posted
I may be crazy but I just bought it back again..for the 3rd time. Lots of news coming next week in national press..I think I'll hang unless I see it dropping suddenly....
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Found this in my izone/TD Ameritrade News for ACTC. Cannot post link... -------------------------------------------------- No stem-cell triumph: Embryos were destroyed
By McClatchy News Open Last Update: 8/31/2006 3:47:59 AM Data provided by
Aug 31, 2006 (The Philadelphia Inquirer - McClatchy-Tribune Business News via COMTEX) -- The California biotech company that grabbed headlines last week for sparing human embryos while creating precious stem cells in fact destroyed all 16 embryos used in the experiments.
Advanced Cell Technology vice president Robert Lanza, senior author of the research, was widely quoted as saying he hoped the new embryo-sparing approach to making stem cells would overcome ethical objections and expand federal funding for the research.
Supplemental data submitted with the paper revealed that Lanza's team did not fully use the approach -- it just extrapolated from less ambitious experiments.
But the lay media weren't the only ones who misunderstood. Nature, the prestigious international journal that published the paper, initially issued a news release that declared Lanza's team had made embryonic stem-cell colonies "while leaving the embryo intact." The journal has since issued two "clarifications" and published online the supplemental data showing the embryos were destroyed.
"We feel it necessary to explain that... the embryos that were used for these experiments did not remain intact," Ruth Francis, Nature's senior press officer, e-mailed the media.
Asked why Nature editors did not make that clear in the paper, Francis e-mailed The Inquirer: "We are looking into the possibility of further clarification of this paper."
In an interview with The Inquirer last week, Lanza explicitly said some of the embryos survived and were returned to frozen storage.
Yesterday, he said he was referring to embryos used in experiments that were complementary to, but separate from, the Nature paper.
Some commentators said such dissembling only added to fears -- raised by last year's South Korean stem-cell research fraud that marred the reputation of the journal Science -- that the field is hyped and suspect.
A call for funding
"It's deeply disturbing," said David Magnus, director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics. "But I think it speaks to why we need state and federal funding of this research. Otherwise, we're dependent on small, underfunded companies like Advanced Cell Technology to do the work. They have a history of making somewhat spurious announcements when they're in need of cash."
Normally, embryonic stem cells are extracted when they briefly appear in a five-day-old embryo, which has about 100 cells. This kills the embryo.
Lanza's team intervened earlier, dismantling eight- to 10-cell embryos, then signaling the individual cells to transform into stem cells. This transformation was a breakthrough, but it was highly inefficient: Of 91 individual cells, only two ultimately made new stem-cell colonies.
Here is where the paper turned speculative: The 16 dismantled embryos might have survived if only one or two of their eight cells had been removed.
The 'breakthrough here'
Indeed, infertility clinics occasionally perform "embryo biopsy" on an eight-cell embryo to screen for genetic diseases before letting the embryo grow to about 100 cells, the size normally implanted in a womb.
The Nature paper showed a picture of a 100-cell embryo that Lanza's lab had biopsied at the eight-cell stage -- implying that it was part of the stem-cell experiments rather than separate, related research.
Lanza's team wrote that the paper shows that single cells "can be used to establish human embryonic stem-cell lines using an approach that does not interfere with the developmental capacity of the parent embryo."
Yesterday, Lanza said he saw no reason to explain that they had not actually used that approach on the embryos from which stem cells were generated.
"The scientific breakthrough here is that a single cell has the capacity to make embryonic stem cells," he said. "It was not the purpose of this study to repeat what we already know" -- that an early embryo can be biopsied without killing it.
In 2001, Advanced Cell Technology was lionized, and then criticized, when its published assertion of having cloned the first human embryos turned out to be exaggerated. Of 19 embryos, only one reached the six-cell stage, then died.
The company was on the brink of insolvency in 2004 after South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk published evidence -- since shown to be a sham -- that his lab had achieved the human embryo-cloning milestone.
Last week, Advanced Cell's shriveled stock value more than quadrupled after the Nature paper was published online, and the company's chief executive officer was quoted saying that he hoped the ability to make stem cells without destroying embryos would attract new investors.
Lanza said yesterday that he did not know how the latest news would affect the company. The firm's shares fell more than 9 percent yesterday to 78 cents a share. "To be truthful, I'm so deeply involved in the scientific side," Lanza said, "you'd have to talk to the business end."
Contact staff writer Marie McCullough at 215-854-2720 or mmccullough*phillynews.com.
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posted
THIS is why everyone is selling... if it hits .40 now, I'm SHORTING. This is the end of the story, this POS is dead.
