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This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (December 2007) Geron Corporation Type Public NASDAQ: GERN Founded 1990 Headquarters Menlo Park, CA Key people Dr. Thomas B. Okarma: President and CEO; David L. Greenwood: CFO Industry Biotechnology Products Cancer Geron Corporation is a biotechnology company founded by Dr. Michael D. West based in Menlo Park, California. The company was incorporated in 1990 and began doing business in 1992. Geron Corporation focuses on creating drugs based on telomere and stem cell research[3]. Geron is traded on the NASDAQ under the symbol GERN. The current chief executive officer is Dr. Thomas B. Okarma, M.D., Ph.D. It was included in the SCCC Index, a 15 stock index of companies important "to the field of stem cell, cloning, and cell transplantation research and medicine" when that index was created in 2003 and as of July 2006 comprises 18.42% of the index[4]. The company specializes in developing and commercialization of products in three specific areas: 1) therapeutic products for cancer that inhibit telomerase; 2) pharmaceuticals that activate telomerase in tissues impacted by cell aging, injury or degenerative diseases; and 3) cell-based therapies derived from human embryonic stem cells for treatment of various chronic diseases[5]. Currently, Geron Corporation has two anti-cancer products in human clinical trials. The first, called GRN163L, is a drug that targets telomerase and has been shown to be effective in treating various cancers in animals[6]. In studies conducted at Johns Hopkins University GRN163L was active against both CD138+ and CD138neg cancer stem cells and eliminated the colony forming potential of both by 5 weeks. Similarly, GRN163L inhibited the in vitro clonogenic growth of CD138neg Multiple Myeloma Cancer Stem Cells isolated from the bone marrow aspirates of patients with Multiple Myeloma. Geron has started human clinical trials and is testing GRN163L in patients with lymphocytic leukemia[7]. Presently Geron is recruiting patients for 3 clinical trials using GRN163L, including lung cancer[8], chronic lymphocytic leukemia[9], solid tumors[10].Also in trials at Duke University is GRNVAC1, a telomerase vaccine being used on patients with prostate cancer. With the vaccine, Geron plans to inject telomerase into the patient with metastatic prostate cancer to induce the body to produce a more aggressive immune response to the cancer. This vaccine has also produced significant initial results. Geron's progress with these telomerase drugs has been significant enough to have elicited a significant monetary investment in 2005 from Merck, one of the largest of the world's drug companies[11]. | ||||
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