Posts Tagged: therapy

News

Will California follow Oregon’s ‘strategic’ approach to psychedelics?

Image courtesy of 24K-Production

There is a growing acceptance in mental health circles that some psychedelics – particularly psilocybin, MDMA, Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and mescaline – have great promise for treating certain mental health disorders, including post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and depression. But some observers fear legalizing it could kick off a psilocybin Gold Rush that emphasizes profits over patient care.

News

Stem cell agency chooses new board chair amidst funding uncertainty

Come March 28, Vito Imbascani is scheduled to be sworn in as the new chairman of the $12 billion California stem cell agency – an 18-year-old state program to develop revolutionary treatments for such things as brain and blood cancers, heart disease, diabetes, sickle cell disease, spina bifida, incontinence, blindness, arthritis, HIV, stroke, epilepsy and much more.

News

Stem cell money flows, as search expands for ‘miraculous’ cures

Photo illustration of a doctor analyzing stem cells. (Image: CI Photos, via Shutterstock)

California’s stem cell agency, created as a way to develop revolutionary cures based on human embryonic stem cells, has awarded  $316 million over the last 12 months, most of it backing a type of therapy that was not even on the agency’s radar when it was created in 2004.

News

Frustration, anxiety mark families’ hopes for ‘bubble baby’ cure

Monica Nava and her 1-year-old daughter Clementine, who suffers from the "bubble baby" affliction. (Family photo).

The story about Jakob, Sheersha  and Clementine is a 6,000-mile biomedical tale that spans the Atlantic. The story ranges from the Saskatchewan River in Canada to the dusty Tehachapi mountains in drought-plagued Southern California. And it is a story of children with a terrible and rare genetic affliction known as the bubble baby disease.

News

Stem cell agency says it’s going all out on ‘bubble baby’ cure

A scientist at work in a biomedical laboratory. (Photo: Tom Robertson, via Shutterstock)

The California stem cell agency says it is doing “everything” it can to move forward on a gene therapy that has saved the lives of more than 50 persons but which has been pushed aside by the company that has exclusive rights to it. The issue has raised questions about the ethics of withholding care from babies and children suffering from a fatal disease.

Opinion

Step therapy: Harmful delays and the patient may suffer

Hospital medical staff checking a patient's records. (Photo: Stokkete, via Shutterstock)

OPINION: It’s never a good idea when insurers cut costs by interfering in the decision-making process between patients and their doctor. But during a national pandemic, it’s a particularly bad idea. I am thinking specifically of an insurance strategy called step therapy.

News

Community college students see need for mental health therapy

Students attending a lecture. (Photo: sirtravelalot, via Shutterstock)

Stressed by classes, grades, jobs, personal issues and COVID-19, some California community college students are turning to mental health counseling. But the service is scarce and demand is high. One major study found that community college students reported higher rates of academic impairment due to mental health struggles than students attending than students at the University of California or  California State University. 

News

Ballot targeted for $5.5 billion stem cell initiative

Stem cell research using what's known as a PCR strip. (Image: Science Photo via Shutterstock)

Backers of a California ballot initiative to provide $5.5 billion more for the state’s cash-strapped stem cell agency say they will take their first official step by the end of this month.That’s when they will submit the proposed measure to California election officials and trigger a many-months-long process. The effort is aimed at ensuring that the nearly 15-year-old research effort survives in a meaningful way beyond next year.

News

Stem cell agency: $16 million-plus in grants

A stem cell researcher at work. (Photo: 18percentgrey, via Shutterstock)

The California stem cell agency handed out $16.4 million in research grants seeking therapies for afflictions ranging from gum disease and cancer to vision loss and Parkinson’s Disease. The award for Parkinson’s was relatively tiny — only $150,000 — but represented a rare case in which the agency’s governing board overturned its reviewers, who make the de facto decisions on awards

News

Stem cell agency founder eyes $5 billion in state funding

A human DNA complex. ((Illustration, Shutterstock)

The man often called the father of the California stem cell agency has all but said he is set to launch an effort to pump an additional $5 billion in state funding into the research effort, which is scheduled to run out of cash in about three years.

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