Embryonic Stem Cells (tm) by Invitrogen

Caught a great talk today at the OHRI by visiting speaker Mahendra S. Rao, who is probably the world's leading scientist in embryonic/neural stem cell therapies. The talk featured an overwhelmingly impressive wealth of data on neural stem cell biology, particularly pertaining to transplant studies. Most of this work was done in his former capacity as head of the NIH's stem cell program.

What was most interesting about the talk was the work Rao is now leading as VP Stem Cell research at Invitrogen Corp (in the more ES-cell research friendly state of California). He recently took up this post after leaving the NIH as a result of their decision to abandon ES cell research in light of the Bush administration's strong anti ES cell research policies. From what he presented of his new project at Invitrogen, it's obvious they are now about to kick some serious ass in the arena of clinical therapeutic development. They've got GMP-friendly, FDA-approved and production-scalable technologies and ES cell lines ready to go. Couple with that Invitrogen's recent moves that has established the company as the leader in gene expression and cell culture technologies, and what you have is imminent domination of the biological therapies scene. Looks like one of the first applications they will go after is Parkinson's disease, using ES-derived neurons to replenish dopamine producers in the substantia nigra.

Interestingly, while transplanted ES-derived neurons are suitable for applications such as Parkinson's as they can survive long-term in recipient's brain, Rao mentioned that their potential in other regenerative therapies is limited by the fact that we do not yet know how to make the transplanted cells properly integrate into existing neuronal circuitry. Strong impetus for a lot of interesting research in probing neural connectivity...