Titan Announces Corporate Partnership With Schering AG for Development and
Commercialization of Novel Parkinson's Disease Therapy
As I read this headline I thought just another merger. But as I
continued to read I became more excited. I will leave out all the
preliminary verbage and quote the heart of the matter:
"Titan's product, Spheramine(TM), is a novel, cell-based product for
the treatment of Parkinson's disease, which will utilize non-embrhyonic,
human retinal pigment epithnelial (RPE) cells. RPE cells produce dopamine,
a neurotransmitter that is lacking in certain brain regions in Parkinson's
disease. The product consists of human RPE cells adhered to microscopic,
inert matrices which allow the long term survival and function of cells that
are implanted into the mammalian central nervous system. Murine and primate
animal studies have demonstrated the ability of a single treatment of RPE
cells on microcarriers to significanatly reverse Parkinson's like symptome
for the duration of the experimental evaluation, which was up to one year.
In these studies, unmodified human RPE cells survived and functioned
without any need for immunosuppression or modification of the cells. RPE
cells can be propagated using cell culture methods to produce a large amount
of cells, and tests to date have shown that the cells may be frozen prior
to use, allowing the potential for a standardized product avbailable on an
as needed basis".
Company Press Release, Feb. 2, 2000 (AMEX:TTP - news)
The web page is: http://yahoo.com/bw/000202/ca_titan_p_1.html
Has anybody else run across this?
Rosemary Dexter cg for Dex 76/7