No stem-cell triumph: Embryos were destroyed
Thursday , August 31, 2006 03:47 ET
By Marie McCullough Aug 31, 2006 (The Philadelphia Inquirer - McClatchy-Tribune Business News via COMTEX) -- The California biotech company that grabbed headlines last week for sparing human embryos while creating precious stem cells in fact destroyed all 16 embryos used in the experiments.
Advanced Cell Technology vice president Robert Lanza, senior author of the research, was widely quoted as saying he hoped the new embryo-sparing approach to making stem cells would overcome ethical objections and expand federal funding for the research.
Supplemental data submitted with the paper revealed that Lanza's team did not fully use the approach -- it just extrapolated from less ambitious experiments.
But the lay media weren't the only ones who misunderstood. Nature, the prestigious international journal that published the paper, initially issued a news release that declared Lanza's team had made embryonic stem-cell colonies "while leaving the embryo intact." The journal has since issued two "clarifications" and published online the supplemental data showing the embryos were destroyed.
"We feel it necessary to explain that... the embryos that were used for these experiments did not remain intact," Ruth Francis, Nature's senior press officer, e-mailed the media.
Asked why Nature editors did not make that clear in the paper, Francis e-mailed The Inquirer: "We are looking into the possibility of further clarification of this paper."
In an interview with The Inquirer last week, Lanza explicitly said some of the embryos survived and were returned to frozen storage.
Yesterday, he said he was referring to embryos used in experiments that were complementary to, but separate from, the Nature paper.
Some commentators said such dissembling only added to fears -- raised by last year's South Korean stem-cell research fraud that marred the reputation of the journal Science -- that the field is hyped and suspect.
A call for funding
"It's deeply disturbing," said David Magnus, director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics. "But I think it speaks to why we need state and federal funding of this research. Otherwise, we're dependent on small, underfunded companies like Advanced Cell Technology to do the work. They have a history of making somewhat spurious announcements when they're in need of cash."
Normally, embryonic stem cells are extracted when they briefly appear in a five-day-old embryo, which has about 100 cells. This kills the embryo.
Lanza's team intervened earlier, dismantling eight- to 10-cell embryos, then signaling the individual cells to transform into stem cells. This transformation was a breakthrough, but it was highly inefficient: Of 91 individual cells, only two ultimately made new stem-cell colonies.
Here is where the paper turned speculative: The 16 dismantled embryos might have survived if only one or two of their eight cells had been removed.
The 'breakthrough here'
Indeed, infertility clinics occasionally perform "embryo biopsy" on an eight-cell embryo to screen for genetic diseases before letting the embryo grow to about 100 cells, the size normally implanted in a womb.
The Nature paper showed a picture of a 100-cell embryo that Lanza's lab had biopsied at the eight-cell stage -- implying that it was part of the stem-cell experiments rather than separate, related research.
Lanza's team wrote that the paper shows that single cells "can be used to establish human embryonic stem-cell lines using an approach that does not interfere with the developmental capacity of the parent embryo."
Yesterday, Lanza said he saw no reason to explain that they had not actually used that approach on the embryos from which stem cells were generated.
"The scientific breakthrough here is that a single cell has the capacity to make embryonic stem cells," he said. "It was not the purpose of this study to repeat what we already know" -- that an early embryo can be biopsied without killing it.
In 2001, Advanced Cell Technology was lionized, and then criticized, when its published assertion of having cloned the first human embryos turned out to be exaggerated. Of 19 embryos, only one reached the six-cell stage, then died.
The company was on the brink of insolvency in 2004 after South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk published evidence -- since shown to be a sham -- that his lab had achieved the human embryo-cloning milestone.
Last week, Advanced Cell's shriveled stock value more than quadrupled after the Nature paper was published online, and the company's chief executive officer was quoted saying that he hoped the ability to make stem cells without destroying embryos would attract new investors.
Lanza said yesterday that he did not know how the latest news would affect the company. The firm's shares fell more than 9 percent yesterday to 78 cents a share. "To be truthful, I'm so deeply involved in the scientific side," Lanza said, "you'd have to talk to the business end."
Contact staff writer Marie McCullough at 215-854-2720 or mmccullough*phillynews.com.
-------------------- Stick with Repo's plan in '07 - FRPT/DKAM!
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This article is BS. They developed a technology that will save the embryos during these tests. They could have spent a fortune and done the test correctly, but they took a shortcut because the old technology (of removing one cell from one embryo) is already proven. They didn't need to prove it. The Embryos were destroyed but didn't have to be. The technology is sound.
