Dear SCF Supporters,

Last month I attended the 2009 World Stem Cell Summit in Baltimore, Maryland. It was an incredible three-day scientific conference that brought more than 1,000 people from 34 countries together. I saw many familiar faces but even more new ones, which proved to me how rapidly this industry is growing. Throughout my visit, I couldn’t stop thinking about how five years ago this cause was all about “hope and possibility.” Now, things felt like they were actually coming to fruition.

The conference began with the signing of an agreement between Maryland, with Governor
O’Malley, and California, with Bob Klein of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine,
to share stem cell research. Back in 2006, the Maryland General Assembly passed an act, that to date, has provided $56 million through the state’s Stem Cell Research Fund. California allocated 3 billion in funds for research in 2004. The intention of the agreement was to set an example of how to keep the stem cell community powerful and united, a challenge repeatedly discussed.

The summit included routine statements from various scientists and industry leaders such as: “We are moving from an era of treatment to an era of cures… instead of fixing your pancreas, we will be building you a new one.”

In attendance were many bio-entrepreneurs, scientists, patient advocates and representatives from the NIH and FDA. Talks covering research updates in diabetes with Dr. Camilo Ricordi, spinal cord injury with Dr. John McDonald, heart disease with Dr. Joshua Hare, and cancer with Curt Civin - to talks of medical tourism, securing patents and biotech advances, started daily at 8am and ended by 6pm. At lunch, one could choose from 49 “experts” to chat over their particular field, including lunch with me and how to start a 501c3 nonprofit stem cell advocacy group, to lunch with Marc Unger of the Fluidigm group, who said that “stem cell culture chips will become an indispensable part of every stem cell lab.”

Dr. Tina Guanting Qui of the Bristol Eye Hospital in Great Britain, spoke about “Ophthalmology and Stem Cell Regenerative Medicine.” Her work, which is highly theoretical and only recently tried on rats, relies on the opposite end of the life cycle - on stem cells harvested from the eyes of people dead fewer than 48 hours. Qui proposed taking neural progenitor cells from the photo receptors of the deceased, noting that most donors come from families where blindness is present, and forcing regeneration before introducing the cells. This is a form of “gene delivery” into the receptors of a patient suffering form macular degeneration.

To my surprise, Dr. Wise Young, founding director of the W.M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience and a professor at Rutgers, said that by November 2009 China will be closing its doors to medical tourism. Therefore, individuals with spinal cord injuries seeking stem cell treatments from China, will no longer be accepted as patients. He said in the next few years, other countries, including India, will do the same. He stressed how important funding in the U.S. is to eventually provide safe and proper treatments in our own backyard, eliminating unrestricted treatment and harmful outcomes. All the while, stem cell tourism, going to another country and trying a stem cell treatment not available in your own nation, was a hot subject. Would you do it? What if doctors told you there was nothing they could do to alleviate your condition, or your loved one’s? Would you go abroad, try an untested medical treatment just in case? Would you spend your life savings on it? These were very important questions that were tossed around, reinforcing why this field is so emotionally charged.

Dr. Alan Moore, President of Stem Cell Therapeutics in Canada, told me about the stem cell therapies he’s working on for acute stroke victims and multiple sclerosis. At the summit he announced a novel, Drug-Based approach to neuron regeneration and upcoming clinical trials. On a side note, he advised that the best thing for chronic stoke victims is aerobic exercises to increase heart rate a minimum of one hour a day.

My talk, which came in on the last day of the conference, was all about the history of my stem cell research advocacy, how I started my own nonprofit and what the foundation is up to. I sat on a panel entitled, SOCIETY TRACK: A New Era for Human Embryonic Stem Cells, with moderator K. Sue O’Shea, University of Michigan, Kevin Wilson, American Society for Cell Biology, and scientist Mark Noble, University of Rochester.

All in all, I left the conference with more information and exciting news than I came in with, feeling so optimistic and proud to be associated with such a charged and promising cause. The most important message that truly sank in was the united belief from each scientist that “treatments and cures are very possible and realistic for all areas of disease.” Unfortunately, however, they all stated that the main barrier to medical breakthroughs is not enough funding. “Hmmmm…” I thought to myself on the plane ride home, “I still have a lot of work to do.”

For those of you who are interested in viewing segments of the conference or would like to watch the conference in its entirety via the summit webcast, please take a minute to sign up and view the World Stem Cell Summit 2009 Webcast at
http://www.worldstemcellsummit.com/2009_webcast_entry.html

View my Interview with Capital News Service at the Summit by visiting
http://www.youtube.com/user/SCFoundation#p/a

Thank you for taking the time to keep up with my efforts. I look forward to sharing more and more cutting edge news with you as the field of stem cell research progresses!

Sincerely,
Sabrina Cohen
President / Founder

P.S. Are you interested in stem cell treatments or know someone who is? Please do a little research first at www.Quackwatch.com