Roche, Pfizer, Sanofi Plan $72.7 Million Stem-Cell Bank

[soccertese]

NO PD MENTIONED
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-1...cell-bank.html

Drug companies and universities are spending 55.6 million euros ($72.7 million) to develop a bank of stem cells to use in testing potential treatments for hard-to- treat diseases.

The effort, known as Stembancc and managed by the University of Oxford in England, will focus on generating 1,500 induced pluripotent stem cell lines, researchers said at a London news conference. The cells will be used by drugmakers including Pfizer Inc. (PFE), Sanofi (SAN) and Roche Holding AG (ROG) to test treatments for peripheral nervous disorders, pain, dementia, migraine, autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and diabetes and to perform toxicology tests.

“This is a pioneering effort,” said Zameel Cader, a neurologist at Oxford and one of Stembancc’s leaders. “We want to be a flagship project within Europe.”

[ol'cs]

Because the rate at which novel compounds for "unmet" therapies, as small molecule entities, are becoming more rare to discover and market. New, effective drugs for many neurological conditions are just not coming on line. When will they get the message that nature has all the capacity for healing disease, and it exists in what we already possess, ie., cells. cs