Rejection Drugs in Study

Nimer named new director for University of Miami’s cancer center

By adminMarch 8, 2012Stem Cell Medical Center

Medical breakthroughs discovered in the laboratory can take a long time to be put into practice in the examination room, often because there is little communication between research scientists and clinical physicians.

Dr. Stephen D. Nimer, a renowned researcher and physician named Wednesday as director of the University of Miamis Sylvester Cancer Center, is vowing to bring equal emphasis to leading-edge scientific research and quality patient care. His goal: to make Miami a worldwide destination for cancer treatment.

I am going to devote my energies toward bringing the center to the next level, said Nimer, 57, who has pioneered novel therapies for cancer and advocated for more compassionate care of patients. I want to build on the greatness that exists here.

Nimers appointment comes nearly 18 months after the Sylvester Centers board launched a global search for a new director to succeed Dr. W. Jarrard Goodwin, who stepped down after 14 years at the helm to become chief medical officer for the center.

Joan Scheiner, board chair of the Sylvester Center, said Nimer is the perfect candidate to lead the 20-year-old center into the next stage.

Hes going to help us build the kind of cancer center we deserve, said Scheiner, who beat metastatic soft tissue sarcoma with the help of Sylvester Center doctors in the late 1990s. It validates our past and ensures a future with no limits.

A key member of one of the nations leading cancer centers Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York Nimer is considered one of the worlds premier leukemia and stem cell transplant researchers and physicians.

During nearly two decades at Sloan-Kettering, Nimer established an inpatient program for patients with blood disorders, and a blood stem cell transplant program for adults with malignant blood diseases, focusing primarily on patients with non-Hodgkin and Hodgkin lymphoma, or multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells in the bone marrow.

Among Nimers notable achievements in the laboratory: developing a bone marrow transplant treatment using stem cells to eliminate cancer cells from the blood and coaxing tumor-reducing proteins out of stem cells, then using those proteins to help enhance the effects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy for cancer patients.

A prolific researcher who has authored more than 200 scientific publications in numerous medical journals, Nimer also has made important discoveries in the field of pre-cancerous oncogenes, which can mutate and trigger cancer.

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Nimer named new director for University of Miami’s cancer center

Stem cell research allows for mismatched kidney transplants

By adminMarch 8, 2012Stem Cell Clinic

Donating a kidney may save a person's life - but only if the conditions are precise.

Kidney donors must be related and immunologically matched to their donors and even then, the recipient must take a lifetime of anti-rejection medications, which dont guarantee the organ won't be rejected.

But a new clinical trial from Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Ill. has shown how stem cells can be used to trick a recipients immune system into believing the new organ has been part of that persons body all along.

The breakthrough has the potential to eliminate both the risks associated with kidney transplantation and the need for anti-rejection medications within one year after surgery.

Its the holy grail of transplantation, said lead author Dr. Joseph Leventhal, transplant surgeon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and associate professor of surgery and director of kidney and pancreas transplantation at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Ill. This notion of being able to achieve tolerance through donor derived cells has been around for more than 50 years, but its translation to the clinic has been quite elusive. This article details the first successful attempt of this in mismatched and unrelated kidney recipients.

The research was published Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine, and it is the first study of its kind in which the donor and recipient were not related and did not have to be immunologically matched. Only 25 percent of siblings are immunologically identical, severely limiting the possibility of being a kidney donor.

The procedure worked by extracting a little bit more from the kidney donor than just their kidney. They also donated part of their immune system. About one month before surgery, bone marrow stem cells were collected from the donor and then enriched with facilitating cells becoming stem cells that will ultimately fool the donors immune system allowing the transplant to succeed.

One day after the kidney transplant occurs, the facilitating cell-enriched stem cells are also transplanted in the recipient, which then prompts the formation of stem cells in the bone marrow. This then causes specialized immune cells similar to the donors immune cells to develop, creating a dual bone marrow system environment, so both the donors immune system and the recipients immune system function inside the persons body.

Leventhal said that the ultimate goal is for the recipient to initially take anti-rejection medications but then slowly wean off of them within a year. According to Leventhal, the drugs come with their own share of negative side effects.

The foundation of clinical transplantation revolves around the use of medicines and suppressive drugs to control the immune system, Leventhal said. These drugs have been very successful in reducing the rates of loss of organs due to acute rejection where side effects include increase risk of infection and cancer, and metabolic side effects, such as the increase risk of hypertension and bone disease. But the drugs themselves are potentially harmful to the organs we transplant. Despite our ability to reduce rates of acute rejection, most individuals go on to lose organs because of chronic (long-term) rejection.

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Stem cell research allows for mismatched kidney transplants

Internationally Recognized Leukemia Physician and Researcher to Lead Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center

By adminMarch 8, 2012Uncategorized

MIAMI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Stephen D. Nimer, M.D., one of the worlds premier leukemia and stem cell transplant researchers and clinicians, has been named the new director of the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Nimer, the Alfred P. Sloan Chair in Cancer Research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, will assume the key University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and UHealth-University of Miami Health System post this spring, bringing 30 years of pioneering research and clinical experience and an unquenchable passion for improving the lives of patients with cancer, and their families.

The focus will not be solely on taking care of the cancer, it will be on taking care of the patient, said Nimer, whose patient-centered philosophy has won him as much acclaim as his clinical and laboratory accomplishments. That means trying to understand as fully as possible each patients cancer the biology driving the cancer, and the impact of the cancer on the patients life in order to develop a personalized therapeutic approach suited to each individual.

Pascal J. Goldschmidt, M.D., Senior Vice President for Medical Affairs and Dean of the Miller School, and CEO of UHealth, said Nimer, who headed the Division of Hematologic Oncology at Sloan-Kettering for a dozen years, is the ideal physician-scientist to lead Sylvester into its third decade and to designation as one of the nations official comprehensive cancer centers by the NIHs National Cancer Institute.

Stephen possesses a unique combination of outstanding clinical skills and visionary scientific acumen in cancer research that will lead Sylvester to become the next top comprehensive cancer center in the U.S., Dean Goldschmidt said. He brings a true patient-centered approach to clinical care and leading-edge research that makes a real difference for our fellow humans. Cancer patients across South Florida and around the world will benefit from his expertise and leadership.

Dr. Nimer will be a spectacular leader for the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, said UM President Donna E. Shalala.This is a momentous development for the Miller School, the University of Miami, and all of South Florida.

Joseph Rosenblatt, M.D., who has served as interim director of Sylvester, said Dr. Nimers arrival will allow Sylvester to find its rightful place among the worlds premier cancer centers, and his leadership will usher in a new era for our cancer center, which I and our faculty anticipate with great enthusiasm.

Nimer, currently vice chair for faculty development at Sloan-Ketterings Department of Medicine, plans to develop and expand a number of services at Sylvester, including programs for breast cancer, lung cancer, prostate cancer and hematological malignancies, among others. He also plans to recruit more than 30 new scientists and physicians, develop key core facilities and expand the clinical and laboratory research capabilities.

He specifically hopes to recruit experts in areas such as bone marrow transplantation, mouse models of human cancer, and molecular diagnostics, as well as additional surgeons skilled in complex, curative and restorative procedures, such as breast reconstruction. He also will expand efforts in cancer prevention, screening and early diagnosis and in identifying those factors that predispose people to develop cancer.

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Internationally Recognized Leukemia Physician and Researcher to Lead Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center