-------------------- "I will smack you in the mouth, I'm Neil Diamond"- Will Ferrell
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Good post from IHUB about this stupid article:
What ACTC was trying to show by the study was that stem cell lines from embryos with 8 cells could be created. They accomplished this. The survival of the embryo by this procedure is already established and in fact many children are alive today who have had a cell taken out at the 8 cell stage for genetic testing. The idea of not allowing the embryos to survive was not the issue. They decided to be efficient with the embryos and remove many cells and obviously they would not survive after this procedure. Otherwise they would have had to experiment on many more embryos. Why waste extra embryos if you don't have to. They were not going to take 91 embryos, keep them alive and say - here you go make babies out of them now. Not for this kind of study. I understood this from day one!!
-------------------- "I will smack you in the mouth, I'm Neil Diamond"- Will Ferrell
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Definitely a lot up in the air right now. But I read (on another board) That they are in a quiet period right now. If that's true then perhaps something big looms on the horizon. Not sure.
-------------------- "I will smack you in the mouth, I'm Neil Diamond"- Will Ferrell
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Quiet Period: The federal securities laws do not define the term "quiet period," which is also referred to as the "waiting period." However, historically, a quiet period extended from the time a company files a registration statement with the SEC until SEC staff declared the registration statement "effective." During that period, the federal securities laws limited what information a company and related parties can release to the public.
On June 29, 2005, the Commission voted to adopt modifications to the registration, communications, and offering processes under the Securities Act of 1933. Among many other provisions, the rules update and liberalize permitted offering activity and communications to allow more information to reach investors by revising the "gun-jumping" provisions under the Securities Act. The cumulative effects of these rules are as follows:
Well-known seasoned issuers are permitted to engage at any time in oral and written communications, including use at any time of a new type of written communication called a "free writing prospectus," subject to enumerated conditions (including, in some cases, filing with the Commission).
All reporting issuers are, at any time, permitted to continue to publish regularly released factual business information and forward-looking information.
Non-reporting issuers are, at any time, permitted to continue to publish factual business information that is regularly released and intended for use by persons other than in their capacity as investors or potential investors.
Communications by issuers more than 30 days before filing a registration statement will be permitted so long as they do not reference a securities offering that is the subject of a registration statement.
All issuers and other offering participants will be permitted to use a free writing prospectus after the filing of the registration statement, subject to enumerated conditions (including, in some cases, filing with the Commission). Offering participants, other than the issuer, will be liable for a free writing prospectus only if they use, refer to, or participate in the planning and use of the free writing prospectus by another offering participant who uses it. Issuers will have liability for any issuer information contained in any other offering participant's free writing prospectus as well as any free writing prospectus they prepare, use, or refer to.
The exclusions form the definition of prospectus are expanded to allow a broader category of routine communications regarding issuers, offerings, and procedural matters, such as communications about the schedule for an offering or about account-opening procedures.
The exemptions for research reports are expanded. A number of these new rules include conditions of eligibility. Most of the rules, for example, are not available to blank check companies, penny stock issuers, or shell companies.
The rules address the treatment under the Securities Act of electronic communications, including electronic road shows and information located on or hyperlinked to an issuer's website. The rules define written communication as any communication that is written, printed, a radio or television broadcast, or a graphic communication. The definition of graphic communication and, thus, electronic road show excludes communications that are carried live and in real-time to a live audience, regardless of the means of transmission. Electronic road shows for initial public offerings of common equity or convertible equity securities will have to make a bona fide electronic road show readily available to an unrestricted audience to avoid filing the electronic road show with the Commission. No other road shows will be subject to filing.
The effective date of the rules is December 1, 2005. For more information, please see Release No. 33-8591 — Securities Offering Reform.
-------------------- "I will smack you in the mouth, I'm Neil Diamond"- Will Ferrell
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Though from what I have found, a quiet period usually only applies to IPO's. So maybe the poster was incorrect. Or maybe the Company was not talking about an official "quiet period" but rather a period where they didn't feel like filing any PR's.
-------------------- "I will smack you in the mouth, I'm Neil Diamond"- Will Ferrell
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Just got this in an e-mail from their PR firm.
Thank you for your continued interest in Advanced Cell Technology. Due to the recent announcement of the financing statement as of August 25th, 2006, the Company is in a quiet period until such time as both financings are closed. Advanced Cell Technology stands by our investors and we look toward a prosperous future as we continue our near term efforts to ready cellular based therapies for clinic trial.
Please don't hesitate to contact Trilogy Capital Partners with any feedback or questions you might have.
Thank you again for your interest in our company and its mission.
Sincerely,
William M. Caldwell IV Chief Executive Officer Advanced Cell Technology
Financial Communications: Trilogy Capital Partners Astra Thomas, VP 800-592-6061
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