Susan L. Solomon to Speak on ‘State of Industry’ of Regenerative Medicine at Biotech Showcase in San Francisco
Susan L. Solomon to Speak on ‘State of Industry’ of Regenerative Medicine at Biotech Showcase in San Francisco
NEW YORK, NY (January 9, 2012) – Susan L. Solomon, CEO of The New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF), will speak on the state of the industry of regenerative medicine as part of a briefing developed by the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM) on Tuesday, January 10, at 8 a.m. at the Biotech Showcase in San Francisco.
Ms. Solomon will discuss the critical role of the NYSCF nonprofit biotech model in conducting translational stem cell research and early stage drug development to move promising new drugs and treatments more quickly to patients. This highly innovative model helps reduce financial investment and risk for the pharmaceutical industry.
“Currently, only one out of every 10,000 promising new drugs are approved for clinical use, and treatments typically take 14 years and an investment of $1.2 billion before they are made available to patients who desperately need them,” said Ms. Solomon. “In part, this is because under the current system drugs are first tested in animals, which often react differently to drugs than humans. We can accelerate and de-risk the drug discovery process by first testing promising drugs for safety and effectiveness on human cells and tissues grown from stem cells in a laboratory dish. This will revolutionize drug development and move critical new treatments to patients faster.”
Fast-tracking cures and therapeutic treatments for some of the world’s most devastating diseases is the highest priority of NYSCF and its co-founder Ms. Solomon, whose son has type 1 diabetes. Founded in 2005, NYSCF now employs 40-full-time researchers concentrating on diseases where stem cell therapy shows the most promise: diabetes, heart disease, cancer, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and bone regeneration. At the NYSCF Drug Discovery Center, which is part of the foundation’s state of the art stem cell research laboratory, researchers are creating a new paradigm for translational research using stem cell technology to make new drugs safer and more effective while minimizing side effects.
Since 2008 research conducted or supported by NYSCF has resulted in major breakthroughs. In what TIME magazine called the #1 Medical Breakthrough of 2011, researchers in the NYSCF laboratory successfully reprogrammed adult skin cells from patients with Type 1 diabetes to the pluripotent state by combining the cells with unfertilized donor oocytes. TIME also named the NYSCF lead scientist in that study, Dr. Dieter Egli, to its list of People Who Mattered in 2011.
In 2010, NYSCF-Robertson Investigator Dr. Derrick Rossi of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) was named one of TIME’s People Who Mattered for research in regenerative medicine. In 2008, TIME named NYSCF-supported research on ALS conducted by Dr. Kevin Eggan at HSCI as the year’s Top Medical Breakthrough.
The Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM) is an international organization representing the interests of the regenerative medicine community and patients. The State of the Industry Briefing will begin at 8 a.m. on January 10 at the Park 55 Wyndham in San Francisco as part of the Biotech Showcase 2012 conference.
The State of the Industry Briefing is open to the public, but attendance at disease-focused panels at the Biotech Showcase requires registration. For more information or to register for the conference, contact Rob Margolin at 646-201-4192. Registration is complimentary for credentialed members of the media and the investment community.